Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History ed. by Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice (review)

380 LETTERS IN CANADA 1997 according to most Japanese- is still self-evidently 'better' than foreign rice. There is also no global market for labour. Capital's ability to profit from 'cheap' labour presupposes state-imposed limits onpopulation movements. Finally, even if the economic process did determine the political, there would be no way to regulate global crises except through national states. Would the UviF respond to an Asian currency crisis by distributing leaflets in Indonesian villages? Ken Collier's perspective on globalization is not the only one possible, but After the Welfare State does provoke reflection on urgent issues in political economy. Collier d1allenges readers to reconsider many prejudices that are often mistaken for facts. In particular, he provides a timely riposte to the simplistic neoconservative belief that globalization is self-justifying. Even if globalization did promote economic efficiency, there is no reason to assume that efficiency would automatically entail justice. For exactly that reason, it is probably premature to predict the end of the national state. (RICHARD B. DAY) Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice, editors. Creating Historical Menwry: English-Canadian Women and tlze Work ofHistory University of British Columbia Press. xii, 308. $75.00 English-Canadian historians are a funny lot. We insist on the importance ofhistory to nnderstanding contemporary events and ongoing debates but, at the same time, we harbour a remarkable historicaJ ignorance of our own profession. The appearance of Creating Historical Memory, however, signals an important change. A collection of eleven original essays, it docurn.ents the experience of English-Canadian women and the work of history from the 1870s to the 1970s. The volume opens with a wonderful, wide-ranging introduction. Here Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice place the experience of EnglishCanadian women and the work of history on a broad canvas- women as writers of history in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. 'Women have been writing history since at least the medieval period in the West and, viewed as a body of work, their historical writings exhibit certain shared characteristics." Most notably, their work centred on the history of women. The professionalization ofhistory, however, introduced a series of changes. A socially constructed category, the professional historian was rational, objective, and scientific. Because these qualities were gendered masculine, the professionalhistorian wasby construction male.ln addition, the subject matter narrowed as past politics became the dominant focus of·inquiry, thus excluding the history of women. As Boutilier and Prentice write, the professionalization of history and the masculinization of history HUMANITIES 381 shared a close alliance. Women continued to write history, of course. At a time when their male counterparts in the university concentrated on national history, women concentrated on regional and local history, according to Boutilier and Prentice. However, male professionals have written regional history from the 1920s. The names A.S. Morton, W.N. Sage, Fred Landon, D.C. Harvey, Alfred Bailey, and George- Stanley come to mind. Meanwhile, Hilda Neatby had little enthusiasm for regional history and Margaret Banks was (and remains) a keen writer of constitutional history. The essays themselves are arranged in more or less chronological order. Over the course, three broad themes emerge. First is the close relationship between history and contemporary politics. Thus the efforts of Sarah Anne Curzon (the subject of Boutilier's article) to link the contributions of the War of 1812heroine Laura Secord to first-wave feminism predict the efforts of women historians in the 1970s (the subject of Deborah Gorham's article/memoir) to link the history of women to second-wave feminism. Second is the persistent and unequal sexual division of labour in the home. The overwhehn:ing responsibility of child care, the duty to entertain the Ottawa establishment, and the submission of her interests to her husband's career form a constant backdrop in Terry Crowley's essay on Isabel Skelton, a pioneer in the field of cultural history. It is not surprising to learn in Prentice's essay on women as undergraduates, graduate students and professors to 1950 that the three women who received permanent appointments were unmarried. Barry Moody addresses the gendered public/private dichotomy as well in his article on the indefatigable Maritime historian Esther Clark Wright. Although...