The Spirit of Industry and Improvement

Liberal Government and Rural-Industrial Society, Nova Scotia, 1790-1862

Daniel Samson

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780773533530
  9780773533530
• eBook ISBN:
  9780773578517
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The notion of improvement permeated social and political discourse in colonial Canadian society. From agriculture to building roads and mills to defining correct habits and behaviour, Nova Scotia's improvers embraced the ideals of innovation and progress and promoted modern programs of government.

Daniel Samson moves Nova Scotia and rural Canada from the colonial margins to the heart of a modernizing society, showing how the countryside functioned as a centre of change and innovation. He connects a fascinating spectrum of sites, actors, and strategies and links settlement, farm-building, rural market formation, and early industrialization to the heterogeneous strategies of families and state actors, the rural poor, and rural elites.

The Spirit of Industry and Improvement presents the first-ever overview of rural colonial Nova Scotia and provides compelling insights into the formation of modern liberal practices of government and self-government in British North America.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Map
• Introduction: Industry and Improvement
• 1 Land and Settlement
• 2 Discourses of Improvement
• 3 The Open Field that Was Early Mining
• 4 Enclosing the Commons at Minudie
• 5 Industrial Colonization and the General Mining Association
• 6 A Colony of Miners
• 7 Farms and Families
• 8 Merchants in the Country of Coal
• 9 Improvers
• 10 Antimonopoly
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index