Canadian History-A Reader's Guide, Vol. 1: Beginnings to Confederation

Martin L. Nicolai is an adjunct assistant professor of history at
Queen’s University.

For the last 10 years, scholars and students in the field of Canadian
history have found the two-volume Reader’s Guide to Canadian History
an indispensable reference. However, a decade is a long time in the
world of scholarship, and the old guide is virtually obsolete.
Fortunately, we now have the first volume of a new historiographical
guide with 10 bibliographic essay chapters that scour every corner of
pre-Confederation history.

The guide does not include every publication on Canadian history,
merely the most useful, recent works, which means that only the most
solid and enduring studies published prior to 1980 appear in its pages.
Nevertheless, each chapter provides an overview of the historiography
(in particular, recent trends in the field), then examines general
works, other bibliographies and reference works, published documents,
and periodicals before proceeding to such subtopics as women’s
history, Native studies, and economics. The author and subject indexes
are especially useful. Regrettably, the volume deliberately omits
unpublished theses (even selected ones), which often contain the most
innovative work in particular fields of study.

The 10 historians responsible for the essay chapters provide superb,
comprehensive, up-to-date surveys of their particular sector of Canadian
history. Unfortunately, there is no attempt to develop a synthesis of
pre-Confederation Canadian historiography, which has traditionally been
divided into regional fiefdoms. Of course, finding common bonds is a
special challenge when we consider that politicians assembled modern
Canada from a multitude of geographically separated aboriginal and
European cultures. The editor, however, is right in pointing out that
there are thematic links between the regions that can and ought to be
exploited.

Historians, students, high-school teachers, and anyone else interested
in Canadian history will welcome this new guide, which promises to
alleviate, at least temporarily, the perpetual challenge of coping with
the torrent of publications in Canadian history.