F. Murray Greenwood – författare

Many people assume that a French-English cleavage has always existed and historians have been uncertain as to just how it unfolded. This book provides the answer. Greenwood re-creates a Quebec in which trust between French and English Canadians was an early casualty of the execution of Louis XVI and the descent of the French Revolution through terror into war. Fearing invasion, the English community, through the law officers of the crown, drafted draconian legislation and established an efficient counter-intelligence service. Lower Canada in these years was a hotbed of spies and counter-intelligence, highlighted by the trial for high treason of an American undercover agent for revolutionary France. Placing the legal history of Quebec in the foreground of these dangerous and dramatic events, Greenwood reveals this period as a turning point that altered not only French-English relations but Canada's legal and constitutional inheritance.While the focus is on legal and political history, the narrative also details intellectual, military, social, and economic developments. The author pursues many dynamic themes of the period including the riots among working people in the 1790s; the differences in judicial behaviour when security matters were at stake; the setting up of the first formal counter-intelligence service, and issues related to the suspension of habeas corpus.Murray Greenwood is one of Canada's finest legal historians. In this work his wide perspective, supported by extensive documentation, brings new evidence and insight to a formative and somewhat neglected period in Canada's history.

]State trials reveal much about a nation's insecurities and shed light on important themes in political, constitutional, and legal history. In Canada, perceived and real threats to the state have ranged from dissent, disaffection, and the emergence of threatening ideologies to insurrection, riot, violent protest, and military invasion. The Canadian State Trials series will explore the role of the law in regulating such threats, from the period of early European settlement to 1971.The first volume and the planned series as a whole present a great deal of new material by prominent Canadian historians and legal scholars. Although certain Canadian political trials and security crises have received scholarly attention in the past, there has never been a comprehensive and systematic examination of the country's surprisingly rich record in this area. The eighteen essays in Volume I examine this record for the period 1608-1837, covering proceedings in New France, the four Atlantic colonies, the Old Province of Quebec, and the two Canadas. They highlight security law during the American revolution, the wars against revolutionary/Napoleonic France, and the War of 1812; comparative treason law; and the trials of David McLane, Robert  Gourlay, Francis Collins, and Joseph Howe, among others. The essays, which extensive use of primary sources (the most illuminating of which appear in a documentary appendix), place the examination of the law and its administration during these events in socio-political and comparative context.

This second volume of the Canadian State Trials series focuses on the largest state security crisis in 19th century Canada: the rebellions of 1837-1838 and associated patriot invasions in Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Québec). Historians have long debated the causes and implications of the rebellions, but until now have done remarkably little work on the legal aspects of the insurrections and their aftermath. Given that over 350 men were tried for treason or equivalent offences in connection with the rebellions, this volume is long overdue.The essays collected here, written by prominent Canadian historians, legal scholars, and archivists, break new ground in the existing historiography of the rebellions by presenting the first comprehensive examination of the legal dimensions of the crises. In addition to examining trials and court martial proceedings, the essays examine their political, social, and comparative contexts, including the passage of emergency legislation and executive supervision of legal responses, the treatment of women, and the plight of political convicts transported to the Australian penal colonies. Canadian State Trials, Volume Two contributes significantly to the ongoing reassessment of the rebellion period.