Elections, Self-Government, and Settler-Colonial Rule in British North America

Abstract The decades of political unrest that erupted in widespread violence in Canada in 1837–38 were followed by efforts to implement responsible self-government, culminating with the federal union of the British North American colonies in 1867. This evolution of liberal imperial rule consolidated white male authority and legitimized England’s settler-colonial projects across northern North America. Many early Canadian historians were perhaps reluctant to draw attention to events such as the rebellions—historians worked to explain the economic, social, and national factors that led British North Americans to demand the abolition of the irresponsible system of colonial self-rule that had governed their lives since the American Revolution. In doing so, they taught us much about the political machinations of establishment, reform, and imperial politicians and the social and political movements they ushered in or resisted. Canadian historians have shown little interest in how demands for self-government in settler colonies were linked to settler colonialism itself.