It has generally been assumed that the political and social ideas of early Upper Canadians rested firmly on veneration of eighteenth-century British conservative values and unequivocal rejection of all things American. Jane Errington's examination of the attitudes and beliefs of the Upper Canadian elite between 1784 and 1828, as seen through their private papers, public records, and the newspapers of the time, suggests that this view is far too simplistic. Errington argues that in order to appreciate the evolution of Upper Canadian beliefs, particularly the development of political ideology, it is necessary to understand the various and changing perceptions of the United States and of Great Britain held by different groups of colonial leaders. Colonial ideology inevitably evolved in response to changing domestic circumstances and to the colonists' knowledge of altering world affairs. It is clear, however, that from the arrival of the first loyalists in 1748 to the passage of the Naturalization Bill in 1828, the attitudes and beliefs of the Upper Canadian elite reflect the fact that the colony was a British-American community. Errington reveals that Upper Canada was never as anti-American as popular lore suggests, even in the midst of the War of 1812. By the mid 1820s, largely due to their conflicting views of Great Britain and the United States, Upper Canadians were divided. The Tory administration argued that only by decreasing the influence of the United States, enforcing a conservative British mould on colonial society, and maintaining strong ties with the Empire could Upper Canada hope to survive. The forces of reform, on the other hand, asserted that Upper Canada was not and could not become a re-creation of Great Britain and that to deny its position in North America could only lead to internal dissent and eventual amalgamation with the United States. Errington's description of these early attempts to establish a unique Upper Canadian identity reveals the historical background of a dilemma which has yet to be resolved. This edition of the book is updated with a new introduction by the author.

Prior to the publication of The Sense of Power most studies of the Canadian movement for imperial unity focused on commercial policy and military and naval cooperation. This influential book demonstrated that the movement – which held that Canada could only become a great nation within the British Empire – was significantly influenced by its leading advocates’ belief in nationalism. Carl Berger explores the emotional appeal and intellectual context of this belief, arguing that these advocates’ support of imperial unity can be grasped only in terms of their commitment to certain conservative values and in relation to their conception of Canada. The Sense of Power was commended by the Toronto Star when it was first published as “entertaining as well as brilliant,” and in 2011 Ramsay Cook noted that “few first books, or for that matter few books, have made as marked an impact on the interpretation of a major theme in Canadian history.” This second edition brings to life the work’s incisive analysis and its important contribution to Canadian intellectual history.

Between 1815 and 1832, Great Britain settled more than 3,500 individuals, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, in the Ottawa Valley. These government-assisted emigrations, which began immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, are explored to reveal their impact on Upper Canada. Seeking to transform their lives and their society, early Scots settlers crossed the Atlantic for their own purposes. Although they did not blindly serve the interests of empire builders, their settlement led to the dispossession of the original First Nation inhabitants, thus supporting the British imperial government's strategic military goals. After transferring homeland religious and political conflict to the colony, Scottish settlers led the demand for political reform that emerged in the 1830s. As a consequence, their migration and settlement reveals as much about the depth of social conflict in the homeland and in the colonies as it does about the preoccupations of the British imperial state.

Canada: land of hockey, terrible weather, unfailing politeness-and little else, as far as many Americans are aware. For Canadians, the United States is seen as a land of unparalleled opportunity and unparalleled failure, a country of heights and abysses. The straitlaced country in the north could hardly have much to tell about its powerhouse of a neighbor to the south, eh? Not so, according to historian Robert Bothwell. In this witty and accessible book, Bothwell argues that the shared history of the United States and Canada reveals more about each country than most would suspect. Your Country, My Country takes readers back to the seventeenth century, when a shared British colonial heritage set the two lands on paths that would remain intertwined to the present day. Tracing Canadian-American relations, shared values, and differences through the centuries, Bothwell suggests that Americans are neither unique nor exceptional, in terms of both their good characteristics and their bad ones. He brings this contention down to the present day by examining Canadian and American differences over such questions as universal health care in domestic policy and the Iraq war in foreign policy. What happens in Canada often reflects what has happened in the United States, but by the same token, what happens in Canada signals what could happen in its American neighbor. From whatever direction, this innovative volume contends, Canada's story illuminates America's-and vice-versa.

In The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada, Anthony Di Mascio analyzes debates about education in the burgeoning print culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In it, he finds that a widespread movement for popular schooling in Upper Canada began in earnest from the time of the colony's first Loyalist settlers. Reviving the voices of Upper Canada's earliest school advocates, Di Mascio reveals the lively public discussion about the need for a common system of schooling for all the colony's children. Despite different and often contentious opinions on the means and ends of schooling, there was widespread agreement about its need by the 1830s, when the debate was no longer about whether a popular system of schooling was desirable, but about what kinds of schools would be established. The making of educational legislation in Upper Canada was a process in which many inhabitants, both inside and outside of government, participated. The Idea of Popular Schooling in Upper Canada is the first full survey of schooling in Canada to focus on the pre-1840 period and how it framed policy debates that continue to the present day.

Agricultural societies founded in the colony of Upper Canada were the institutional embodiment of the ideology of improvement, modelled on contemporary societies in Britain and the United States. In Improving Upper Canada, Ross Fair explores how the agricultural improvers who established and led these organizations were important agents of state formation. The book investigates the initial failed attempts to create a single agricultural society for Upper Canada. It examines the 1830 legislation that publicly funded the creation of agricultural societies across the colony to be semi-public agents of agricultural improvement, and analyses societies established in the Niagara, Home, and Midland Districts to understand how each attempted to introduce specific improvements to local farming practices. The book reveals how Upper Canada’s agricultural improvers formed a provincial association in the 1840s to ensure that the colonial government assumed a greater leadership role in agricultural improvement, resulting in the Bureau of Agriculture, forerunner of federal and provincial departments of agriculture in the post-Confederation era. In analysing an early example of state formation, Improving Upper Canada provides a comprehensive history of the foundations of Ontario’s agricultural societies today, which continue to promote agricultural improvement across the province.