Humphries, Mark Osborne

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

on circumstances and even on personal affinities. Among the body trades, includ-ing surgery, a web of alliances served better than could single lineages alone.Transmuting social patterns into a perspective on personal experience and iden-tity, the book concludes on the cultural theme of masculinities. Despite a puzzlingchapter title, “The Weak Father,” Cavallo effectively makes the case that, in con-trast to Protestant northern Europe, for these Italian artisans mature manhood didnot correlate tidily with age, licensed mastership, professional office, or status as ahusband, father, or household head. As social relations were complex and per-meable, so were varieties of masculinity. If scholars look closely, they may wellfind analogs elsewhere. All told, this book delivers an engaging and nourishingscholarly read.Elizabeth S. CohenYork UniversityCHRISTIE, Nancy (ed.) — Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and SocialExperience in Post-Revolutionary British North America. Montreal andKingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Pp. 477.The era of pure national history may be coming to an end. Historians have tra-ditionally been content to examine state formation, institutional and social devel-opments, and the emergence of political cultures within the confines of imaginedpolitical borders that serve to define the outer limits of historical inquiry. Whendefined as “Colonial” American or “pre-Confederation” Canadian, however,research begins with assumed protagonists and antagonists. Over the past fewdecades historians have begun to realize that these rigidly defined and artificiallyimposed boundaries are stifling rather than revealing. After all, nations and cul-tures do not exist in a vacuum. A transnational approach to history, on the otherhand, emphasizes the centrality of political, social, and cultural contexts that veryseldom respect the political boundaries drawn on a map or the categorical and histor-iographical limits imposed by historians. It is a relatively new approach, which holdsmuch promise for future scholarship, as indicated by Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas,Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America.Arising from a conference held at McMaster University in October 2004,Transatlantic Subjects, edited by Nancy Christie, responds to J. G. A. Pocock’scall for a “new British history” that would synthesize the study of the peripheralplaces of empire with the history of the metropole. For Pocock, British history isthe history of Greater Britain and vice versa — a point, it should be noted, madeby Seeley in 1883.The term British should thus be construed broadly, as the eventsof British national history have had as much significance for colonists and colo-nized peoples on the periphery as they did for those in London. Pocock, who pro-vides a forward for Transatlantic Subjects, drives home this point, writing, “theessays in this volume convey a dominant impression that the religious and politicalproblems disturbing the colonies of Upper Canada were derived from those492 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryHistoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 84 (Novembre-November 2009)disturbing the British state . . . it is British history that Transatlantic Subjects bothobliges and encourages the reader to study” (p. ix). Pocock is correct in his evalu-ation of this book’s contribution to Canadian historiography.Christie, a diverse and accomplished scholar of the family, the welfare state, andProtestant churches in Canada, has assembled eleven essays in this eclectic collec-tion. The introduction, which at times totters toward the verbose and dense, never-theless effectively reunites long-estranged historiographies and sets the stage for abook that aims to analyse the transference of various British cultures and socialand political institutions to the New World (p. 18). Through examinations ofsocio-political institutions, religion, and intellectual discourse, it emerges thatBritishness as a value or identity was contested and shaped by the colonial experi-ence, not merely transposed by British loyalists and emigrants. British identity istherefore a product of the interplay between centre and periphery, a uniqueproduct of shared transnational contexts.To make this overarching argument, the book is divided into three sections.