'The Dust of Toryism': Monarchism and Republicanism in Upper Canadian Travel and Immigration Texts
| Autor: | John Thurston |
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| Rok vydání: | 1996 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Canadian Studies. 30:75-87 |
| ISSN: | 1911-0251 0021-9495 |
| DOI: | 10.3138/jcs.30.4.75 |
| Popis: | This essay analyzes a representative sample of travel and immigration texts set in Upper Canada, from John Howison (1821) to Samuel Strickland (1853), for the struggle played out within them between images of republicanism and monarchism. It identifies a pervasive fear in these writers of the contamination of the colony with principles and behaviour entirely contrary to its British origins. The construction of the colony these texts attempt was rife with the possibilities of transculturation through their delivery of the discourse of republicanism to the British reading public. In 1832 Henry Clay, a resilient and popular American political leader who had backed the War of 1812, told his supporters in one of several nearly - successful presidential campaigns that the "eyes of all civilized nations are intensely gazing upon us; and it may truly be asserted that the fate of Liberty throughout the World mainly depends upon the maintenance of American liberty."(f.1) No nation was more mesmerized than England, divided between those who revered and those who abhorred the American example. Five years after Clay's speech, Anna Jameson, in one of the best - known travel books on Upper Canada, said of the colony that the very first elements out of which our social system was framed, were repugnance and contempt for the new institutions of the United States, and a dislike to the people of that country ... [T]he slightest tinge of democratic, or even liberal principles in politics, was for a long time a sufficient impeachment of the loyalty, a stain upon the personal character, of those who held them.(f.2) Mrs. Jameson was in the colony at the behest of her husband, its attorney general, and these claims are coloured by time she spent at the seat of power, associating with the administrative elite and observing colonial politics. Her implication that this "long time" has passed does not take into account the rebellion of 1837, which took place just after she left and which renewed and exacerbated the negative and reactive tendencies in colonial politics. Ten years later, John Richardson, now remembered for Wacousta, in his account of Eight Years in Canada describes the moderate reformers in the first union Executive Council as "extreme Radicals" belonging to "the rebel party" (192, 191); they earn this description due to their "Wat Tyler - like demand[s]" for control of patronage and responsible government (191). To us, for whom democracy is a sacrosanct if seldom examined concept, the idea that mere association with it might stain one's character seems outrageous. In the texts analyzed in this article, however, the "democratic, or even liberal principles" portrayed as American and republican are everywhere decried, or discussed in terms so cautious as palpably to project a fear of contamination. Raymond Williams reminds us that democracy "only came into common English use at the time of the American and French Revolutions" and that "Democrats ... were seen, commonly, as dangerous and subversive mob agitators" (xiv). The representation of Americans, of republicanism and of democracy in British travel and immigration narratives about Upper Canada engage their authors, often consciously, in a struggle to shape the future. Setting aside the more material embodiments of that struggle, what follows will deal with how it plays out in these texts, with the images of republicanism versus monarchy that they circulate in England through the colonial relay. Throughout the 1830's, governors and lieutenant - governors were convinced they were fighting a decisive battle against American - style republicanism and democracy, the triumph of which would lead to the end of monarchy and the loss of the colonies" - so writes an American scholar of Canadian history who compares the second quarter of the nineteenth century in Upper Canada "to the critical periods between 1689 and 1720 in England and 1763 and 1789 in the . … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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