Reddit mentions: The best 19th century canadian history books

Just to make it easier to find - it's spelled "Pierre Berton", not "Burton". Also, "Hostages to Fortune" was written by Peter C. Newman, not Pierre Berton (more about Newman below).

Here's Berton's list of books.

Some great foundational stuff about Canada is as /u/MonotheistThrowaway describes, in the 1812 things. There's also other stuff by him that's excellent:

"The National Dream" and "The Last Spike", about the construction of the railroad across Canada.

"The Great Depression", which of course is about the Great Depression.

"Vimy", which is about the Canadians at Vimy Ridge in 1917. It's not especially "scholarly", but it's incredibly accessible and a riveting read.

"The Arctic Grail", which is about the many attempts to find the North-West Passage. See also the Stan Rogers song about this. It's a pretty key piece of Canadian history.

There is lots and lots more in his bibliography. If you go out of your mind and decide to read all of his work, you'll probably know more about Canadian history and identity that 95% of those born here.

Peter Newman wrote similarly great Canadian history. He did a three-volume piece about the Hudson Bay Company, in the books Company of Adventurers, Caesars of the Wilderness and Merchant Princes. There's a sort of a "condensed" version called "Empire of the Bay" that might be a quicker read.

If you ever get bored of reading but you still want to learn Canada's history, check out "Canada: A People's History", an incredible series done by CBC back in 2001. That's a link to a playlist with all episodes. I can't possibly recommend it enough.

Edit to add: Welcome to Canada, friend!

ASINs are the same, yes, I didn't realize they varied by region. My technique is to find the kindle book on .com and paste the ASIN into the .ca search to make sure I got the right version.

BUT, I just checked by random selection, and For Honour's Sake has the same Kindle ASIN in America, Canada, and Brasil, as well as other books by the same author. So maybe certain books are doable for you.

The book is a collection of essays mostly by Wayne State students and was published by the Detroit Historical Society. It's great, tons of interesting perspectives in there.

If you (or anyone else for that matter) are interested, historian Pierre Burton wrote two excellent books on the war, which were later combined into one book. It's a massive book that covers the war from its root causes, to the concluding peace talks. He follows the major figures (from generals, to political leaders, and notable people), armies and battles, and the countries involved as a whole and how they were coping with the war. He also uses accounts from people who were there, and follows them through key moments to create very captivating narratives. For instance, he might discuss battles in part by discussing a soldier or citizen who was caught in it, following them from start to finish. Burton is very unbiased, and I truly appreciate how factual the book is, while being so enthraling to read. He is one of the best historian authors in my opinion, and I went through these works very quickly.

Amazon US

Amazon Canada

Part of the intro, from an Amazon preview, discussing this engagement

I just included the last one to give an idea of what kind of writter Burton is.

I don't think ignorance of Canada's treaty obligations to indigenous First Nations is something to get guilty about. Canada's education system has generally done a terrible job on this.

One thing you could do to start is buy this book, which I found to be an easy, breezy read and very informative. https://www.amazon.ca/Things-Know-About-Indian-Reconciliation/dp/0995266522 .

But yeah on the topic in question, and why 'communities' is an inappropriate framing:

Canada's land area contains a large number of indigenous nations with significant traditional territorial lands. In some cases these nations have treaties with the crown, while in other cases, (in much of BC for example) there is no treaty, and these traditional lands are unceded, meaning that the rights and title have never been extinguished.

For a concrete example the Haida Nation has declared that the entirety of Haida Gwaii archepelago is its territory, and has strong opinions on how these lands and waters should be jointly managed by the Haida Nation, BC and Canada.

From this example, given the scale of the lands and scope of governance we're talking about, it's absurd to talk about this issue with the framing of the Haida Nation as a 'community' as that brings to mind like a small town and small area.

When Scheer talks about these nation to nation discussions between the Crown and First Nations as just being about 'communities' he's being disengenuous and trying to make it sounds like it's a small town dispute and something that the Feds should of course be able to railroad over.

This is a good read, and it is a from a totally different perspective. Ie, its about the girls that mined the miners during the gold rush.

https://www.amazon.ca/Good-Time-Girls-Alaska-Yukon-Gold/dp/1551109948

The rail lines were re-routed from their initially planned route many times. Often based on lobbying and outright bribery from local business and land owners.

Other re-routings happened because railway officials happened to own land in the places where the tracks ultimately went.

The CPR was originally supposed to go thru Rapid City, but was re-routed to go thru Brandon.

