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| The tiger and the beaver? -- who'da thunk. |
The standout article in the April-May Canada's History must be Madhuparna Gupta's essay "Bonds of Empire." It considers how Canada and India "emerge... as two sides of the same coin, united by the common threads of European colonial heritage" over hundreds of years.
For much of those hundreds of years, many Canadians would have ranked themselves as part of the "white Commonwealth" and co-rulers of the Empire -- quite different from the subject peoples of India. Gupta skillfully subverts that position with surprising comparisons: from the monopoly trading companies that took charge of things on both continents to the similarities she finds between the Rebellions of 1837 here and the Sepoy Rebellion, aka the First War of Indian Independence in 1857, there.
She makes fascinating material of Canadian nonentities like Lord Minto and Lord Willingdon, who as Governors General of Canada stand for little more than a lacrosse cup and an arts prize, but who as Governors General of India wielded despotic authority in trying to prevent steps toward Indian independence. She notes a shared history of military service fuelling nationalist stirrings in the twentieth century, and the shared parliamentary history since 1947, and the tide of immigration from the subcontinent to Canada in the last half century.
It's subversive in the most polite way, and brilliantly extends Canadian history to include a million and a half Indo-Canadians.
Also in the issue, Alan MacEachern on Green Gables during the Second World War, Robert Chaulk on the wreck of the "Atlantic," Julian Sher on the Canadian who captured John Wilkes Booth, lots of reviews, news items, and commentary. I'll be back in the next issue with a feature article related to Prince Edward Island's sequicentennial of Confederation 1873-2023. Subscribe.
Online, Madhuparna Gupta and Stephen Bown discuss colonial connections with CH senior editor Kate Jaimet.
