ROSS FAIR PUBLISHES BOOK ON AGRICULTURE AND GOVERNMENT IN UPPER CANADA
ROSS FAIR PUBLISHES BOOK ON AGRICULTURE AND GOVERNMENT IN UPPER CANADA
The University of Toronto Press has just released Dr. Ross Fair’s new book, Improving Upper Canada: Agricultural Societies and State Formation, 1791-1852. It explores the colony’s agricultural societies as the institutional embodiment of the ideology of improvement and argues that the agricultural improvers who established and led these organizations were important agents of state formation. Through various means, they ensured the colonial government added leadership of agricultural improvement to its core responsibilities. Upper Canadian improvers secured legislation in 1830 to fund the establishment and activities of local agricultural societies and, later, the 1852 creation of a Bureau of Agriculture and the appointment of a cabinet minister to lead it. (The bureau was a forerunner of departments of agriculture formed at the provincial and national levels following Confederation in 1867.)
Improving Upper Canada provides a comprehensive history of the foundations of today’s Ontario agricultural societies, which continue to promote improvements in agricultural practices across the province. Dr. Fair’s book also reveals the supporting role that colonial newspaper editors and the colony’s nascent agricultural press played in promoting agricultural improvement. As well, his study examines the improvers’ role in establishing a Chair of Agriculture at the University of Toronto and the creation of an experimental farm on its campus.
George Emery, Professor Emeritus of History at Western University, notes that, “With an impressive amount of research and an extensive bibliography, Ross Fair offers a pioneering and useful work on Upper Canadian agricultural associations.” University of Alberta historian David Mills observes that, “There hasn’t been much new scholarship on the political history of Upper Canada for well over a generation. Improving Upper Canada makes a useful contribution to the literature and is quite original in its argument about the role of agricultural societies in the development of the state.”
For further information, visit: https://utorontopress.com/9781487553531/improving-upper-canada/ (external link)