Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on Saltspring Island, 1859-1891An intriguing mix of African-American, First Nation, Hawaiian, and European, the early residents of Saltspring Island were neither successful farmers nor full-time waged workers, neither squatters nor bona-fide landowners. Contesting Rural Space explores how these early settlers created and sustained a distinctive society, culture, and economy. In the late nineteenth century, residents claiming land on Saltspring Island walked a careful line between following mandatory homestead policies and manipulating these policies for their own purposes. The residents favoured security over risk and modest sufficiency over accumulation of wealth. Government land policies, however, were based on an idea of rural settlement as commercially successful family farms run by sober and respectable men. Settlers on Saltspring Island, deterred by the poor quality of farmland but encouraged by the variety of part-time, off-farm remunerative occupations, the temperate climate, First Nations cultural and economic practices, and the natural abundance of the Gulf Island environment, made their own choices about the appropriate uses of rural lands. R.W. Sandwell shows how the emerging culture differed from both urban society and ideals of rural society. |
Contents
Reading the Rural with a Microhistorical Eye | 3 |
1 Land Policies and the Agricultural Vision in British Columbia | 15 |
2 Settling Up the Wild Lands | 40 |
How Preemptors Met PolicyMakers Goals | 61 |
4 Commercial Farmers? | 85 |
Preemption Behaviour as Rural Culture | 104 |
6 Political Economy and Household Structure on Saltspring Island | 122 |
Other editions - View all
Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on ... Ruth Wells Sandwell No preview available - 2005 |
Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and Practices of Resettlement on ... R.W. Sandwell No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
abandoned Aboriginal acres activities African-American agricultural areas argued arrived Assessment Roll average Begg British Colonist British Columbia Department Census of Canada cent certificate chapter claim cleared Colonial Correspondence Cowichan culture Department of Land detailed discourse District early economic evidence example farm farmers Figure Gulf Islands historians household heads important improved indicates John labour land landowners late later liberal listed living March married ment murder Native nineteenth century Nominal North noted occupation Office particularly period Point political population practice pre-emption pre-emption system pre-emptors production province purchased rates records Register relations Report residents rural Saltspring Island Schedule settlement settlers social society sources Spring SSIA Stark stayed success suggests Surveyor Table taken throughout tion took Vancouver Island Victoria waged wife women