Improving Upper Canada : Agricultural Societies and State Formation, 1791–1852 / Ross Fair.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fair, Ross, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (416 p.) : 26 b&w illustrations

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2024]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Agricultural societies founded in the colony of Upper Canada were the institutional embodiment of the ideology of improvement, modelled on contemporary societies in Britain and the United States. In Improving Upper Canada, Ross Fair explores how the agricultural improvers who established and led these organizations were important agents of state formation. The book investigates the initial failed attempts to create a single agricultural society for Upper Canada. It examines the 1830 legislation that publicly funded the creation of agricultural societies across the colony to be semi-public agents of agricultural improvement, and analyses societies established in the Niagara, Home, and Midland Districts to understand how each attempted to introduce specific improvements to local farming practices. The book reveals how Upper Canada’s agricultural improvers formed a provincial association in the 1840s to ensure that the colonial government assumed a greater leadership role in agricultural improvement, resulting in the Bureau of Agriculture, forerunner of federal and provincial departments of agriculture in the post-Confederation era. In analysing an early example of state formation, Improving Upper Canada provides a comprehensive history of the foundations of Ontario’s agricultural societies today, which continue to promote agricultural improvement across the province.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations and Maps

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Transatlantic Improvers and the Niagara Agricultural Society, 1791–1807

2 Imperial Defence, Agricultural Improvement, and the Upper Canada Agricultural and Commercial Society, 1801–1815

3 Robert Gourlay, the Upper Canada Agricultural Society, and Independents, 1815–1830

4 Agricultural Societies as State Formation, 1821–1851

5 The Farming Compact: York, 1830

6 The Home, Midland, and Niagara District Agricultural Societies, 1830–1850

7 District Agricultural Societies and Their Improvements, 1830–1850

8 The Agricultural Association of Upper Canada, 1846–1852

9 A Board and a Bureau of Agriculture, 1850–1852

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)

ISBN:

1-4875-5354-4