Home : Book details : Book description

Description of  Land and the Liberal Project: Canada s Violent Expansion

0774869801 epub Uncovers Canadas methods of appropriating Indigenous land hidden beneath its history. Canada was a small country in 1867, but within twenty years its claims to sovereignty spanned the continent. With Confederation came the vaunting ambition to create an empire from sea to sea. How did Canada lay claim to land so swiftly? Land and the Liberal Project examines the tactics deployed by Canadian officialdom from the first articulation of expansionism in 1857 to the consolidation of authority following the 1885 North-West Resistance. lna Choquette contends that although the dominion purported to absorb Indigenous lands through constitutionalism, administration, and law, it often resorted to force in the face of Indigenous resistance. She investigates the liberal concept that underpinned land appropriation and legitimized violence: Indigenous territory and people were to be improved, the former by agrarian capitalism, the latter by enforced schooling. By rethinking this tainted approach to nation-making, Choquettes clear-eyed expos of the Canadian expansionist project offers new ways to understand colonization. Read more