Crafting the Machinery of Municipal Rule: The Board of Police in Nineteenth Century Brockville, Upper Canada

This thesis traces the coordination, configuration and operation of municipal government in Brockville, Upper Canada, between 1830 and 1836. By focusing on how governing occurred and what was involved in governmental projects it presents new insights into the processes that constituted a form of rule. Contrary to presenting a narrative of rationalization, it argues that manner, etiquette and prestige were essential to the machinery of local government, as targets of regulation and as characteristics of the mode of operation. How the concept of democracy is translated into political practices is explored through an investigation of the agents and arrangements that were fashioned to form an institution of municipal government. I focus on an incorporated model of government styled as the board of police to argue that local government was only possible through the coordination of a political space, populated by agents who had to govern themselves and govern others.