Don Nerbas is Associate Professor and the St. Andrew鈥檚 Society/McEuen Scholarship Foundation Chair in Canadian-Scottish Studies. He is also a member of the Montreal History Group / Groupe d鈥檋istoire de Montr茅al. He has published widely on the politics of business and the political economy of capitalism in Canada. The principal focus of his current research centres on Cape Breton鈥檚 coal trade and the social and political history of Cape Breton鈥檚 Sydney coalfield in the 19th听century, which was powerfully shaped by Scottish migration and settlement, an aspect of the entangled histories of colonialism and industrialism. This project is a component of Professor Nerbas's broader efforts, as Chair in Canadian-Scottish Studies, to expand and deepen investigation of the complex historical role of the Scots in Canada.
听
Selected publications:听
Books
- Dominion of Capital: The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947听(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013) (378 pp.).
- with Dimitry Anastakis and Elizabeth Kirkland, eds.听Montreal鈥檚 Square Mile: The Making and Transformation of a Colonial Metropole听(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2024).
Articles
- 鈥溾�楲awless Coal Miners鈥� and the Lingan Strike of 1882-83: Remaking Political Order on Cape Breton鈥檚 Sydney Coalfield.鈥澨�Labour / Le Travail听92 (Fall 2023): 81-121.
- 鈥淪cots, Capitalism, and the Colonial Countryside: Impressions from Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton.鈥澨�History Compass听18, 11 (November 2020): 1-12.
- 鈥淓mpire, Colonial Enterprise, and Speculation: Cape Breton鈥檚 Coal Boom of the 1860s.鈥澨�Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History听46, 6 (2018): 1067-95. [Revised version in Lachlan MacKinnon and Andrew Parnaby, eds.听Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century: Formations and Legacies of Industrial Capitalism听(Athabasca: Athabasca University Press, forthcoming 2024).]
- 鈥淲illiam Zeckendorf, Place Ville-Marie, and the Making of Modern Montreal.鈥澨�Urban History Review / Revue d鈥檋istoire urbaine43, 2 (Spring 2015): 5-25.
- 鈥淢anaging Democracy, Defending Capitalism: Gilbert E. Jackson, the Canadian Committee on Industrial Reconstruction, and the Changing Form of Elite Politics in Canada.鈥澨�Histoire sociale / Social History听46, 91 (May 2013): 173-204.
Book Chapter听
- 鈥淔amily, Society, and Highland Identity in an Industrial World,鈥� in听Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World: Social Networks and Identities, eds. S. Karly Kehoe, Chris Dalglish, and Annie Tindley (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023): 170-93.