Dr. Peter Cook
Position
Contact
Credentials
BA (Toronto), MA (Ottawa), PhD (McGill)
Area of expertise
Early Canadian History, Settler-Indigenous Relations, Immigration and Identity
Bio
I grew up in the Ottawa Valley and attended the University of Toronto, Université Laval, the University of Ottawa, and McGill University. During a summer job at the Archives Nationales du Québec in Sainte-Foy, I came across a notarial act signed by Pierre-Esprit Radisson; this may well have been the moment I became hooked by the history of early Canada and that of Indigenous-settler relations in North America. My research examines relations between the Indigenous nations of eastern North America and European colonial societies from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.
Selected publications
To Share, Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Coedited with Neil Vallance, John Sutton Lutz, Graham Brazier, and Hamar Foster. Vancouver : UBC Press, 2021.
“Onontio Gives Birth: How the French in Canada Became Fathers to Their Indigenous Alllies, 1645–73,” Canadian Historical Review 96, no. 2 (2015): 165–193. *Winner of the William Koren, Jr. Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies.
“‘A King in Every Countrey’: English and French Encounters with Indigenous Leaders in Sixteenth-Century America.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 24, no. 2 (2013): 1–32.
“Les premiers contacts vus à travers les sources documentaires européennes.” In Les Autochtones et le Québec : Des premiers contacts au Plan Nord, 55–73. Edited by Alain Beaulieu, Stéphan Gervais, and Martin Papillon. Coll. “Paramètres.” Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2013.
“Kings, Captains, and Kin: French Views of Native American Political Organization in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.” In The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624, 307–341. Edited by Peter Mancall. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2007.
“Vivre comme frères: le rôle du registre fraternel dans les premières alliances franco-amérindiennes au Canada (vers 1580–1650).” Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 31, no. 2 (2001): 55–65.
“Symbolic and Material Exchange in Intercultural Diplomacy: The French and the Hodenosaunee in the Early Eighteenth Century.” In New Faces of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1995, 75–100. Edited by Jo-Anne Fiske, Susan Sleeper Smith and William Wicken. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.
“New France’s Agents of Intercultural Diplomacy: The Western Frontier, 1703–1725.” In Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, Cleveland, May 1994, 59–79. Edited by A. J. B. Johnston. Cleveland: French Colonial Historical Society, 1996.
Courses
| HSTR 230A | Canada to Confederation |
| HSTR 328 | Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada |
| HSTR 385D | Pirates and Piracy since 1500 |
| HSTR 430 | Seminar: Canada in the Age of Revolutions |
Graduate Supervision
Cory Wilcock, “Paternalism, Capitalism, and Political Suppression: Case Studies of Settler-Colonialism on the Grand River” (master’s thesis, 2024).
Carla Osborne, “‘We Know Where We Are’: The Role of Place in Indigenous Historiography by Haudenosaunee and Northwest Métis Historians” (PhD dissertation, 2023). Co-supervised with Dr Christine O’Bonsawin.
Emilee Petrie, “(De)Constructing Nation and Race Along the Canadian Pacific Railway: First Nations and Chinese Migrants in the Colonial Project” (master’s thesis, 2023).
Catherine Reardon, “‘Colony’ But Not Colonized: How Early 1850 was a Liminal Moment in Spatial Definition between Indigenous Territory and Colonial ‘Victoria’” (master’s major research project, 2023).
Anne-Marie Pearce, “Qallunology of an Arctic Whaling Encounter: An Inuk’s Transatlantic Voyage, 1839 to 1840” (master’s thesis, 2022).
Jennifer Seidel, “Cultivating the Three Sisters: Haudenosaunee Foodways and Acculturative Change in the Fur Trade Economy” (master’s thesis, 2016).