Calgary was also moved from it's original location at Fort Calgary to re-build itself around the newly built CPR Calgary station (the first station being a converted box car)

Edit:

the CPR was originally surveyed to cross the Wascana near Fort Quapelle, but land speculators had already bought up all the usable land, so CPR quietly re-routed their line further south to a place called "pile of bones", which later became Regina. It was probably just a co-incidence that the Lieutenant Governor (one Mr Edgar Dewdney) was part of a group who owned large parcels of land where he ultimately decided to re-locate the capitol to it's present location in Regina. (from Rails across the prairies, p30 )

You guys should read "For Honour's Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace"

Written in 2007 it's a very easy read. Thrill a minute, some wicked battles happened in that war, lots of drama :)

You can get it on kindle too! which is how I read it http://www.amazon.ca/Honours-Sake-Brokering-Uneasy-Peace/dp/0676977065/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317963535&sr=8-1

The War That Made America for an excellent overview of the French & Indian War. While often talked about in school, it's often just a prelude to the Revolution. While it was that, there is so much more to the struggle, and it's results changed and defined much of what came after.

The Island at the Center of the World the origins of New York, and the struggles of the Dutch Colony.

Hey, so the last thing I want to do is be one of those Reddit know-it-alls.

It's just that the British troops who burned down the while house staged out of Bermuda. They had arrived in Bermuda not too long before after kicking some Napoleonic ass at Waterloo. None of them were British troops from Canada.

It's not just a technicality. Canadian troops just weren't present for the burning of Washington. There were plenty of great battles in the war of 1812 that Canadian troops did participate in. I think that trying to take credit for something in which Canadian troops weren't involved makes us look bad, and takes away from the battles where we were involved because not as many people hear about them.

A couple of interesting ones were the Battle of Lundy's Lane and the capture of Fort Niagara.

If anyone is looking for a relatively recent book about the war, I found The Civil War of 1812 to be an interesting take on the whole thing.

The Civil War of 1812 looks like a good book. I haven't read it, but caught a reading on C-Span a while back. He talked about the invasion of Toronto, and a lot of that war took place in the area (I think). If nothing else, it's a good look into the complicated and nuanced relations between Britons, Americans, and Canadians that you probably didn't get in your obligatory mention of the war in grade school (I think all they told us was that the Brits were jealous of us and burned the White House).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Civil-War-1812-American/dp/0679776737

Not the area's you're asking for, but we're about to get inundated with 200 year anniversary articles about The War of 1812

Pierre Berton (Canadian) does a good job of explaining the run up to the war, what actually happened instead of the jingoistic view that had taken hold since then, and this book includes both of the 'The Invasion of Canada 1812-1813' and 'Flames Across the Border 1813-1814' books that make up a fantastic series.

While the War may not seem very important from the outside due to it's stalemate of a result, the implications are huge. England maintained it's Canadian provinces, or we would have become American States. It was America's first war of aggression. It led to the Flag, the star spangled banner (song), and the burning of both York (Toronto) and Washington D.C..

Having realized they couldn't go North and fight the British successfully (as the Napoleonic war had ended) the US looked South and West instead, leading to confrontations with the Mexicans, and Spanish.

Sorry for the delay! So there are a few interesting places to start. I do want to warn you that I'm not a military historian. I'm a social historian who studies the causes and effects that events have on a society at large. So when I study war, I don't really study the battles, but rather the effects battles or wars have on societies. As a result, the books I am about to recommend aren't going to be ones that solely focus on warfare, but rather discuss the war, its battles, but also their effects on society.

Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 by Fred Andersen is pretty much the academic standard on the French and Indian War. Like most academic books focusing on warfare during this time period, Andersen will also talk about all aspects of the war, including civil affairs.

War & society in the American Revolution by John Resch and Walter Sargent feature a collection of essays that deal with all aspects of the war. Warning, this is a very academic piece but it's incredibly fascinating. It talks about all aspects of the war and it's impacts on societies at large (which is something you seemed to be interested in).

Another book I am reading currently is actually pretty new. It's called American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 but one of the most dominant historians in the field; Alan Taylor. I haven't finished it yet, but it does one of the best jobs of discussing the American Revolution from so many different perspectives -- something you may find interesting.

Another Alan Taylor book that discusses war is The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies. Taylor once again discusses the multifaceted struggles of war, and shows how dynamic it is.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. I will make sure I respond quicker this time!