scholarly journals John Stuart Mill and the liberal idea of Canada

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Graeme Garrard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
North American ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
French Canada ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Publicly Supported ◽  
British North American ◽  
Liberal Imperialism

The writer and politician John Stuart Mill played an important role in the two greatest constitutional moments of nineteenth-century Canada: he publicly supported Lord Durham’s 1838 report on Canada and he voted for the British North American Act (1867) that formed the Dominion of Canada. Mill had a part, in his own mind an important part, in Canada’s evolution from colony to self-governing dominion. I argue that his attitude to Canada was broadly consistent across these three decades and was consistent with his principled defence of liberal imperialism. But it was complicated by Mill’s relatively low opinion of the French Canadians who, he thought, lagged behind the rest of Canada in their development. That is why Mill supported Durham’s recommendation that they be assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream. I conclude that French Canada exposed the limits of Mill’s form of liberalism, which gave priority to the ‘civilising’ imperative over cultural diversity. And it remains questionable just how capacious Millian liberalism really is in accommodating cultural diversity.

Feelings, language and referential preferences in advertising (North America, French Canada and France)

Babel ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geneviève Quillard
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
North American ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
French Canada ◽  
The North

This study is based on a bilingual corpus made up of advertisements published in North American magazines and their translations for French Canadians, and on a unilingual corpus of advertisements published in France.<p>Drawing primarily on research conducted in the area of cultural studies and on such concepts as universalism/particularism, individualism/collectivism, monochronic/synchronic cultures, etc., this paper analyses the part played by feelings and language, and the referential preferences in the North American advertisements, their translated versions and the French advertisements.


scholarly journals Loyalty and Lobbying: French-Canadian Delegates in London, 1763–1840

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-66
Author(s):  
Damien-Claude Bélanger
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
French Canada ◽  
English Speaking

This article examines the individuals who came to London in order to lobby the imperial authorities in favour of the expansion of French-Canadian rights from the 1763 Treaty of Paris to the 1840 Act of Union and who were delegated by a significant body or institution within French Canada. Early efforts were centred on the expansion of religious rights and the perpetuation of Quebec’s legal and social institutions, including French civil law and the seigneurial system. Religious affairs remained an important facet of French-Canadian lobbying throughout the British regime, though the issue of political reform, which came to the fore in the 1780s, soon came to dominate lobbying efforts. These efforts were predicated on ideas of loyalty, as delegates sought to negotiate a place within the British Empire for French Canada. They lobbied London to allow French Canadians to fully participate in civic life within the framework of British political institutions while also allowing Quebec to retain its particular religious and social institutions. Delegates experienced some success, especially when they enjoyed the support of the colonial authorities at Quebec, but often failed to achieve their goals because they ran counter to British policy or because their English-speaking opponents had greater access to Whitehall.

Roving Printers

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-65
Author(s):  
David Finkelstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
North American ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
English Speaking

Using archival records and primary sources derived from English, Scottish, Irish, Australasian, South African, and North American print trade union sources, this chapter examines the phenomenon of the ‘tramping typographer’ in the long nineteenth century. English-speaking printers circulated across regions and continents, acting as transmitters of union values and trade skills, and becoming central to the expansion of labour interests in new territories. Such circulation of highly skilled workers played its part in the development of nineteenth-century anglophone print economies. Between 1830 and 1914, supported by emigration and removal grant schemes, printers and print union members circulated overseas, setting up businesses, engaging in labour and union politics, and creating the print culture infrastructures that sustained social, communal, and national communication and identity.

scholarly journals Racializing American “Egyptians”: Shifting Legal Discourse, 1690s–1860s

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-59
Author(s):  
Ann Marguerite Ostendorf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
British North American

This article situates the historical “Egyptian,” more commonly referred to as “Gypsy,” into the increasingly racist legal structures formed in the British North American colonies and the early United States, between the 1690s and 1860s. It simultaneously considers how those who considered themselves, or were considered by others, as “Egyptians” or “Gypsies” navigated life in the new realities created by such laws. Despite the limitations of state-produced sources from each era under study, inferences about these people’s experiences remain significant to building a more accurate and inclusive history of the United States. The following history narrates the lives of Joan Scott, her descendants, and other nineteenth-century Americans influenced by legalracial categories related to “Egyptians” and “Gypsies.” This is interwoven with the relevant historical contexts from American legal discourses that confirm the racialization of such categories over the centuries.

