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Capitalism and Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890–1960
A New History for the Twenty-First Century Volume Two
by Bryan D. Palmer
Capitalism and Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890–1960 continues the examination of our nation’s past through a new lens, incorporating the scholarship of Canadian historians to portray a richly endowed and wealthy but very unequal first-world country.
This second volume of Bryan Palmer’s history of Canada covers 1890 to 1960. Weaving together themes that include business, labour, politics, and social history, this account brings the experiences of Indigenous peoples into the centre of the narrative.
Canada experienced extraordinary growth during these decades, notably after the Second World War when many Canadians quickly became far better off Yet vast inequalities persisted, Indigenous peoples experienced ongoing and often worsening deprivation, and ordinary people saw little or no real improvement in their lives. These realities set the stage for the interplay of reform, resistance and reaction that followed after 1960. Palmer examines the continuing role of capitalism and colonialism in structuring Canada in the period between 1890 and 1960 from capital’s conflicts and fragile ententes with labour, to the struggles of Indigenous Peoples and francophone Canada, and the changing role of Canadian capital internationally.
Relying on the work of scholars who have produced a vast academic literature on a wide range of topics in Canadian history, Bryan Palmer offers a new history of Canada which reflects the knowledge and values of 21st-century Canadians.
About the Author
Bryan D. Palmer is Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair, Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former editor of Labour/Le Travail, and has published extensively on the history of labour and the revolutionary left. Among his many books are Canada’s 1960s and the co-authored Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History. In the fall of 2024 he published Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500–1890. He lives in Warkworth, Ontario.
Reviews
"In his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, Marx wrote, 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.' Bryan Palmer's magnificent two-volume exploration of the convergence of colonialism and capitalism in the history of Canadian state formation stands true to Marx's words. I personally will constantly be returning to these texts in my teaching and scholarship to hopefully do the same."
Praise for Volumes One and Two:
“Bryan D. Palmer has done something no one else has done… He has written a serious, sustained, and accessible account of colonialism and capitalism. It is a history of Canada that is also the story of creative resistance on the part of Indigenous Peoples, workers, Québécois, and others.
Like the juggler who has three bowling balls and a chainsaw in the air while riding a bicycle, Palmer keeps his themes, subjects, and dramatis personae moving, yet always visible for the reader, never dropping them and explaining change over time. Reading these books, like watching a juggler, I was in awe. You will be too.”
Praise for Volume One:
“This is a book of huge importance, one of awesome depth and range. As I read Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500–1890, I had a sense of learning about the history of Canada for the first time. Canadians, and people in many other parts of the world for which the forces of colonialism and capitalism are troubling and urgent issues, will be deeply interested and, I suspect, deeply affected by this book. It sheds intellectual light in every historical direction.”
Praise for Volume One:
"Colonialism and Capitalism: Canada's Origins, 1500-1890 is what we have been waiting for, a history that links the material and the ideological conditions of state-making to the centrality of Indigenous dispossession. Palmer offers an expansive and exhaustive overview of the inextricable relation of colonialism and capital accumulation. The ways in which race, class, and gender featured in the varied subordinations critical to bringing Canada as a nation state into being, and giving rise to many and varied forms of resistance, are given careful and nuanced consideration. This is a much needed origin story."
Anyone who seeks to understand Canada must read this, the second volume of Bryan Palmer's brilliant historical analysis of colonialism and capitalism. This is a book that sparkles with insight and historical detail. It takes the reader deep into the nature and structure of a complex society, with writing that is unfailingly lucid and wonderfully readable. Palmer's account is destined to become a classic of North American studies.
Praise for Volumes One and Two:
"A detailed tour de force of the entwined history of colonialism and capitalism in Canada. No place, no time, no struggle has been left behind. The sweep and range of Palmer’s work is breathtaking."
Praise for Volumes One and Two:
"His challenging and illuminating account is truly a new history for the twenty-first century, one that lays out how the country’s past lies before us, demanding redress. The two books that comprise this retelling of Canada’s rise from a colony to a nation that has routinely and relentlessly colonized, should and will be widely read by all concerned with basic issues of social justice."
Praise for Volumes One and Two
"Bryan D. Palmer has done something no one else has done, not even Bryan Palmer. He has written a serious, sustained, and accessible account of colonialism and capitalism. It is a history of Canada that is also the story of creative resistance on the part of Indigenous Peoples, workers, Québécois, and others.
Like the juggler who has three bowling balls and a chainsaw in the air while riding a bicycle, Palmer keeps his themes, subjects, and dramatis personae moving, yet always visible for the reader, never dropping them and explaining change over time. Reading these books, like watching the juggler, I was in awe. You will be too."
Praise for Volumes One and Two:
Great historians are the ones who are able to explain to us why we do what we do, relate to each other as we do, show us the kinds of compromises we have made, the tensions we have created, the injustices we have left unremedied. This marvellous book by Bryan Palmer does all of these things and more. His conceptualization of Canadian history is painstakingly documented and remains front and centre as his gracious prose weaves a rich picture of the events, scandals, brutalities, [and] disposessions . . . It is all, literally all, there. It gives those who want a different and better world a road map.
No longer will anyone be able to pretend that we are a polity based on a liberal political philosophy that allows all to act as sovereigns. In these territories, Palmer explains, the right to self-determination rests on where the past placed you. It is a clarion call for change."
Subjects (BISAC)
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