In this fifth volume in Oxford's Illustrated History of Canada series, Patricia Roy and John Thompson present a compact narrative survey of British Columbia's economic, political, and social history, generously illustrated with roughly 150 paintings, drawings, and maps that shed their own light on the province's history. British Columbia, as we know it geographically and politically today, did not exist until 1858. The boundaries of the present-day province were defined in a piecemeal and haphazard manner, and are still disputed by the First Nations, who have never accepted the 1927 agreement between the federal and the provincial governments that defined the extent of their territories within the province. Historians can never entirely escape superimposing the tidy political map of contemporary British Columbia over an untidy geography, and an equally untidy history. Human conflict and human diversity mark British Columbia's past. Based on current scholarship, this volume provides a detailed account of the multitude of experiences within British Columbia. British Columbia: Land of Promises continues the tradition of sound scholarship and easy readability of the previous volumes in Oxford's Illustrated History of Canada series. Previous volumes were praised for being "richly illustrated, readable, detailed and opinionated" (London Free Press), and "attractive as individual volumes to those who want an introduction to a particular region, and as part of a series to those who are looking for a new, general history of Canada."(Quill and Quire)

PATRICIA ROY is a professor of history at the University of Victoria. She is co-author of The Writing on the Wall.

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Born in Manchester, England, John Thompson (1938-1976) moved to the United States in 1960. For his PhD thesis, Thompson translated the poetry of the French surrealist René Char. He moved to New Brunswick in 1966 to teach English at Mount Allison University. Stilt Jack (1978) consists of thirty-eight ghazals and Thompson's working of the form has been a major influence on Canadian poetry. In 1991 Anansi Press published I Dream Myself Into Being: Collected Poems, and in 1995 Peter Sanger edited John Thompson: Collected Poems & Translations.

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"British Columbia is the fifth in Oxford's splendid Illustrated History of Canada series....At just under 200 pages of richly illustrated text, the book cannot give more than an overview of B.C.'s complex history, but it's a very good overview. All the colourful characters, from Amor de Cosmos to Bill Vander Zalm, are here, and there are some perspectives that are not included in many other history books, such as the idea that the early history of contact with the province's native peoples was much more violent than the common myth suggests." Quill and Quire