Books published by McGill-Queen's University Press

The "Middle East" has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored. In Inventing the Middle East Guillemette Crouzet charts the spatial, political, and cultural emergence of the Middle East, not in the twentieth century but in the nineteenth.

Known today chiefly for his surrender to the American forces at Saratoga in 1777, General John Burgoyne led a multidimensional life. From the Battlefield to the Stage remembers him as not only a participant in one of Britain's worst military disasters but also a brave soldier, successful playwright, reforming politician, and popular socialite.

Beginning in the 1950s, alleged UFO sightings sparked tension between the Canadian government and its citizens. The public demanded investigation and disclosure while the state appeared unconcerned. In Search for the Unknown Matthew Hayes presents the first comprehensive history of UFO investigations in Canada.

This collection investigates how different countries approach the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants in their armed forces, and offers immigrant military participation as a way to provide a pathway to citizenship, foster greater societal integration, and achieve a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive military.

This book considers the large-scale public architecture associated with French imperialism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India, Siam, and Vietnam, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indochina. A comprehensive study of structures that rank among the most fascinating examples of intercultural exchange in the history of global empires.

Canadian Spy Story takes readers into a dark and dangerous world of betrayal and deception, spies and informers, invasion and assassination. David A. Wilson tells the tale of the Fenians - Irishmen who wished to liberate their country from British rule - and the Canadian secret police who infiltrated their revolutionary cells.

May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth collects the private correspondence of the officers and sailors who set out in May 1845 on the Erebus and Terror for Sir John Franklin's fateful Arctic expedition, providing new insights into the personalities of those on board, the voyage's significance, and the dawning realization that they might never return.

Through a synoptic historical sweep of Canada, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, The Symbolic State shows us that institutions may be more important for what they mean than for what they do. This book is timely in an era when the power of symbols - Brexit, the Donald Trump presidency, the Black Lives Matter movement - is shaping global politics.

Penal Servitude is the first comprehensive study of the convict prison system that housed all those who were sentenced to penal servitude between 1853 and 1948, detailing the administration and evolution of the system, its creation, the building of the prison estate, and the experiences of prisoners and staff within it.