• De-sanctifying Written Constitutions

    Review of Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2021) 502 pp. $35.00. Elizabeth Mancke and Adam Nadeau[1] In the conventional metanarrative of modernity, written constitutions symbolize progressive trends, political events that were considered “benevolent and normally acted as… Continue Reading

  • “What would Lord Durham advise?”

    E.A. Heaman No, “not assimilate your French”: I think he’s been misread. Lord Durham would have better advice than that because he lived in a world not unlike our own. Devastating and state-discrediting pandemic? Check. Disaffected fringe looking to topple the state? Check. Popular American violence lending strength to popular violence everywhere, including Canada? Check.… Continue Reading

  • Entangling the Quebec Act: Transnational Contexts, Meanings, and Legacies in North America and the British Empire – A Review

    Ollivier Hubert and François Furstenberg, eds., Entangling the Quebec Act: Transnational Contexts, Meanings, and Legacies in North America and the British Empire (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020). Adam Nadeau In Entangling the Quebec Act: Transnational Contexts, Meanings, and Legacies in North America and the British Empire, editors Ollivier Hubert and François Furstenberg present… Continue Reading

  • The Militia and Civic Community in Colonial New Brunswick: Part I, 1786-1816

    Service militaire, citoyenneté et culture politique : études des milices au Canada atlantique Nous vous présentons le premier texte d’une série de contributions qui seront publiées au cours des prochaines années par des membres d’un nouveau groupe de recherche en histoire des milices au Canada atlantique. Réuni autour d’un projet de recherche subventionné par le Conseil… Continue Reading

  • Reconciling Chignecto: The many stories of Siknikt

    Anne Marie Lane Jonah [Welcome to our summer series on Acadian history! We are very excited to be presenting this special four-week series, cross-posting on Unwritten Histories, Borealia, and  Acadiensis, and in collaboration with the Fredericton Regional Museum, the York Sunbury Historical Society, an Open Academy grant from the Royal Society, the UNB Departments of… Continue Reading

  • Exhibiting the Acadian History of Pointe Sainte-Anne

    Stephanie Pettigrew [Welcome to our summer series on Acadian history! We are very excited to be presenting this special four-week series, cross-posting on Unwritten Histories, Borealia, and  Acadiensis, and in collaboration with the Fredericton Regional Museum, the York Sunbury Historical Society, an Open Academy grant from the Royal Society, the UNB Departments of History and… Continue Reading

  • Early-Modern Place Names in Today’s Canada

    [This is the third essay of the Borealia series on Cartography and Empire–on the many ways maps were employed in the contested imperial spaces of early modern North America.]  Lauren Beck The Geographic Names Board of Canada (GNBC) provides scholars with a database of place names that allows users to look up the location of a place name,… Continue Reading

  • Mapping Land Tenure Pluralism in the St. Lawrence River Valley

    Julia Lewandoski [This essay kicks off a Borealia series on Cartography and Empire-on the many ways maps were employed in the contested imperial spaces of early modern North America.]  After the 1763 Peace of Paris, British officials embarked on an ambitious project to probe and depict the territories—many in reality still under indigenous sovereignty—that they now considered… Continue Reading