Transatlantic Subjects

Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America

Nancy Christie

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780773533882
• eBook ISBN:
  9780773578609
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: History

Transatlantic Subjects dissents from four decades of scholarly writing on colonial Canada by taking the British imperial context - rather than the North American environment - as a conceptual framework for interpreting patterns of social and cultural life in the colonies prior to the 1850s. Anchored in "the new British history" advanced by J.G.A. Pocock, David Armitage, and Kathleen Wilson, this collective work explores ideas, institutions, and social practices that were adapted and changed through the process of migration from the British archipelago to the new settlement societies. Contributors discuss a broad range of institutional and social practices, including education, religion, radical politics, and family life. Transatlantic Subjects offers a new perspective for the writing of Canada's history. A self-conscious response to the plea for a broader British history that includes the overseas settlement colonies, it makes a significant contribution to the new cultural history of the British Empire. Contributors include Bruce Curtis (Carleton), Michael Eamon (Queen's), Darren Ferry (McMaster), Donald Fyson (Laval), Michael Gauvreau (McMaster), Jeffrey McNairn (Queen's), Bryan Palmer (Queen's), J.G.A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins), Michelle Vosburgh (Brock), Todd Webb (Laurentian), and Brian Young (McGill)."

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Theorizing a Colonial Past
• Part One: Agrarian Patriots
• The Canadiens and British Institutions of Local Governance in Quebec from the Conquest to the Rebellions
• “The Plague of Servants”
• Revisiting Feudal Vestiges in Urban Quebec
• Part Two: Provincial Britons
• How the Canadian Methodists Became British
• The Dividends of Empire
• Monitorial Schooling, “Common Christianity,” and Politics
• Part Three: A Laboratory of Modernity
• Scottish-Trained Medical Practitioners in British North America and Their Participation in a Transatlantic Culture of Enlightenment
• The Malthusian Moment
• “Deserving of Favourable Consideration”
• Popular Radicalism and the Theatrics of Rebellion
• “The Original Idea Has Been Considerably Amplified”
• Contributors