Capitalism and Colonialism
The Making of Modern Canada 1890?2025: A New History for the Twenty-First Century Volume Two
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This second volume of Bryan Palmer's history of Canada covers 1890 to the present. Weaving together themes that include business, labour, politics, and social history, this account brings the experiences of Indigenous peoples into the centre of the narrative. Palmer covers key developments in this period as well as noting the changing role of Canadian capital internationally.
Canada experienced extraordinary growth during these decades, with a notable period after the Second World War when most Canadians quickly became far better off. But he sees a drastic shift in the country's history starting from the 1980s to the present, when inequality grew, Indigenous peoples experienced ongoing and often worsening deprivation, and ordinary people saw little or no real improvement in their lives.
Relying on the work of scholars who have produced a vast academic literature on a wide range of topics in Canadian history, Bryan Palmer offers a new history of Canada which reflects the knowledge and values of 21st-century Canadians.
About this Author
Bryan D. Palmer is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former editor of Labour/Le Travail, and has published extensively on the history of labour and the revolutionary left. Among his many books are Canada's 1960s and the co-authored Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History. In the fall of 2024 he published Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890. He lives in Warkworth, Ontario.
Reviews
Praise for Volume One:
"Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins, 1500-1890 is what we have been waiting for, a history that links the material and the ideological conditions of state-making to the centrality of Indigenous dispossession. Palmer offers an expansive and exhaustive overview of the inextricable relation of colonialism and capital accumulation. The ways in which race, class, and gender featured in the varied subordinations critical to bringing Canada as a nation state into being, and giving rise to many and varied forms of resistance, are given careful and nuanced consideration. This is a much needed origin story."
"In his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, Marx wrote, 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.' Bryan Palmer's magnificent two-volume exploration of the convergence of colonialism and capitalism in the history of Canadian state formation stands true to Marx's words. I personally will constantly be returning to these texts in my teaching and scholarship to hopefully do the same."
Praise for Volume One:
"This is a book of huge importance, one of awesome depth and range. As I read Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890, I had a sense of learning about the history of Canada for the first time. Canadians, and people in many other parts of the world for which the forces of colonialism and capitalism are troubling and urgent issues, will be deeply interested and, I suspect, deeply affected by this book. It sheds intellectual light in every historical direction."
Praise for Volume One:
"Bryan D. Palmer has done something no one else has done... He has written a serious, sustained, and accessible account of colonialism and capitalism. It is a history of Canada that is also the story of creative resistance on the part of Indigenous Peoples, workers, Québécois, and others.
Like the juggler who has three bowling balls and a chainsaw in the air while riding a bicycle, Palmer keeps his themes, subjects, and dramatis personae moving, yet always visible for the reader, never dropping them and explaining change over time. Reading these books, like watching a juggler, I was in awe. You will be too."
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