Canadian Political History and Ideas: Intersections and Influences

Over the last two decades, traditionally minded historians have argued that the rise of social and cultural history has fragmented Canadian history and caused the decline of Canadian political history. Despite these claims, current Canadian political history is proving to be a dynamic field that embraces the methodological and theoretical innovations of social and cultural history by incorporating gender, class, race and ethnicity as categories of analysis to create a "new political history." However, the "new political history" in Canada has neglected to integrate the history of ideas. Studying the history of ideas in Canadian political history could expand the discipline beyond the current trends that include highly individualised political biography and studies emphasising politics, the state and ideology within Ian McKay's potentially reductive liberal order framework. Supplementing the "new political history" with the history of ideas, influenced by the work of Michael Freeden, would allow innovative analyses of institutional and popular politics to accompany the voices of elite political figures.