Sean Kheraj and Denis McKim Welcome to a series on early Canadian environmental history, jointly hosted by Borealia and The Otter ~ La Loutre, the blog of The Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). This joint series provides environmental historians of Canada the opportunity to reflect upon the state of so-called “pre-Confederation” history in the field. As was evident… Continue Reading
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Robert Englebert Robert Michael Morrissey, Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). I recently had an opportunity to discuss Robert Michael Morrissey’s new book Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country with my senior level seminar on French-Indigenous relations in colonial… Continue Reading
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Jerry Bannister In March I had the pleasure of attending the Pierre Savard conference[1] at the University of Ottawa. I was asked to give a talk on the future of Canadian history, particularly the ongoing debate over transnational versus national perspectives. I never did get around to asking why they invited me to speak. Perhaps… Continue Reading
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Douglas Hunter The Vikings are back in North America, athough in truth they’ve been with us since at least the eighteenth century, when the Vinland sagas began to fuel speculation about the lands Leif Eiriksson and his compatriots tried to colonize around 1000 AD. Their latest sighting is at Point Rosee in southwestern Newfoundland, where… Continue Reading
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Laura J. Smith In the summer of 1824 the British Colonial Office instructed the Upper Canadian government to give a soon-to-arrive Irish emigrant named John Dundon a “gratuitous” land grant of 200 acres and provisions for a year.[1] Such assistance was not unusual. Assisted emigration programs targeting disbanded soldiers, dispossessed peasants, and unemployed craftsmen had… Continue Reading
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Jeffers Lennox The American Revolution wasn’t simply American. The Early National period was hardly national at all. From 1774 to at least 1815, regional linkages and continental strategies shaped the development of American states and British provinces as people, policies, and ideas traversed a porous and fluid border. Ironically, loyal British colonies were less foreign… Continue Reading
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Thomas Peace When I first learned about Louis Vincent Sawatanen, about a decade ago, I thought that this Wendat man from Lorette was exceptional. Indeed, in many ways he was. Sawatanen was competent, if not fluent, in at least five different languages (Wendat, Mohawk, French, English, and Abenaki). At the end of the eighteenth-century, when… Continue Reading
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Bonnie Huskins This dapper fellow is known colloquially as “Loyalist Man.” He welcomes tourists to the Reversing Falls attraction in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and until a few years ago, sat on the highway welcoming drivers into the “Loyalist City.” I would like to use him today to entice American scholars who are becoming… Continue Reading
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Charmaine A. Nelson “A NEGRO WENCH, named Cloe, about thirty years old, pretty stout made, but not tall; speaks English and French, the latter not fluently. As she has taken all her own cloaths and some which did not belong to her, it is uncertain what dress she may wear. She is supposed to have… Continue Reading
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Daniel Laxer Historians tend to overlook the role of musical instruments in the Seven Years’ War. Few devote much attention to explaining how armies operated or battles played-out. Fred Anderson’s Crucible of War, for instance, does a terrific job explaining the origins and unfolding of events, but hardly assesses the experiences of soldiers on the… Continue Reading
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