Land and the Liberal Project: Canada's Violent Expansion (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780774869805)

Uncovers Canada's methods of appropriating Indigenous land hidden beneath its history.

Canada was a small country in 1867, but within twenty years its claims to sovereignty spanned the continent. With Confederation came the vaunting ambition to create an empire from sea to sea. How did Canada lay claim to land so swiftly?

Land and the Liberal Project examines the tactics deployed by Canadian officialdom from the first articulation of expansionism in 1857 to the consolidation of authority following the 1885 North-West Resistance. ?l?na Choquette contends that although the dominion purported to absorb Indigenous lands through constitutionalism, administration, and law, it often resorted to force in the face of Indigenous resistance. She investigates the liberal concept that underpinned land appropriation and legitimized violence: Indigenous territory and people were to be "improved," the former by agrarian capitalism, the latter by enforced schooling.

By rethinking this tainted approach to nation-making, Choquette's clear-eyed expos? of the Canadian expansionist project offers new ways to understand colonization.

Author: ?l?na Choquette
ISBN-10: 0774869801
ISBN-13: 9780774869805
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Language: English
Published: 05/23/2024
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2024