Sarah Carter’s "Imperial Plots: Women, Land, and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies" examines the goals, aspirations, and challenges met by women who sought land of their own.
Supporters of British women homesteaders argued they would contribute to the “spade-work” of the Empire through their imperial plots, replacing foreign settlers and relieving Britain of its "surplus" women. Yet far into the twentieth century there was persistent opposition to the idea that women could or should farm: British women were to be exemplars of an idealized white femininity, not toiling in the fields. In Canada, heated debates about women farmers touched on issues of ethnicity, race,
gender, class, and nation.
Despite legal and cultural obstacles and discrimination, British women did acquire land as homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, and speculators on the Canadian prairies. They participated in the project of dispossessing Indigenous people. Their complicity was, however, ambiguous and restricted because they were excluded from the power and privileges of their male counterparts.
Imperial Plots depicts the female farmers and ranchers of the prairies, from the Indigenous women agriculturalists of the Plains to the array of women who resolved to work on the land in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 338.108209712
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cnp--
- ISBN
- 9780887555329 9780887558184
- LCCN
- HD6077.2.C32
- LCCN Item number
- P73 2016b
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xxii, 455 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)kck00237231 (OCoLC)953332141 (CaOOCEL)451961
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Contents 10
- List of Illustrations 12
- List of Tables 15
- Acknowledgements 16
- List of Abbreviations 20
- Note on Terminology 21
- Introduction 26
- Chapter 1. Narrowing Opportunities for Women: From the Indigenous Farmers of the Great Plains to the Exclusions of the Homestead Regime 52
- Chapter 2. "Land Owners and Enterprising Settlers in the Colonies": British Women Farmers for Canada 108
- Chapter 3. Widows and Other Immigrant Women Homesteaders: Struggles and Strategies 170
- Chapter 4. Women Who Bought Land: The "Bachelor Girl" Settler, "Jack" May, and Other Celebrity Farmers and Ranchers 230
- Chapter 5. Answering the Call of Empire: Georgina Binnie-Clark, Farmer, Author, Lecturer 268
- Chapter 6. "Daughters of British Blood" or "Hordes of Men of Alien Race"?: The Homesteads-For-British-Women Campaign 310
- Chapter 7. The Persistence of a "Curiously Strong Prejudice": From the First World War to the Great Depression 350
- Conclusion 398
- Notes 406
- Bibliography 446
- Index 466
