The Durham Report and British Policy: A Critical Essay (Cambridge Commonwealth Series) - Hardcover

In 1838 Lord Melbourne's Whig government in Britain sent the radical Lord Durham to Canada as Governor-General to deal with a colony in the aftermath of a rebellion. Durham's vanity and arrogance made him a poor choice for the post, and he resigned a few months later after the government had been forced to overrule him for exceeding his powers. After his return to Britain he wrote his Report on the Affairs of British North America - and its unauthorized publication in the Times caused a sensation. This report - the famous 'Durham Report' - has been seen as the starting point of the British tradition of colonial self-rule leading through the Statute of Westminster of 1931 to the independent self-governing Commonwealth of today.

Ged Martin is a graduate of Cambridge University. Awarded the United Kingdom's first chair in Canadian Studies by the University of Edinburgh, he is the author of "Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67" and "Favourite Son? John A. Macdonald and the Voters of Kingston 1841-1891". He is adjunct professor of history at National University of Ireland Galway, and at the University of the Fraser Valley.

SHERRILL V. MARTIN is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.