Transatlantic Upper Canada: Portraits in Literature, Land, and British-Indigenous Relations

by Kevin Hutchings

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780228001294
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	08/20/2020
Series:	McGill-Queen's Transatlantic Studies , #2
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Kevin Hutchings is professor of English and university research chair at the University of Northern British Columbia and author of Romantic Ecologies and Colonial Cultures in the British Atlantic World, 1770-1850 and Imagining Nature: Blake's Environmental Poetics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xiii

Introduction: Literature, Land, and Colonial Relations 3

1 Romantic Ecology, Indigenous Culture, and the Ideology of "Improvement" 32

2 Bishop John Strachan, Christian Evangelism, and the First Nations of Upper Canada 54

3 The Legal, Literary, and Environmental Passions of Sir John Beverley Robinson 84

4 Anna Brownell Jameson and Sir Francis Bond Head among the Anishinaabeg 111

5 The Transatlantic World of John Norton (Chief Teyoninhokarawen) 137

6 John Brant (Chief Ahyonwaeghs) and the Grand River Haudenosaunee 160

7 Peter Jones (Chief Kahkewaquonaby) and the Credit River Mississauga 186

8 The Atlantic Crossings of George Copway (Kahgegagahbowh) 213

Afterword: Paths Not Taken 236

Notes 241

Bibliography 261

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

"The ways in which Hutchings puts individuals such as Robinson and Strachan together, allowing us to see how in many instances they 'spoke' to each other, is creative and insightful. By insisting on their connections to a world outside Upper Canada, Transatlantic Upper Canada helps us understand them as part of a wider imperial landscape." Cecilia Morgan, University of Toronto and author of Travellers through Empire: Indigenous Voyages from Early Canada

From the Publisher