Crowdsourcing Empire: Compliance, Autonomy and Disobedience in the Canada Company’s Planned Towns during the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The Canada Company was a joint-stock company incorporated in the city of London in 1826. This company purchased over two million acres from the Crown in the colony of Upper Canada, going on to develop and sell those lands for profit. One such way in which the Canada Company chose to improve the value of its lands was by establishing planned towns, which were urban spaces that largely preceded the settlement of the surrounding forests. However, each of the Company’s three planned towns experienced unique development and diverse fates. The chapters in this thesis are each dedicated to a case study of one of these towns. Chapter 1 deals with Guelph, the first town and an exploratory project for the Canada Company to try out different development strategies. Chapter 2 addresses Goderich, the second town and aspiring port city on Lake Huron, which seemed to be incapable of sustained growth despite continued effort and expenditure by the Company. Chapter 3 focuses on Stratford, the town which evolved much later and more spontaneously than the first two, such that the Canada Company itself did not anticipate the town’s growth. Using a combination of internal Canada Company records, including finance reports, advertising material, maps and correspondence, along with published settler accounts, travel accounts and government documents, this thesis investigates the ways in which Company policy was reconciled to settler demand. In doing so, Crowdsourcing Empire argues that the autonomy of these planed towns and the settlers within them drove the development of Canada Company lands. In this way, this thesis intervenes in the existing literature by emphasizing the ways in which colonialism was driven by layers of autonomous institution and authorities just as much as official policy.