Journals Of The Colonial Legislatures Of The Colonies Of Vancouver Island And British Columbia 1851 1871

Perry examines the efforts of a loosely connected group of reformers to transform a colonial environment into one that more closely adhered to the practices of respectable, middle-class European society.

Frontiers were not confined to the bush, backwoods, or borderlands. Towns and cities at the farthest reaches of empire were crucial to the settler colonial project. Yet the experiences of Indigenous peoples in these urban frontiers have been overshadowed by triumphant narratives of progress. This book explores the lives of Indigenous peoples and settlers in two Pacific Rim cities � Victoria, British Columbia, and Melbourne, Australia. Built on Indigenous lands and overtaken by gold rushes, these cities emerged between 1835 and 1871 in significantly different locations, yet both became cross-cultural and segregated sites of empire. This innovative study traces how these spaces, and the bodies in them, were transformed, sometimes in violent ways, creating new spaces and new polities.

To Share, Not Surrender offers an entirely new approach to assessing Indigenous-settler conflict over land, opening scholarship to the public and augmenting it with First Nations community expertise. Informed by cel’aṉ’en – “our culture, the way of our people” – this multivocal work of essays traces the transition from treaty-making in the colony of Vancouver Island to reserve formation in the colony of British Columbia. The collection also publishes translations/interpretations of the treaties into the SENĆOŦEN and Lekwungen languages. An all-embracing exploration of the struggle over land, To Share, Not Surrender advances the urgent task of reconciliation in Canada.

Celebrated historian Barry Gough brings a defining era of Pacific Northwest history into focus in this biography of Richard Blanshard, the first governor of Vancouver Island—illuminating with intriguing detail the genesis and early days of Canada's westernmost province. Early one wintry day in March 1850, after seven weary weeks out of sight of land, a well-dressed Londoner, a bachelor aged thirty-two, stood at the ship’s rail taking in the immensity of the unfolding scene. From Her Britannic Majesty’s paddlewheel sloop-of-war Driver, steadily thumping forth on Imperial purpose, all that Richard Blanshard could make out to port, in reflected purple light upon the northern side, was a forested, rock-clad island rising to considerable height. Vancouver’s Island they called it in those far-off days. This was his destination. Richard Blanshard was only governor of the young colony for three short, unhappy years—only one and a half of which were spent in the colony itself. From the very beginning he was at odds with the vastly influential Hudson’s Bay Company, run by its Chief Factor James Douglas, who succeeded Blanshard as governor of the colony of Vancouver Island and later became the first governor of the colony of British Columbia. While James Douglas is remembered, for better or worse, as a founding father of British Columbia, Richard Blanshard’s name is now largely forgotten, despite his vitally important role in warning London of American cross-border aggressions, including a planned takeover of Haida Gwaii. However, his failures highlight the fascinating struggles of the time—the supreme influence of commerce, the disparity between expectations and reality, and the bewildering collision of European and Pacific Northwest culture.

Framing the West argues that photography was intrinsic to British territorial expansion and settlement on the northwest coast. Williams shows how male and female settlers used photography to establish control over the territory and its indigenous inhabitants, as well as how native peoples eventually turned the technology to their own purposes. Photographs of the region were used to stimulate British immigration and entrepreneuralism, and imagies of babies and children were designed to advertise the population growth of the settlers. Although Indians were taken by Anglos to document their "disappearing" traditions and to show the success of missionary activities, many Indians proved receptive to photography and turned posing for the white man's camera to their own advantage. This book will appeal to those interested in the history of the West, imperialism, gender, photography, and First Nations/Native America. Framing the West was the winner of the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.