A Bounded Land

Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada

Table of contents

Introduction

Part 1: Early Encounters

The Fraser Canyon Encountered

Imagining and Claiming the Land

Voices of Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia

Part 2: Early Settlements

Acadia: Settling the Marshlands

Of Poverty and Helplessness in Petite-Nation

The Settlement of Mono Township

Part 3: The Architecture of Settlement

European Beginnings in the Northwest Atlantic

The Overseas Simplification of Europe

Creating Place in Early Canada

Part 4: Reconfiguring British Columbia

The Making of the Lower Mainland

The Struggle with Distance

Indigenous Space

Part 5: Theorizing Settler Colonialism

Making an Immigrant Society

How Did Colonialism Dispossess?

 

Postscript: The Boundaries of Settler Colonialism

Notes and Further Readings; Index

Description

How was society reorganized—for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike—when Europeans resettled this distinctive land? Through a series of vignettes that focus on people’s experiences on the ground, Cole Harris exposes the underlying architecture of settler colonialism as it grew and evolved. In the process, he explores how Canada’s settler societies differed from their European progenitors and, more theoretically, how colonialism managed to dispossess. Ultimately, Harris argues that country’s boundedness is now drawing it toward its Indigenous roots.

Reviews

There is a lot packed into this book . .. [It] highlights the theoretical and practical policies that underwrote colonialism. In doing so, it helps to explain how the history of dispossession became inseparable from the rise of nation-states such as Canada.

- Benjamin Hoy

Overall, this book is not only a fitting capstone to an extroardinary career, but also an excellent primer for understanding Canada's settler colonial past.

- Ryan Hall, Colgate University

It is to Harris’s credit that the innovative assembly of spatial and social vignettes in A Bounded Land prompts our reflection on Indigenous and settler relations in colonial Canada.

- Grace Keng, Pennsylvania State University

A Bounded Land brings new dimensions and reflections to the work of Cole Harris as a scholar. The themes turn on settlement, colonization, dispossession, re-settlement, and the concluding theme throws light on Indigenous displacement and theories of empire and decolonization.

- Barry Gough

Cole Harris has produced an eloquent compilation of work on settler colonialism in Canada.

- Ken Favrholdt, Kamloops, BC

A Bounded Land is a guided tour through the work of a brilliant, insightful, and compassionate mind and body of work.

- James Murton

This is the most informative, penetrating and best-written account that I have read on the topic.

- Jim Reynolds