“Agrarian Patriots” examines popular or unofficial responses to the impositionand recreation of British institutions, ideas, and power relationships in BritishNorth America. Essays by Donald Fyson, Nancy Christie, and Brian Youngexamine French Canadian acceptance of the civil courts in Lower Canada, therole of Upper Canadian domestic servants in subverting traditional class relations,and the centrality of social institutions to the consolidation of elite power in LowerCanada. The second section, “Provincial Britons,” examines how British insti-tutional ideas were reinvented in the British North American colonies. ToddWebb, Michael Gauvreau, and Bruce Curtis focus on the influence of religiousand educational institutions and ethnic identity in the formation of British identity.Webb effectively argues that Methodists constructed an inclusive definition ofBritishness to counter the notion that they were subversive dissidents, whileGauvreau posits that ethnic and religious diversity in British North America pre-vented the formation of an integrative British, Protestant identity (p. 235). BruceCurtis rounds out the section with an examination of the ways in which the Bell-Lancasterian controversy over monitorial schooling was reshaped by the specificpolitical and religious context of Lower Canada (p. 274). The third section featuresessays by Michael Eamon, Jeffrey L. McNairn, Michelle Vosburgh, Bryan Palmer,and Darren Ferry that examine the tension between “modern notions of theliberal market society” and the “older Enlightenment ideas of civic virtue,social deference, or Tory rule” in the 1830s and 1840s (p. 27). Their essaysinclude a re-examination of the impact of the Scottish enlightenment in BritishNorth America, Malthusian ideas of economic liberalism as evidenced in traveldiscourse, the politics of land ownership and the tension between centrallydefined policies and actual practices on the ground, the rituals and rhetoric of1830s radicalism in Upper Canada, and the transplantation of voluntary associ-ations from Britain to Canada.What is most striking about these essays is the overall quality of the scholarshipand the possibilities left open for future study. A number of papers — notablythose by Fyson, Young, Webb, and Palmer — return with a fresh approach toComptes rendus / Book Reviews 493Histoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 84 (Novembre-November 2009)well-worn historical fields that have lately been left to pasture. The other papersgenerally break new ground or offer reinterpretations of existing historiographywith Gauvreau, Curtis, McNairn, and Vosburgh presenting particularly revealingstudies. It is also worthwhile to note that Brian Young’s paper offers a significantre-evaluation of his own previous work on the consolidation of elite power inQuebec. Most importantly, the book truly does open a refreshing window forfuture scholarship and begs a companion volume that would take the approachbeyond the artificial boundary of 1867.Overall, the book succeeds admirably in making the point that post-revolutionaryBritish North America was society in transition and in flux. Political institutions,religious authority, social dynamics, and intellectual discourse were all mutable,the evolving products of an ongoing interaction and exchange between theImperial centre and periphery. The book’s only real shortcoming is in what isnot covered. Indigenous peoples, for example, are absent from the text, whilethe topic of the slave trade in British North America might also benefit from atransnational perspective.On the whole Transatlantic Subjects is a good book. Although a collection ofessays, it effectively drives a coherent argument home and leaves the readerfirmly convinced that, to understand Canadian history, one must understand thebroader British context. This book is therefore essential and recommendedreading for Canadian historians and graduate students alike.Mark Osborne HumphriesMount Royal UniversityFAHRNI, Magda, and RUTHERDALE, Robert (eds.) — Creating Postwar Canada:Community, Diversity, and Dissent, 1945–1975. Vancouver: University of BritishColumbia Press, 2008. Pp. 347.Creating Postwar Canada: Community, Diversity, and Dissent, 1945–1975 bringstogether 13 studies that explore the “trente glorieuses” — the 30 years inCanadian history defined by its “extended moment of unprecedented prosperity,developed welfare states, high modernity, and advanced capitalism” (p. 2). In theintroductory chapter, Magda Fahrni and Robert Rutherdale effectively make thecase for the historical coherence of this period before introducing the volume,noting that they have broken it into two parts. The first deals with “imagined”postwar communities and the second with diversity and dissent.The first half of the book is split between efforts with a geographic focus andthose of a thematic nature. Joel Belliveau provides a useful survey of NewBrunswick Acadian history — from autonomy to integration and partially backagain — between 1950 and 1975. The process towards a liberal society began inthe 1950s, accelerated in the first half of the 1960s, was called into question atthe end of the 1960s, and was followed by a neo-nationalist movement thatbegan in the later 1960s but had largely petered out by 1975. Through a494 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryHistoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 84 (Novembre-November 2009)

CHRISTIE, Nancy (ed.) — Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America.

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CHRISTIE, Nancy (ed.) — Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America.

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