British Columbia is regularly described in superlatives both positive and negative - most spectacular scenery, strangest politics, greatest environmental sensitivity, richest Aboriginal cultures, most aggressive resource exploitation, closest ties to Asia. Jean Barman's The West beyond the West presents the history of the province in all its diversity and apparent contradictions. This critically acclaimed work is the premiere book on British Columbian history, with a narrative beg...

Esteemed historian Jean Barman brings new insights on the seemingly disparate events that converged to lay the foundation of the present-day province.By examining newly accessible private correspondence exchanged with the Colonial Office in London, Barman pieces together the chain of events that caused the distant colony of British Columbia to join the Canadian Confederation as opposed to the very real possibility of becoming one or more American states.Fol...

An Abenaki born in St Francis, Quebec, Noel Annance (1792-1869), by virtue of two of his great-grandparents having been early white captives, attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Determined to apply his privileged education, he was caught between two ways of being, neither of which accepted him among their numbers.Despite outstanding service as an officer in the War of 1812, Annance was too Indigenous to be allowed to succeed in the far west fur trade, and too schooled in o...

“The ways in which we can redress the past are many and varied,” writes Jean Barman, “and it is up to each of us to act as best we can.” The seventeen essays collected here, originally published between 1996 and 2013, make a valuable contribution toward this laudable goal. With a wide range of source material, from archival and documentary sources to oral histories, Barman pieces together stories of individuals and groups disadvantaged in white settler society because of their gender, race...

Two centuries ago, many hundreds of Iroquois - principally from what is now Kahnawà:ke - left home without leaving behind their ways of life. Recruited to man the large canoes that transported trade goods and animal pelts from and to Montreal, some Iroquois soon returned, while others were enticed ever further west by the rapidly expanding fur trade.Recounting stories of Indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, Iroquois in the West tracks four clusters of travel...

Two centuries ago, many hundreds of Iroquois - principally from what is now Kahnawà:ke - left home without leaving behind their ways of life. Recruited to man the large canoes that transported trade goods and animal pelts from and to Montreal, some Iroquois soon returned, while others were enticed ever further west by the rapidly expanding fur trade.Recounting stories of Indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, Iroquois in the West tracks four clusters of travel...

Jean Barman was the recipient of the 2014 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.In French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of French Canadians attracted by the fur economy, the indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. Joined in this distant setting by Quebec paternal origins, the French langua...