Roads to Confederation: The Making of Canada, 1867, Volume 1

by Jacqueline Krikorian (Editor), David Cameron (Editor), Marcel Martel (Editor)

In recognition of Canada’s sesquicentennial, this two-volume set brings together previously published scholarship on Confederation into one collection. The editors sought to reproduce not only the "classic" studies about the people, ideas, and events associated with the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 , but also scholarly works that capture the complexities of the Confederation project. This ambitious anthology challenges the notion that there exists one dominant narrative underpinning 1867, and includes research that focuses on Indigenous peoples. Seven articles written in French are translated for the first time for publication in this collection. In the first volume of this anthology, Roads to Confederation introduces readers to the competing approaches to the study of Confederation and provides material that considers the nature of the 1867 project from the perspective of peoples and communities who have been traditionally excluded from the literature. It also includes the definitive scholarship on the ideational underpinnings of the making of Canada as well as several leading articles that set out different ways to understand the nature and purpose of the 1867 agreement.

400 pages, Hardcover

Published October 13, 2017

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

One change to this volume that I feel could have greatly improved it was if each entry could have received an introduction of its own, either written by one of the editors or the writer of the essay itself. I believe a brief introduction, perhaps that provided some retrospective framing, could help place many of these works and help guide the reader through the dense historiography of Canadian Confederation. As an example, the authors note in the introduction that English scholars read less widely into French historiography, hence this is one example of where introductions would clearly benefit English readers delving into French-translated works. Overall, I believe it would be beneficial to provide introductions that could contextualize such works. This would help increase the accessibility of both French and English works and help the authors achieve their goal of curating an accessible collection on Confederation.