Campus
- Mississauga (UTM)
Fields of Study
- Canada
- Economy, Technology and Society
- Empires, Colonialisms and Indigeneity
- State, Politics, and Law
Areas of Interest
19th and 20th-century Canada; history of colonialism, the state, and capitalism; Indigenous histories; Quebec
Biography
Brian Gettler’s research focuses on the political, economic, and social history of colonialism in Quebec and Canada. He has published articles in several edited collections and academic journals, including the Canadian Historical Review, Histoire sociale / Social History, and the Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française. Gettler’s book, Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950, analyzes the distinct experiences of three First Nations alongside the monetary dimensions of British and Canadian Indian policy and corporate policy in the fur trade. Rather than focusing on the perhaps obvious ways in which wealth shaped politics, it concentrates on money as both a symbol around which discourses of appropriate behaviour were articulated and as a concrete tool in the governance of peoples and lands. His current research explores public finance and Crown-First Nations fiscal relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Brian is a member of the Montreal History Group and Associate Editor of the Canadian Historical Review.
Education
Publications
- “Histoire autochtone, histoire québécoise: défis et ambiguïtés” (Montréal: Boréal : 2023)
- “Take and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Democratic Colonialism in Canada” ( : 2021)
- Colonialism's Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press : 2020)
- Historical Research at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (University of Toronto Press : 2017)
- “Economic Activity and Class Formation in Wendake, 1800-1950” (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press : 2016)
- “Innu Participation in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean Fur Trade, 1888-1950” (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press : 2016)
- Les Premières Nations et l’histoire du Québec: au-delà du négationnisme et du récit ‘nationaliste-conservateur’ ( : 2016)
- Money and the Changing Nature of Colonial Space in Northern Quebec: Fur Trade Monopolies, the State, and Aboriginal Peoples during the Nineteenth Century ( : 2013)
- En espèce ou en nature? Les présents, l’imprévoyance et l’évolution idéologique de la politique indienne pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle ( : 2012)
- La consommation sous réserve : les agents indiens, la politique locale et les épiceries à Wendake aux XIXe et XXe siècles ( : 2012)