McGill-Queen's Transatlantic Studies – serie

Literature emerging from nineteenth-century Upper Canada, born of dramatic cultural and political collisions, reveals much about the colony's history through its contrasting understandings of nature, ecology, deforestation, agricultural development, and land rights. In the first detailed study of literary interactions between Indigenous people and colonial authorities in Upper Canada and Britain, Kevin Hutchings analyzes the period's key figures and the central role that romanticism, ecology, and environment played in their writings. Investigating the ties that bound Upper Canada and Great Britain together during the early nineteenth century, Transatlantic Upper Canada demonstrates the existence of a cosmopolitan culture whose implications for the land and its people are still felt today. The book examines the writings of Haudenosaunee leaders John Norton and John Brant and Anishinabeg authors Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Peter Jones, and George Copway, as well as European figures John Beverley Robinson, John Strachan, Anna Brownell Jameson, and Sir Francis Bond Head. Hutchings argues that, despite their cultural differences, many factors connected these writers, including shared literary interests, cross-Atlantic journeys, metropolitan experiences, mutual acquaintance, and engagement in ongoing dialogue over Indigenous territory and governance. A close examination of relationships between peoples and their understandings of land, Transatlantic Upper Canada creates a rich portrait of the nineteenth-century British Atlantic world and the cultural and environmental consequences of colonialism and resistance.

Portrait of an English Migration recounts the history of those who left North Yorkshire for North America between the eighteenth century and the early twentieth century. Focusing on individual stories of migrants and their families, this book provides many personal glimpses of the migration experience of those who left England's largest county to build new lives in the United States and Canada.Exploring the local history, geography, and cultures of Yorkshire and the key places of settlement in North America, William Van Vugt deepens our understanding of the historic migration process: how local conditions and access to information influenced migration decisions, the role of local networks in migration patterns, and the significance of family connections, religious identities, and land ownership to the migrants themselves. He considers the extent to which English migrants shaped regional culture and contributed to economic development, addressing ongoing questions about identity and what it meant to be English in North America.Full of first-person accounts and stories from migrants themselves, Portrait of an English Migration is both a sweeping history of two centuries of migration and an intimate look at the lives of generations of Yorkshire people who crossed the ocean to make a new home.

Exceptionalist ideas have long influenced British foreign policy. As Britain begins to confront the challenges of a post-Brexit era in an increasingly unstable world, a re-examination of the nature and causes of this exceptionalist bent is in order.Arguing that Britain's search for greatness in world affairs was, and still is, a matter of habit, Srdjan Vucetic takes a closer look at the period between Clement Attlee's "New Jerusalem" and Tony Blair's New Labour. Britain's tenacious pursuit of global power was never just a function of consensus among policymakers or even political elites more broadly. Rather, it developed from popular, everyday, and gradually evolving ideas about identity circulating within British – and, more specifically, English – society as a whole. To uncover these ideas, Vucetic works with a unique archive of political speeches, newspapers, history textbooks, novels, and movies across colonial, Cold War, and post–Cold War periods.Greatness and Decline sheds new light on Britain's interactions with the rest of the world while demonstrating new possibilities for constructivist foreign policy analysis.

For much of the Cold War, Canada’s relationship with Europe played an integral yet often overlooked role in shaping the country’s place in the world. The end of that struggle and the rise of globalization saw Canadian policymakers shift their attention elsewhere – towards Canada–US relations and towards the Global South – at least until the events of the late 2010s. Across the North Atlantic refocuses attention back on Europe and its place in Canadian international relations.The volume examines Canada’s foreign policy engagement with Europe through its relationships with major institutions – most notably the European Economic Community (now the European Union) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – as well as with individual states such as Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Throughout the Cold War, Canadian policy sustained key post–Second World War priorities: support for Europe’s stability and security, the use of Europe as a strategic offset to American hegemony, and the pursuit of shared values rooted in a common past. Contributors show how political, economic, military, and diplomatic ties with Europe shaped Cold War strategy and Canada’s evolving global identity. Drawing on new research, chapters connect Cold War–era decisions to issues that continue to define Canada–Europe relations today, including security and defence, trade diversification, environmental diplomacy, human rights, and immigration and refugee policy.Across the North Atlantic demonstrates how Canada navigated the tensions – and opportunities – of transatlantic engagement with Europe while operating in the shadow of the United States.