Tocqueville and Lower Canadian Educational Networks

Abstract

Educational history is commonly written as the history of institutions, pedagogical practices or individual educators. This article takes the trans-Atlantic networks of men involved in liberal political and educational reform in the early decades of the nineteenth century as its unit of analysis. In keeping with the author’s interest in education and politics in the British North American colony of Lower Canada, the network is anchored on the person of Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the colony in 1831. De Tocqueville’s more or less direct connections to many of the men involved in colonial Canadian educational politics are detailed.