Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the liberal political subject and the settler state

Democratic Struggle or National Uprising? The Canadian Rebellions in British Political Thought, 1835–1840

“…Wakefield, had previously published a book comparing England and America which shared a number of common points with Tocqueville's analysis. 64 As Wakefield also happened to be working for Lord Durham, whose 1839 Report paraphrases Tocqueville in places 65 , it is clear that Tocqueville's views largely informed middle-class Radical uses of 'democracy' in the Canadian debate, by allowing them to expand the meaning of the word and attach new connotations to it. For the first time in the nineteenth-century 'democracy' was regularly used in a positive manner in Westminster, as Radicals deployed the term to characterize Canadian society and its potential political institutions 66 .…”

Rule of the Routes: Infrastructure, Colonization, and ‘the Social Science’ in the Canadas from Conquest to Confederation

“…It is also worth noting that Howick was Durham's brother-in-law and they were on generally cordial terms at the time. 56 For a discussion of the defects of these schemes and how they were viewed by proponents of systematic colonization, see Harrington, J. 2015.…”