Rule of the Routes: Infrastructure, Colonization, and ‘the Social Science’ in the Canadas from Conquest to Confederation

Rule of the Routes offers a rich and detailed account of colonial social and political development from 1759 to 1875 by focussing on a state-led process of what is throughout referred to as 'infrastructural colonization'.Offering a novel account of state formation and infrastructure development by shifting from traditional infrastructural systems, namely highways, canals and railways, and toward mundane modes of transport, specifically rural routes, this thesis shows how agricultural settlement, communal development, rural infrastructures and forms of political administration became inextricably intertwined by the mid-nineteenth century.Longstanding historical divisions between state-military roads and common-merchant routes began to fade at the turn of the nineteenth century.While states have always sought to ensure military control over their roads, attempts to establish an 'art of government' based on the prudent administration of the common routes of the people are comparatively more recent.Through an examination of a specific road-building initiative, the colonization roads project, Rule of the Routes offers an account of Canadian social and political development by outlining the State's use of common routes as a mechanism of social and political subjectification.This is the first thesis of its kind examining rural infrastructure development for the region known as 'the Canadas' during the late-18 th and 19 th centuries.Drawing on an exhaustive amount of archival material, Rule of the Routes uses the process of infrastructural colonization to trace the decline of mercantile conceptions of public order, infrastructure, and settlement strategy, and its notion of a static political equilibrium of 'kings, lords, and commons'.Beginning in the 19 th century, conceptions of political sovereignty stressing patronage, the people's ignorance, and static class structures, slowly gave way to recognizable liberal governmentalities which targeted populations, not 'the people', and privileged notions of social order and political subjection based on practices of ethical subjectification, not traditional authority or sovereign-juridical force.Rule of the Routes shows how such concerns can be seen in the very form of rural roads themselves, from their materials, width, orientation, layout of lots, maps depicting them, and their organizational administration.The form of the liberalbureaucratic state expanded as its interest in the regularities of population tightened.New ministries developed as techniques for representing the social, moral, and economic progress of colonization were institutionalized.Rule of the Routes documents conditions on the ground to offer a reflexive historical sociology revealing how colonial socio-political relations between the French and English, as well as imperial attempts to anglicize canadiens, motivated the early development of 'the social science' in the Canadas.The thesis concludes by demonstrating how attempts by state actors and amateurs alike to use the social science to demonstrate the progress of infrastructural colonization led to the creation of new territorial abstractions which led to changes in the form of infrastructural colonization in the 1870s and the end of the colonization roads.vii You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here. -Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road', 1856Oh, give me one, one more kiss mama Just before I go, 'Cause when I leave this time you know I, I won't be back no more.I got the key to the highway, Billed out and bound to go.I'm gonna leave here running; Walkin' is much too slow.-Big Bill Broonzy, 'Key to the Highway', 1941 The Mire of the Macadam: Roads and the Politics of Hearts and MindsThis thesis presents a historical sociology of state formation in the British North American Colonies called 'the Canadas' during the Period of Union (1840-1867). 1 I use the general process and practice of what I call 'infrastructural colonization' as a means to trace broad shifts in the form and function of colonial government; from a general commitment to sustaining a socio-political order based on a static equilibrium between 'king, lords, and commons' to one based on the calculated subjectification of populations, reared to be responsible for their own self-government.Infrastructure is treated throughout not merely as a technical system for the movement or people or goods, nor as a politically or ethically neutral technology, but as a component of a general project of social engineering and political training.In the years preceding the Period of Union, attempts to wed infrastructure, colonization, and mixed monarchial forms of government were prominent.After the union, infrastructure and colonization became key features of an emerging liberal discourse that wed ideas of legitimate political sovereignty to knowledge of ruled populations configured in politically congenial territorial units.Investigations of these populations offered fertile ground for the development of techniques of knowledge encapsulation typical of 'the social science'.From the Conquest of 1759 to the end of the eighteenth century, provincial governors were loath to invest public funds in the construction and maintenance of rural routes.While the 'royal' or 'military' roads were of state interest, the same could hardly be said of the paths of the peasantry.By the turn of the 19 th century, supporters of an emerging liberal mode of government began to link infrastructural underdevelopment with political backwardness.Addressing the former would solve the latter.Improved roads could foster solidarities, configure populations in territory, increase commerce, and thereby create governable subjects with a taste for improvement and a nascent ethic of accumulation.Yet such efforts could be and were resisted.Turbulent rallies took place in response to new road legislation altering the traditional responsibilities of the peasantry.At times, path-masters were accosted, tied up, marched to the parish square, and forced to resign their office.By effacing the distinction between state roads and common routes, 'rule of the routes' marked a new order of things; a new relation between 1 The word 'Canada' (originally 'Kanata') is an appropriation from the Iroquois dating from the 16 th century.In this thesis I use the term the Canadas to refer to the politico-administrative entity created by the British in 1791.After the British military conquest of 1759 and the ceding of New France by the French in 1763, the conquered territory was called 'Quebec' and encompassed the entirety of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes region.In 1791, after several attempts to continue French military style rule in modified form (Treaty of Paris, 1763; Quebec Act 1774), the Constitution Act of 1791 was passed by the Imperial Parliament creating two separate provinces called Upper and Lower Canada.Geographically, the two provinces were separated by the Ottawa River from roughly the point of its confluence with the St. Lawrence and continuing north-west into what was then called 'Rupert's Land'.Each province was to have the same political structure; an appointed Governor was to be advised by appointed Executive and Legislative Councils while the will of the people was to be represented by an elected representative Assembly.This arrangement continued from 1791 until the Rebellions of 1837-38 at which time the government was suspended, a dictatorial Special Council was created, and plans for the union of the two provinces were developed.The new union, the Province of Canada, was created in 1840 divided into two sections, Canada West and Canada East.Despite the huge population disparity in favour of the East over the West, each were to have an equal number of representatives (forty-one) in an elected Assembly.Despite their distinct political structures, Canada West and Canada East continued to be referred to colloquially as Upper and Lower Canada respectively.References to Upper or Lower Canada should not be understood as referring to the time before 1841 unless otherwise indicated.2 The activities of the British American Land Company was a key topic of discussion for Lord Durham's Crown Lands commission as the surviving correspondence shows.See LAC, MG24 A27, v. 22. See also Browde, A. 2002."Settling the Canadian Colonies: A Comparison of Two Nineteenth Century Land Companies."The Business History Review 76 (2): 299-335.3 Anon.1819.Edinburgh Review, v. xxxii, 477-87.10 Glazebrook, G. 1934."Roads in New France and the Policy of Expansion."Report of the Annual Meeting/Rapports annuels de la Société historique du Canada, 13 (1): 51-52.11 Caron, I. 1933."Historique de la voirie dans la province de Quebec."Le Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, 39 (5): 278-300.12 See Guldi for an account of British developments dating back to the mid-18 th century and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.Guldi, J. 2012.Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State.

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