Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48Was Canada’s Dominion experiment of 1867 an experiment in political domination? Looking to taxes provides the answer: they are a privileged measure of both political agency and political domination. To pay one’s taxes was the sine qua non of entry into political life, but taxes are also the point of politics, which is always about the control of wealth. Modern states have everywhere been born of tax revolts, and Canada was no exception. Heaman shows that the competing claims of the propertied versus the people are hardwired con- stituents of Canadian political history. Tax debates in early Canada were philosophically charged, politically consequential dialogues about the rela- tionship between wealth and poverty. Extensive archival research, from private papers, commis- sions, the press, and all levels of government, serves to identify a rising popular challenge to the patrician politics that were entrenched in the Con- stitutional Act of 1867 under the credo “Peace, Order, and good Government.” Canadians wrote themselves a new constitution in 1867 because they needed a new tax deal, one that reflected the changing balance of regional, racial, and religious political accommodations. In the fifty years that followed, politics became social politics and a lib- eral state became a modern administrative one. But emerging conceptions of fiscal fairness met with intense resistance from conservative statesmen, culminating in 1917 in a progressive income tax and the bitterest election in Canadian history. Tax, Order, and Good Government tells the story of Confederation without exceptionalism or mis- placed sentimentality and, in so doing, reads Cana- dian history as a lesson in how the state works. Tax, Order, and Good Government follows the money and returns taxation to where it belongs: at the heart of Canada’s political, economic, and social history. “This book shows that the history of taxation is not only important – it can also be provocative, infuriating, and exciting. Tax, Order, and Good Government is an essential read for all historians of Canada.” Eric Sager, University of Victoria E.A. Heaman is associate professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. C A N A D I A N H I S T O R Y • P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y 5 M Q U P S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 Tax, Order, and Good Government A New Political History of Canada, 1867–1917 e.a. heaman The history of Confederation rewritten through the redistribution of wealth. S P E C I F I C AT I O N S Carleton Library Series May 2017 978-0-7735-4962-3 $39.95T CDN, $39.95A US, £34.00 cloth 6 x 9 584pp 30 figures, 3 tables eBook available