'The Dragon of Imperialism': Martin Butler, Butler's Journal, the Canadian Democrat, and Anti-Imperialism, 1899-1902
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines the anti-imperialist writings of New Brunswick radical Martin Butler (1857-1915), during an era when ideas on imperialism constituted a powerful force in Canadian political and social life. The analysis is focused on editorials written during the South African War and published in Butler's two newspapers: Butler's Journal, which ran from 1890 until Butler's death in 1915, and the Canadian Democrat, which ran from 1899 to 1901 and was originally planned as the English edition of L'Independence canadienne (1894-6), a newspaper from Trois Rivi�res, QC, edited by veteran editor Georges-Isidore Barthe. Butler, who grew up in rural New Brunswick and Maine and cultivated ties with Canadian nationalists, social reformers, and radicals of various stripes from all over North America, perceived imperialism within the context of social reform and the possibilities of the nation-state. Deeply committed to helping his fellow human beings, Martin Butler initially advocated independence for Canada because he linked attainment of this goal to the achievement of related social, political, and legal reforms for Canadians. As he became more aware of imperialism's stranglehold on the nation-state, however, and the entanglement of imperialism with capitalism, he shifted his focus away from Canadian independence and more toward expressions of anti-imperialism. Butler'sJournal, consequently, was a source of early and critical views on imperialism. The Democrat, launched during the South African War, became the vehicle for Butler's sharpest anti-imperialist critiques when imperialism became too controversial a topic to be placed in the more established - and more valuable - Butler's Journal. Butler's political and social philosophy was shaped, early on, by a mainly rural (and non-Fredericton) audience. Ultimately, this audience supported the Journal even when they did not completely agree with the anti-imperialist politics of its editor, allowing the Journal, though not the Democrat, to survive beyond the years of the South African War. Cet ouvrage �tudie les �crits contre l'imp�rialisme pr�sent�s par l'extr�miste Martin Butler du Nouveau-Brunswick (1857 � 1915), � l'�poque o� les id�es sur l'imp�rialisme repr�sentaient une force puissante dans la vie sociale et politique au Canada. L'analyse se concentre sur les articles de r�daction r�dig�s par Butler au cours de la Guerre des Bo�rs et publi�s dans les deux journaux de ce dernier : Butler's Journal, publi� de 1890 jusqu'� son d�c�s en 1915, et le Canadian Democrat, publi� de 1899 � 1901. (Ce dernier journal �tait, � l'origine, pr�vu comme l'�dition anglaise de l'Ind�pendance canadienne [1894 � 1896], � Trois-Rivi�res, un journal qu�b�cois r�dig� par le r�dacteur chevronn� Georges-Isidore Barthe.) Monsieur Butler, qui a grandi dans les r�gions rurales du Nouveau-Brunswick et du Maine, a tiss� des liens avec des nationalistes canadiens, des r�formateurs de soci�t� et des extr�mistes de diff�rentes nationalit�s provenant de toutes les r�gions de l'Am�rique du Nord. Il percevait l'imp�rialisme dans le contexte d'une r�forme sociale et envisageait les possibilit�s de cr�er une nation-�tat. Muni d'un d�sir d'aider ses compatriotes, Martin Butler, au d�but, plaidoyait la cause de l'ind�pendance pour le Canada car il associait l'atteinte de cet objectif � la r�ussite des r�formes sociales, politiques et juridiques qui s'y rattachaient pour le peuple canadien. Toutefois, au fur et � mesure qu'il devenait conscient de l'�tranglement de l'imp�rialisme au sein de la nation-�tat et de l'emm�lement de l'imp�rialisme au capitalisme, il se concentra, dans une plus grande mesure vers des expressions d'anti-imp�rialisme, plut�t que vers l'ind�pendance canadienne. Butler's Journal, par cons�quent, fut une source des opinions premi�res et critiques sur la question d'imp�rialisme. Le Democrat, lanc� au cours de la Guerre des Bo�rs, fut le moyen d'expression pour Butler d'exprimer vigoureusement ses sentiments d'anti-imp�rialisme au moment o� le sujet d'imp�rialisme devenait une question beaucoup trop discut�e pour �tre ins�r�e dans le Butler's Journal, journal d�j� bien �tabli, et en tant que tel, d'une plus grande valeur. La philosophie politique et sociale de Butler a �t� form�e, au d�but, par un auditoire provenant principalement des r�gions rurales (et non de Fredericton). En fin de compte, les membres de cet auditoire �taient en faveur du Journal, m�me s'ils n'�taient pas enti�rement d'accord avec les politiques d'anti-imp�rialisme pr�sent�es par son r�dacteur. Ceci a permis au Journal, et non au Democrat, de survivre au-del� des ann�es de la Guerre des Bo�rs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".