Canada was a small country in 1867, but within twenty years its claims to sovereignty spanned the continent. With Confederation came the vaunting ambition to create an empire from sea to sea. How did Canada lay claim to so much land so quickly?

Land and the Liberal Project examines the tactics deployed by Canadian officialdom from the first articulation of expansionism in 1857 to the consolidation of authority following the 1885 North-West Resistance. Éléna Choquette contends that although the dominion purported to absorb Indigenous lands through constitutionalism, administration, and law, it often resorted to force in the face of Indigenous resistance. She investigates the liberal concept that underpinned land appropriation and legitimized violence: Indigenous territory and people were to be “improved,” the former by agrarian capitalism, the latter by enforced schooling.

By rethinking this tainted approach to nation making, Choquette’s clear-eyed exposé of the Canadian expansionist project offers new ways to understand colonization.