Course Structure and Study Strategy

History 224 is divided into six units as outlined below. Please note that each Study Guide contains two units.

Unit 1

First and Second Peoples

Unit 1 examines the cultural values and the social and political institutions of the two groups of people who would occupy the territory of today’s Canada after 1600: the Native peoples who had already occupied these lands for millenia, and the Europeans who would intrude in ever-greater numbers on these territories after 1600.

Unit 2

Canada in the Period of French Colonialism

Unit 2 examines the character of European-Native relations during the first period of colonial commerce and settlement in today’s Canada. It also deals with everyday life in New France and Acadia, analysing the degree to which the French colonies that developed in North America in the seventeenth century were shaped by metropolitan politics and transplanted social values, on the one hand, and by frontier conditions, on the other.

Unit 3

British Conquest

Unit 3 traces the commercial and military rivalries, both metropolitan and frontier, that led to the conquest of most of France’s North American colonies. An attempt is made to place the North American warfare in the context of international politics of the period. Unit 3 also discusses the early years of British settlement in the former French territories and their impact on the Native and French residents.

Unit 4

Establishing a “British” North America: The Atlantic Colonies and the West

Unit 4 outlines the political, economic, and social developments that occurred in the Atlantic and western regions of British control in the period from the triumph of the American revolutionaries to the 1850s.

Unit 5

Establishing a “British” North America: The Canadas

Unit 5 traces the attempts by Britain to establish societies replicating British class structures and social values in Upper and Lower Canada after 1791. It also examines the reasons why the societies that emerged were very different from the British model. Conflicts leading to the two rebellions of 1837 are outlined as part of an exploration of the emerging social relations both in predominantly French-speaking Lower Canada and in English-speaking Upper Canada.

Unit 6

A Changing Social Order: Industrial Revolution and Confederation

Unit 6 explores the changing economic and social order that resulted as British North America began to transform from a pre-industrial to an industrial society. The impact of social and economic changes on the debate about whether the colonies of British North America ought to federate is then discussed.