ABSTRACT
Robert Gourlay's Statistical Account of Upper Canada describes the most remarkable by-products of transatlantic intellectual trade during the first half of the nineteenth century. The statistical account develops with much more frequency, a series of discursive and graphical processes that were largely unknown up to the descriptions with the aid of numbers, discussions about the size of the population and tables that summarize information. The statistical account, introduces the devices that describes the technologies of distance allowed for the apprehension of previously ignored phenomena and unexpected relations. Gourlay's Statistical Account subscribes perfectly well to the genre's conventions examines the sedimentation of all the political, ideological currents and struggles in which Gourlay involves during the two decades that preceded his arrival in Canada. The oligarchic character of Upper Canadian authorities and an absence of administrative knowledge seems to result from voluntary ignorance, Gourlay's statistical inquiry presented by him as an experiment in democracy and enlightenment.
