This thesis is concerned with the relationship between creditor/debtor law and
broader political, economic, and social relations in Upper Canada before 1812. The research
reviews the history of credit relations in early Upper Canada through a critical reassessment
of both the historiographic debates and available primary legal and archival sources. Recent
historical writing, in seeking out the community based nature of creditor/debtor relations has
often tended to overlook the extent to which social, political, and economic conflicts were
also played out in the arena of credit and debt. In early Upper Canada, matters relating to
credit and debt were not infrequently the focus of conflicts about constitutionalism and the
rights of colonial subjects.
The thesis argues for a re-framing of the study of creditor/debtor relations to take
account of the overall context of economic inequality. Feminist historical and theoretical
work is drawn upon to expand conventional understandings of the economic, and to argue
that local or communal based relations are not always consensual. The thesis draws a
connection between social inequality, political repression, constitutional politics and the
private law of property, credit, and debt. It asserts that early Upper Canadian creditor/
debtor relations were expressive of the struggle over the kinds of institutions that would
represent the new polity, and of a sensibility among at least some portion of the population
that the rule of law should apply to a wider range of people than those who made up the
elite. It is found that the role of certain financial instruments and the contents of certain
court records has been misunderstood. These findings change our understanding of the 1794
court reforms in Upper Canada, which established an English-style Court of King's Bench.
It is also found that debtor/creditor law, in particular the seizure of land for debt in Upper
Canada (a remedy that was not available in England) impacted upon the constitutional
politics of the time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9305 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Pearlston, Karen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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