"Union is Strength:" W.L. Mackenzie, The Children of Peace, and the Emergence of Joint Stock Democracy in Upper Canada (review)

Albert Schrauwers has written an important book that changes our understanding of the coming of representative democracy in Upper Canada. Many academics and graduate students will find this book extremely useful.

The author is concerned with two developments that transformed life in Upper Canada between 1815 and about 1850. First, he explores the growing integration of Upper Canadians into a trans-Atlantic market economy. Second, he discusses the democratization of the political order, a transformation that involved the loss of power by the Family Compact and the achievement of responsible government. Schrauwers employs the concept of "joint-stock democracy" to show how economic and constitutional change co-evolved: far from being coincidental, responsible government and the transition to capitalism reinforced each other. The author's narrative incorporates a number of familiar names from Upper Canadian history (e.g., William Lyon Mackenzie, Lord Sydenham, John Strachan, Robert Baldwin, the Bank of Upper Canada), but he provides us with a fresh paradigm for understanding their actions.

As someone who teaches an undergraduate course on business history, I find that it is sometimes difficult to interest young adults in the juridical evolution of the company. Many students find it difficult to grasp why the granting of legal personhood to business corporations is historically significant. Schrauwers' research will make it easier to illustrate this point because he shows the subversive nature of the unincorporated joint-stock companies of Upper Canada. The Family Compact oligarchy was able to use its control of the legislature to charter limited-liability corporations such as the Bank of Upper Canada and the Canada Company. Schrauwers shows that non-elite people responded by creating joint-stock companies that did not have the sanction of the state.

Joint-stock companies such as the Farmers' Storehouse cooperative played an important role in both the reform agitation leading up to the 1837 Rebellion and the subsequent struggle for responsible government. Schrauwers also explores the nature of debt in Upper Canada, showing how the Family Compact used the threat of imprisonment to control the populace.

Schrauwers' observations on assisted emigration, poor relief, and workhouses in Upper Canada are interesting because he places Upper Canadian developments in a wider imperial context. He shows that the influx of British paupers into Upper Canada in the 1830s created a crisis in Toronto. Schrauwers relates Canadian ideas about poverty to the New Poor Law of 1834, a piece of British legislation that signalled a hardening of attitudes in the mother country. The author's evidence about the intensity of the pauper problem in Upper Canada helps to address one of the unanswered questions of Upper

Canadian political history, namely why Britain appointed Sir Francis Bond Head, a civilian who lacked experience in colonial government, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada in 1835. Historians have long wondered about the British cabinet's bizarre choice of Head, with some speculating that his appointment was the result of clerical confusion with Francis' more suitable cousin, Edmund Head. Drawing on research by Rainer Baehre, Schrauwers suggests that Head was sent to Upper Canada because his prior experience as a Poor Law Commissioner in Kent suited him to governing a province with a growing population of British-born paupers. It is unfortunate that Schrauwers did not follow up this very interesting line of speculation by reinterpreting the relevant Colonial Office files. Schrauwers' book is largely based on secondary and published primary sources. A scholar based in a history department probably would have made somewhat greater use of archival materials.

Schrauwers has successfully synthesized several different sub-disciplines of history: social history, political history, and business history. It is rare to find a book in which the footnotes refer to such diverse scholars as Bryan Palmer, Alfred Chandler, and John Ralston Saul. Another positive aspect of this work is its comparative or international element. Schrauwers places Upper Canada in its...