Author: Robert, Camille Page 1 of 4

The Montreal History Group has received a grant from the Fonds de recherche du Québec (Support for Research Teams) for 2025-2029! The Montreal, City of Empires (1800-2000) project will bring together researchers, collaborators, students, and postdoctoral fellows from several Quebec and Canadian institutions.

Project summary (translation):
This scientific program spans a two-century period (1800–2000) and offers a novel perspective on the history of Montreal as a site of imperial entanglement. It focuses on the city’s dual status as both a colony and a metropolis, and how its historical trajectory is deeply intertwined with various formal and informal empires (French, British, American, Canadian/Québécois). The proposed program is structured around three thematic axes, each addressing a central dimension of the topic: Colonialisms, Mobilities and Migrations, and Capitalism. It draws on the critical work of theorists who have examined the concept of empire, while also making a significant contribution to the historiography of Canada, Quebec, and Montreal. Located on unceded Indigenous territories, Montreal has been a hub of commercial activity since the beginning of European settlement, while also serving as a gateway to interior lands. The first axis, “Colonialisms”, explores Montreal both as a space of colonization and as a strategic site for the implementation of the Euro-Canadian colonial expansion project toward the West, the North, and its Québécois “hinterland.” The second axis, “Mobilities and Migrations”, will examine the impact of geography, power, and imperial structures on migration flows, mobility experiences, and population movements in Montreal throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. This axis seeks to situate the metropolis within the evolution of global dynamics of international migrations and to study its role as a crossroads for the circulation of people, capital, goods, knowledge, and ideas. Finally, the third axis, “Capitalism”, brings together projects that place Montreal at the heart of a vast commercial, industrial, and financial empire. We aim to understand the distinct aspects of this empire of capital—its tentacles reaching across the province, Canada, and the world—as well as its internal dynamics within the urban environment. Thus, we are interested in the modalities of structuring and developing empires, their connections to colonial and capitalist projects, and the voluntary or forced migrations they provoke and that sustain them. Our approach is characterized by the study of structures and institutions, discourses and practices, as well as the analysis of power relations (particularly of race, gender, and class), the role of social actors, their agency, networks, strategies, and everyday lives. This program will shed light on how capitalism, colonialism, and migration regimes have perpetuated various social hierarchies closely tied to imperialist projects, particularly through the racialization of Indigenous peoples and migrants. We will pay close attention to the responses of local populations (Indigenous or Euro-Canadian) to empire and to capitalist and colonialist projects, as well as to how they resist and the tools they use to do so.