Liberalism, Colonialism and Liberal Imperialism

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Liberal Imperialism ◽  
Policies And Practices

One of the most obvious features of the post-Cold War world was that western states and western dominated international organizations pursued a more expansionist and interventionist set of foreign policies and practices. In attempting to explain as well as assess this period, scholars from across the theoretical and political spectrum have identified “liberalism” or “liberal” ideas, arguments and concepts, as playing a crucial role in motivating these practices as well as shaping their contents. In turn this has led to increased attention to the links between liberalism, colonialism, and liberal imperialism. This article explores these connections by focusing on the trajectory of a particular form of Nineteenth Century colonial liberal argument—what will be called here “developmental liberalism”—articulated most famously by John Stuart Mill. The objective here is to use Mill’s arguments to raise a number of vitally important questions about the discourses and practices of some modern forms of liberal imperialism. In particular it stresses Mill’s arguments against immanence and institutional universalism, and his understanding of the kind of agency necessary for achievement of progress in colonial settings.

scholarly journals God & Government

2018 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-97
Author(s):  
Denis McKim
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
North American ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Upper Canada ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic ◽  
British North American ◽  
The Church

This article focuses on a debate that raged in Upper Canada during the early and mid-nineteenth century over the degree to which civil authorities should assume responsibility for promoting societal virtue. Supporters of state-aided Christianity, many of whom were Tories, clashed with critics of close church-state ties, many of whom were Reformers. The catalyst for this conflict was the Clergy Reserves endowment. Drawing on works that situate British North American affairs in an expansive interpretive framework, this article maintains that the Upper Canadian debate over state-aided Christianity was subsumed within a larger conflict regarding the church-state relationship that originated in early modern England and played itself out across the North Atlantic World.

scholarly journals Constitutional Statesmanship: Lord Durham and the Creation of a New Colonial Paradigm, 1839–1841

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-137
Author(s):  
Richard W. Pound
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
English Canada ◽  
Traditional Farming ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
French Canada ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
The Church

No one is fully prescient, Durham included. His Report did not anticipate the degree to which the French Canadians would be unwilling to submerge themselves into a British whole and the role which religion would play in maintaining the distinctive society. But nor did he anticipate the willingness and ability of the two communities to work together to achieve tangible results for the new country, while the underlying racial resentment remained largely intact. Despite eruptions, occasionally violent, fuelled by that resentment, the growth of the country which he envisioned has taken place and the outcome has been beyond what he could have imagined. The full assimilation which he anticipated has not occurred, although French Canada has gradually moved in the direction of urbanization and adoption of commerce at the expense of the traditional farming orientation. The diminution of the Church influence and the increasing adoption of English as the new lingua franca of the world may yet have an impact which cannot be fully estimated. The existence of Quebec within Canada has provided much greater ability and political leverage to maintain the French language than would ever have been possible were Quebec to have existed separately, completely surrounded by the predominantly English-speaking United States and English Canada.

‘The worst loups-garous that one can meet’: Reading the Werewolf in the Canadian ‘Wilderness’

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Kaja Franck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Native Canadian

Ginger Snaps (2000) has been recognised as a significant example of feminist horror. This article analyses the final film in the trilogy, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004). On first appearance, Ginger Snaps Back reacts to the ending of the first film, in which Brigitte kills her lupine sister Ginger. Set in the nineteenth century, the film draws on Canadian Gothic tropes with the two sisters trapped in an isolated fort, surrounded by frozen forest. In doing so, it echoes another Canadian werewolf narrative, Henry Beaugrand's ‘The Werwolves' (1898). Beaugrand's story opens with a group of settler-colonisers spending the Christmas period in Fort Richelieu, Quebec. This location evokes North American fears, and the representation of the wooded wilderness as full of wild beasts and wild men. Beaugrand collapses the ‘wild beasts’ and ‘wild men’ into one hybrid monster. By comparing the depiction of werewolves in Ginger Snaps Back and Beaugrand's story, this article uncovers the implications of ignoring and appropriating Native Canadian folklore.

The Blue Flower and the Account Book

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Anne F. Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
American West ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Blue Flower ◽  
Racial Category ◽  
North American West ◽  
Mixed Blood ◽  
Anglo American

This essay, a revised version of the August 2015 talk, examines the story of two mixed-blood women, indigenous and Anglo American, who lived in the fur trade North American West. The essay examines a racial category, mixed blood or “half-breed” and considers the challenges for people who lived in and used that category in the nineteenth century. The essay illuminates the challenges of using different kinds of personal records to understand how these nineteenth-century women might have thought about identity, a word they never would have used.

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