Re-imagining Niagara: A Spatial Study of Economic Development (1783-1812)

The end of the American Revolution marked a turning point in the history of Niagara. In the span of three decades, this Upper Canadian district evolved as the territory of nomadic groups of Mississauga and Haudenosaunee nations into the post-war settlement of approximately 15,000 white, black, and British-allied Indigenous nations. Some arrived immediately as refugees of the late war, while other families came later in hopes of securing a brighter future. Historians generally discuss this period of Niagara’s history in terms of its socio-political developments, while economic histories of the “Loyalist Era” are most often assigned a broader lens focusing on trade and commerce in Upper Canada. To fill this historiographical gap, this paper investigates the economic developments within the Niagara region from 1783-1812, using geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the role of geography alongside human agency in commodity production and the formation of local trade networks. This thesis includes an interactive webmap used to analyze a carefully compiled geospatial database of commodity sales gathered from primary sources. Historical GIS sets this project apart from others by bringing the investigations back to the land, showing how farmers and merchants responded to natural barriers like distance, wetlands, elevation and soil type, inciting individuals to adapt according to their personal circumstances. Ultimately, this project illustrates Niagara’s post-war transition from its role as a transshipment point in a larger transatlantic trade system into a productive agrarian economy by the early 19th century. The Niagara escarpment and the region’s many creeks and rivers were the economic hubs wherein diverse groups of people converged to participate in industries that formed society’s foundational economic structures. At the same time, participation in Niagara’s economy was limited by factors of race, gender, and class. Thus, it also discusses how individuals maneuvered through their subjective socio-political positions within society in their own unique way. The re-interpretation of primary sources using spatial tools presents Niagara as an important colonial region into which the British government poured significant funds for its strategic position and market potential. Exposing its commercial development provides a tangible contribution to this part of Canadian history

Female stereotypes in selected Zimbabwean Ndebele novels, 1975-2016

The research examines gender stereotypes accorded to women in different socio-historical periods in selected Ndebele novels published in (1975-2016) written by both men and women. Eriksen (1994:29) defines stereotyping as “the creation and consistent application of standardised notions of the cultural distinctiveness of a group”. The study derives impetus from the fact that studies on gender in Zimbabwean literature such as those by Chitando (2011), Mangena (2013) and Nyanhongo (2011) have laid disproportionate emphasis on literary works written in Shona and English at the expense of Ndebele language ones. It was found that there is change and continuity in stereotypes accorded to women in different historic periods where both external and internal forces such as colonialism and patriarchy respectively play a major role in the stereotypes accorded to women. Information for this study was gathered through an analysis of data collected through interviews with literary critics and authors. Ndebele narratives demonstrate various representations of women where Ndebele novelists enforce stereotypes about women. Women are depicted as mothers, mother warriors, immoral and inferior to men. The research made use of the socio-historic approach and African feminism to argue that stereotypes depict unjust gender relations and cultures tend to place boundaries on the gender spaces of maleness and femaleness so as to stereotype expectations associated with masculinity and femininity and novels enhance gender stereotypes in Ndebele society.African LanguagesD. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages

American languages: Indians, ethnology, and the empire for liberty

American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, and the Empire for Liberty is a study of knowledge and power, as it relates to Indian affairs, in the early republic. It details the interactions, exchanges, and networks through which linguistic and racial ideas were produced and it examines the effect of those ideas on Indian administration. First etymology, then philology, guided the study of human descent, migrations, and physical and mental traits, then called ethnology. It would answer questions of Indian origins and the possibility of Indian incorporation into the United States. It was crucial to white Americans seeking to define their polity and prove their cultivation by contributing to the republic of letters.;The study of Indian languages was both part of the ongoing ideological construction of the empire for liberty and it could serve practical ends for the extension and consolidation of imperial relations with the native groups within and on the borders of the United States. Administrators of Indian affairs simultaneously asserted continental mastery and implicitly admitted that it was yet incomplete. Language could be used to illustrate Indian civilization and Indian savagery, the openness of the U.S. nation and its exclusivity, Indian affinities to Anglo-Saxons and their utter difference. Language was a race science frequently opposed to understandings of race defined through the body alone.;The War Department repeatedly sought linguistic information that it could use as the basis of policy, but philology was not a discourse of scientific control imposed upon helpless Indians. On the contrary, Indians lay at the heart of almost all that was known of Indian languages. This was especially true once European scientific interest shifted from the study isolated words to grammatical forms, which happened to coincide with debates over Indian removal in the United States. This meant that Indians were in an unprecedented position to shape the most authoritative scientific knowledge of the Indian at the moment that U.S. Indian policy was most uncertain. Native tutoring, often mediated through white missionaries, led Peter S. Du Ponceau to refute the notion, shared alike by apologists for removal (e.g. Lewis Cass) and European philosophers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt) that the American languages indicated Indian savagery. ;Yet in attempting to prove that Native American languages were not savage, Du Ponceau defined Indian grammatical forms as unchanging plans of ideas that all Indians, and only Indians, possessed. Henry R. Schoolcraft, Indian agent, protege of Cass, and husband to the Ojibwa-Irish Jane Johnston, extended this line of thought and defined a rigid Indian mind that refused civilization. Such conclusions suggested that Indians possessed fixed mental traits. This conclusion largely agreed with those that ethnologists of the American school would advance years later, but those scientists argued that language could offer no information on physical race. The rapid (but brief) rise of the American school undermined the ethnological authority of the philological knowledge that Indians, such as David Brown (Cherokee) and Eleazer Williams (Mohawk) had produced in the preceding decades.;After decades of debate over Indian plans of ideas, patterns of thought, and whether Indian languages were a suitable medium for teaching the concepts of Christianity and republican government---debates intensified by the invention of the Cherokee alphabet and the understanding that Sequoyah, its author, intended it to insulate Cherokee society from white interference---the federal government began moving toward a policy of English-only instruction. Even after the strident opposition of the American school, language remained a key marker of civilization and nationhood