The making of British Columbia history: Historical writing and institutions, 1784-1958

Just over two centuries ago, the area now encompassing British Columbia was unknown to the European world. But as Europeans colonized the region, they realized that they needed a written history to legitimate their dispossession of the native inhabitants and to provide their new society with an identity. This study examines the efforts of historians to provide B.C. with such a history. It does so by examining these historians' written work, along with their intellectual biographies and institutions they formed.;It begins with the exploration literature of the late- eighteenth century, and moves into the promotional literature of the nineteenth century. As B.C. became more settled in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, 'amateur' historians produced a wealth of writing extolling the efforts of European 'pioneers'; the former also perpetuated a celebratory and collector approach to the past in the historical institutions they founded. With the establishment of the University of B.C., the writing of provincial history was 'professionalized'. It was altered by the themes and methodologies of 'professional' historians, who in turn trained a first generation of academic provincial historians.;The study's underlying argument is that B.C.'s historians wrote an essentially imperial history--'imperial' in three interconnected ways: first, they viewed B.C. and its history as part of the British Empire; second, they incorporated the region within an expanding European civilization; and finally, they were concerned with bringing the province within the empire of written history itself.;The study also argues that a distinct historiographical tradition emerged over the course of nearly two centuries of provincial writing. The most enduring themes were linked to B.C.'s historical and geographic position: its isolation from Europe and late entry into European history; the balancing of American, British and Canadian influences which this isolation complicated; and the regionalism within B.C. resulting from its topography. An underlying materialism, and efforts to delineate the social boundaries of B C. society, also were enduring motifs. Throughout, the province differed from the rest of Canada in its historiographical evolution--most notably in its relative neglect of the traditional theme of nation building.