Proprietary Settler Colonialism and the Making of North America

Whiteside’s fascinating and timely analysis encourages important reflections on how the distinctive origins of North American capitalism inform its present. Imperialist land grabs, rapacious capitalist firms, blurred lines between public and private. Plus ça change?

-- Eric Helleiner, Professor and University Research Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo

In this exciting book, Heather Whiteside brings the English North American joint-stock royal charter companies into the colonial present, tracing their pivotal role in the reimagining of land, property and labour. No longer relics, the companies are resituated as integral to the colonial project.

-- Nicholas Blomley, Professor of Geography, Simon Fraser University

A vital, timely, complex, and insightful book which deftly weaves the threads property and jurisdiction, sovereignty and colonialism, corporate capital and accumulation to craft a foundational story of political economy that shapes so much of our current experience on both sides of the Canada/US border. A book of remarkable geographic scope and time depth, tracing how property is made and sovereignty exercised from diverse examples from historic Vancouver Island to modern-day metro Vancouver, New England to the Red River Colonies, and other places between. We come to understand how through the language of property (and its many distinct forms) that these Indigenous places have been transformed into something divisible and alienable, how land has become a speculative asset which launched capitalist states and markets, exploiting workers, and dispossessing Indigenous peoples. Whiteside's work is not just about history but helps us grasp the complex hybridity of the contemporary property regime that has grown across the continent, rooted in feudal land relations and now part of the tool kit of Indigenous peoples to reclaim, decolonize, and prosper in the future.

-- Brian Thom, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Vict