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Join authors Brian Gettler and Dan Horner for the launch of their respective books, Colonialism's Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950 and Taking to the Streets: Crowds, Politics, and the Urban Experience in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Montreal. The authors will be in conversation with Magda Fahrni and Donald Fyson, moderated by Amanda Ricci.
Brian Gettler is assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto. Dan Horner is associate professor in the Department of Criminology at Ryerson University and a member of the Montreal History Group.
Colonialism's Currency analyzes the historical experiences and interactions of three distinct First Nations - the Wendat of Wendake, the Innu of Mashteuiatsh, and the Moose Factory Cree - with monetary forms and practices created by colonial powers. Whether treaty payments and welfare provisions such as the paper vouchers favoured by the Department of Indian Affairs, the Canadian Dominion's standardized paper notes, or the "made beaver" (the Hudson's Bay Company's money of account), each monetary form allowed the state to communicate and enforce political, economic, and cultural sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and their lands. Surveying a range of historical cases, Brian Gettler shows how currency simultaneously placed First Nations beyond the bounds of settler society while justifying colonial interventions in their communities.
In Taking to the Streets Dan Horner examines how the urban environment became a vital and contentious political site during the tumultuous period from the end of the 1837-38 rebellions to the burning of Parliament in 1849. Employing a close reading of newspaper and judicial archives, he looks at a broad range of collective crowd experiences, including riots, labour demonstrations, religious processions, and parades. By examining how crowd events were used both to assert claims of political authority and to challenge their legitimacy, Horner charts the development of a contentious democratic political culture in British North America.