Brad’s Reviews > Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500–1890: A New History for the Twenty-First Century Volume One > Status Update

" Confederation was never imagined as a democracy ."

Two doctors, one an NWMP surgeon, reinforced the view that Jackson was insane, although they possessed no expertise in treating or dealing with patients experiencing mental disorders. A six-person jury then immediately announced its verdict: not guilty by reason of insanity...

What was termed 'insanity'...was their admiration of the Indian mode of living.

*Foucault has entered the chat*...

[Lands north-west of Manitoba] were no longer capable of being kept under the administrative and political control of an antiquated chartered monopoly. A company, however grandiose, could not quite compete with a state; a mercantile endeavor, craving capital, was overtaken by a nation with grand aspirations and the promise of capitalism.

Maybe he's read Ellen Meiksins Wood!

"In March 1849, the Province of Canada...passed a Rebellion Losses Bill...When Elgin signed the bill, he...ratified the realization of responsible government.

...That evening, a Tory mob of 1,500 attacked the Parliament building, in which the elected assembly was still conducting business. As a rampaging crowd smashed furniture and gas lamps, the members filed out...The building was put to the torch."

It's incumbent on any socialists in Canada to familiarize themselves with the history of the Patriotes and the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38 (with the direct endorsement of the International Workingmen's Association).

"Nation-building rested on a far more diversified capitalist foundation; if a part of colonialism's past would be discarded as obsolete, other components of the colonial project would be strengthened and intensified."

"The peculiarities of the HBC [Hudson's Bay Company] ‘factory’ system and the complexities of its work discipline thus necessitated a unique blend of compromise and cruelty. A market in furs existed in the early nineteenth century, but a capitalistic labour market did not."