Imprinting Empire

The 1870s was a time of rapid transformation for the province of Manitoba. Though reeling from the aftermath of the Red River Resistance and ongoing oppression of the Métis community, at the onset of the decade the province was still an Indigenous space. However, by the decade’s close, settler hands firmly grasped power structures and territory following waves of immigration encouraged by newspapers that repeated colonial narratives about land and belonging until they seemed inevitable and true.

Through a careful examination of nine Manitoba newspapers—including French-language Le Métis—and relevant local, national, and international immigration materials, Shelisa Klassen captures the tensions, political debates, and outright propaganda that helped the Canadian nation dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and claim the prairies as its own. Imprinting Empire demonstrates the intentionality, violence, and integrality of immigration to the settler colonial process while clearly pointing to the printing press as a weapon of empire.