Description
Book SynopsisCivilization explores how Scottish Enlightenment theories played out in Canadian imaginaries and institutions: the state and society; the liberal and the conservative. E.A. Heaman’s case study identifies crucial spaces and moments of conceptual reversal to consider what was unique and what was broadly representative in Canadian civilization.
Trade Review"Civilization bridges philosophy and Canadian history by blending insights from a major school of moral philosophy with certain founding practices, biases, and debates in nineteenth-century Canada. The result is extremely original and thought-provoking. The writing is rich: a pleasure to read and written in an individual style with a humanist’s regard for language and breadth of disciplines. I am convinced this book will have a lasting impact on Canadian scholarship about national values past and future." John Weaver, McMaster University
"E.A. Heaman's lengthy and important new book engages with imperialism, colonization, residential schools, oppression, conquest, and much else in a Canadian context, but its overarching concept is that of civilization. More balanced in its assessment of imperial ambition and colonial folly ... Heaman's tome resists simple binaries of heroes and villains. …As Civilization demonstrates so well, a lot depends on who does the civilizing, to whom, and how.” Literary Review of Canada
