On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 PDF
Preview On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871
ON THE EDGE OF EMPIRE: GENDER, RACE, AND THE MAKING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1849–1871 On the Edge of Empire is a well-written, carefully researched, and persua- sively argued book that delineates the centrality of race and gender in the making of colonial and national identities, and in the rewriting of Canadian history as colonial history. Utilizing feminist and post- colonial filters, Adele Perry designs a case study of British Columbia. She draws on current work that aims to close the distance between ‘home’ and ‘away’ in order to make her case about the commonalities and differences between circumstances in British Columbia and those of the ‘Anglo-American’ culture that was increasingly dominant in North America, parts of the British Isles, and other white settler colonies. On the Edge of Empire examines how a loosely connected group of reformers worked to transform an environment that lent itself to two social phenomena: white male homosocial culture and conjugal rela- tionships between First Nations women and settler men. The reformers worked to replace British Columbia’s homosocial culture with the prac- tices of respectable, middle-class European masculinity. Others encour- aged mixed-race couples to conform to European standards of marrrige and discouraged white-Aboriginal unions through moral suasion or the more radical tactic of racially segregated space. Another reform impetus laboured through immigration and land policy to both build and shape the settler population. A more successful reform effort involved four assisted female immi- gration efforts, yet the experience of white women in British Columbia only made more pronounced the gap between colonial discourse and colonial experience. In its failure to live up to British expectations, remaining a racially plural resource colony with a unique culture, Brit- ish Columbia revealed much about the politics of gender, race, and the making of colonial society on this edge of empire. (Studies in Gender and History) adele perry is an assistant professor of history at St Paul’s College, University of Manitoba. STUDIES IN GENDER AND HISTORY General editors: Franca Iacovetta and Karen Dubinsky On the Edge of Empire Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 ADELE PERRY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted 2002, 2004 ISBN 0-8020-4797-1 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-8336-6 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Perry, Adele On the edge of empire : gender, race, and the making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 (Studies in gender and history series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-4797-1 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8336-6 (pbk.) 1. British Columbia – History – 1849–1871.* 2. British Columbia – Social conditions – To 1871. 3. British Columbia – Colonization. I. Title. II. Series. (cid:0) FC3822.P47 2001 971.1 02 C00-931748-1 F1088.P47 2001 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). Contents acknowledgments vii Introduction: Analysing Gender and Race on the Edge of Empire 3 1 ‘Poor Creatures Are We without Our Wives’: White Men and Homosocial Culture 20 2 ‘The Prevailing Vice’: Mixed-Race Relationships 48 3 Bringing Order to the Backwoods: Regulating British Columbia’s Homosocial Culture 79 4 Marriage, Morals, and Segregation: Regulating Mixed-Race Relationships 97 5 Land and Immigration, Gender and Race: Bringing White People to British Columbia 124 6 ‘Fair Ones of a Purer Caste’: Bringing White Women to British Columbia 139 7 ‘An Unspeakable Benefit?’: White Women in Colonial Society 167 Conclusion: Gender, Race, and Our Years on the Edge of Empire 194 notes 203 references 251 illustration credits 277 index 279 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I have been writing this part in my head for a long time. It goes something like this. This manuscript began as a doctoral dissertation. It was completed at York University under the expert and thoughtful guidance of Craig Heron, Bettina Bradbury, and Kathryn McPherson. Susan Houston, Nick Rogers, and Ramsay Cook also generously shared their advice and knowledge. Sylvia Van Kirk’s wise comments helped to turn the dissertation into a book. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, I benefited from the sage counsel and scholarly support of Jean Barman and Veronica Strong-Boag. My new colleagues in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba have welcomed me and my research to this other edge of empire. I shopped parts of this manuscript around fairly widely, and bene- fited from critical comments from the Toronto Labour Studies Group, the University of Toronto Women’s History Discussion Group, the University of Toronto Gay and Lesbian History Discussion Group, the Early Canada Research Group, the York University Women’s History Group, the Farley Series on Gender History, and audiences at the Cana- dian Historical Association in St John’s and the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Montreal. In different ways, Lisa Chilton, John Gay, Mona Gleason, Cole Harris, Victoria Heftler, Martha Kanya- Forstner, Richard Mackie, Fiona Miller, James Moran, Steve Penfold, Carolyn Podruchny, Gillian Poulter, Myra Rutherdale, Becki Ross, Ruth Sandwell, Nandita Sharma, and Sharon Wall provided helpful com- mentary, feedback, and support. Emily Andrew, Jill McConkey, and Gerry Hallowell of the University of Toronto Press and series editors Karen Dubinsky and Franca Iacovetta each helped hone this volume and shepherd it through the publishing process. Eric Leinberger made the maps. viii Acknowledgments Archivists and librarians in Victoria, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, and London supported this project ably. Martha Kanya-Forstner, Colin Mooers, Penny Perry, Lara Perry, and Marie Campbell put me up and put up with me on my various research trips. In an era of declining state support for scholarship, I was lucky to receive generous assistance through a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a Queen Elizabeth II Ontario Scholarship, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellowship. There is personal in the academic just as there is in the political. My father, Clay Perry, first showed me that there was a connection between social justice and social history. My mother, Penny Perry, taught me that there was much to value and evaluate in British Columbia. Both sup- ported me and this project above and beyond the obligations of paren- tal duty. Peter Ives certainly knows more about colonial British Columbia than he ever wished. Our daughter Nell Ives Perry was born as I finished this book, and she has brought unspeakable joy into my life and helped to keep it in perspective as only a baby can. Throughout it all, Kate McPherson has taught me much about the writing of social history, about Western Canada, about feminism, about teaching and, ultimately, about friendship. So this book is for her. ON THE EDGE OF EMPIRE: GENDER, RACE, AND THE MAKING OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1849–1871
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