This event is open to the BSIA community, including all UW and Laurier faculty and students.
Please join the Global Political Economy Research Cluster for a lunchtime conversation about Heather Whiteside ‘s new book Proprietary Settler Colonialism and the Making of North America. Dr. Whiteside will provide an overview of the book, followed by reflections on the book by Dr. Susan Brophy (St. Jerome’s University) and Dr. Eric Helleiner (University of Waterloo). A light lunch will be provided to attendees.
The mythic story of English America’s origins has long focused on the Mayflower pilgrims and their 1620 democratic compact. Less well known are the activities of the leading joint-stock royal charter companies that established colonial settlements like those of the Virginia and Hudson’s Bay Companies. Operating in ways often independent of the Crown, these for-profit companies established communities, trade routes and legal regimes in what Whiteside terms “proprietary settler colonialism,” all of which were pivotal in shaping the political-economic transformation of British North American colonies and their capitalist evolution. The fortunes of these company colonies were built on unfree labour, the appropriation of land and displacement of Indigenous peoples. The book explores the consequences of colonizing companies’ activities by connecting their historical significance to contemporary struggles for reconciliation, decolonization and reclamation.
About the Speakers
Dr. Heather Whiteside is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo. Before this latest book, her previous single-authored book, Capitalist Political Economy: Thinkers and Theories (Routledge, 2020), won the 2022 Rik Davidson/Studies in Political Economy Book Prize.
Dr. Susan Brophy is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome’s University. Her latest book, A Legacy of Exploitation: Early Capitalism in the Red River Colony, 1763-1821 (UBC Press, 2022), won the 2023 Clio Prize, The Prairies, Canadian Historical Association.
Dr. Eric Helleiner is Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo. His latest book, The Contested World Economy: The Deep and Global Roots of International Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2023), won the 2023 IPE Best Book Award of the International Studies Association.
