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  • Few have examined the class politics of pre-Rebellion Toronto in any detail; a vocabulary of class born in an industrial setting appears poorly fitted to an agrarian colony where production took place in small workshops of independent journeymen and apprentices under the supervision of master craftsmen. This article, in contrast, examines the transformations in class relations of the period in a framework derived from Cain & Hopkins theory of “Gentlemanly Capitalism.” It examines the creation of the three “fictitious commodities” (money, land, and labour) that Polanyi places at the heart of the “Great Transformation” in the context of the “Gentlemanly Order” being constructed by Upper Canada’s elite. This Gentlemanly Order was corporate in nature. The article concludes with an analysis of class conflict that resulted in the era, in particular in the building trades, where workers helped form a province-wide “Mechanics Association.”

  • The Hunters' Lodge was a secretive, grassroots American social movement that arose during the Patriot War in support of the Canadian Rebellions of 1837–38. However, despite the large number of participants, we know little about those who took part. This article decentres the military narratives that dominate the existing historiography by providing a collective cultural biography (or prosopography) of the Lodge's leadership elected in September 1838 at a Patriot Congress in Cleveland. An examination of the life trajectories of these men indicates their shared prewar participation in three related social movements: freethought, free banking, and Freemasonry. A closer cultural examination of the development and intersection of these movements reveals common ties within the Hunters' Lodge to Owenite utopian socialism as it moved from its communitarian phase to its involvement with an emerging American labour movement. These ties would place the Patriot War participants at the far left of the Democratic Party and in opposition to the concentration of land, wealth, and political power in the developing evangelical-antimasonic-Whig alliance in the aftermath of the financial panic of 1837.

Last update from database: 9/22/24, 4:10 AM (UTC)

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