The Past Speaks

I’d like to make a quick observation on the state of Canadian-American relations. On Thursday, the Canadian and Ontario governments announced that they would be taking equity stakes in the reorganized Chrysler. This means that they will be joint owners of the company along with the United States government and the UAW. On the same day, however, the U.S. State Department added Canada to its blacklist of countries that provide insufficient respect for intellectual property. Canada is the only developed country on this list.

It is striking that the same day there can be one announcement related to transborder cooperation on one issue (rescuing Chrysler, a bankrupt twentieth-century smokestack company) and conflict on another, arguably more important question, (the intellectual property rights on which the IT and entertainment industries are based).

This is the blog of Andrew Smith, a professor of history at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. To find out more about me, click here.

This is a para-academic blog that relates to my teaching and research. My aim is to create a blog that is similar in style to Dan Drezner’s blog at Foreign Policy. Drezner’s blog contains his musings on the discipline of political science, IR theory, and current events as well as updates on his scholarly activities (e.g., conference presentations). He also contains the odd post about baseball, just to keep the blog from getting too serious. Drezner makes many short posts rather than a few long ones, which encourages people to return to his blog on a regular basis. His blog is one of the most popular academic blogs out there and I’ve shamelessly decided to borrow his formula for success.

What are my research and teaching interests? I teach Canadian history. My research interests centre on political, business, and economic history in the nineteenth century. Much of my research is focused on the 1860s, the decade I regard as the most interesting period in the history of North America and the North Atlantic Triangle. My first book, which was published in 2008, was on the financial aspects of Canadian Confederation. My second book, which is currently be considered by an academic press, provides a revisionist interpretation of Confederation.  My goal for this summer is to finish my third book, which examines the lives of seven individuals whose lives illuminate Canada’s relationship to the British Empire.

What sort of posts will appear on this blog? The posts will fall into four main categories.

First, I shall provide updates on my activities (e.g., conference presentations).

Second, I will share my opinions on scholarly books and articles I am reading.

Third, I will supply hit-and-run observations current events from a Canadian historian’s perspective. If there is a historical aspect of or parallel with a story in the news, I will point it out.

Fourth, I’m going to share my opinions of movies I have seen. My main hobbies outside of work are cinema and cooking.

This is the first post of Andrew Smith to his new blog.

I’m heading to the gym right now. I will be listening a podcast of an interview  with Joseph Ellis, who will be talking about his new book on the generation of American politicians who led the Revolution