The Debt of a Nation

This book is a comprehensive history of Canada’s nineteenth-century public debt, exploring how loans gave British North American settler governments access to unprecedented amounts of capital at low interest rates.

The credit for such loans derived from colonial appropriation of Indigenous territories, and this process essentially created a market value for stolen land.

It analyzes how an economic system centred on credit and debt relied on settlers becoming the risk bearers of loans, and colonial governments having the power to appropriate Indigenous territories in order to appear creditworthy.

This history of the intimate relationship between public debt and colonization underscores the importance of the appropriation of Indigenous lands to global markets.