Readings in Canadian History: Pre-Confederation

Louis A. Knafla is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

The editors are historians at the University of Calgary. Their research and writing concern Canadian social, intellectual, and native history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in French as well as English-speaking society. This second edition contains numerous revisions, and is considerably more reflective of current scholarship than the first. The introductions to each of the fifteen sections comprise short bibliographical essays which are more useful than those in the original edition, and the sections themselves are more strongly oriented in the area of social and economic history, and the impact of settlers on the native inhabitants. However, several deficiencies remain: (1) the lack of a critical evaluation of the subject matter and especially of the works discussed in the introductions to the sections; (2) an inadequate and unbalanced representation of the Prairie and Pacific West; and (3) the absence of an index. Nonetheless, the collection remains one of the best readers for pre-Confederation Canadian history.