"Unequal Union" has been seen as the more adventuresome of these two works. It focused on only 60 years, rather than the 300-year scope of "The Founding of Canada", and it discussed more deeply the events after the War of 1812 leading up to the expansion of confederation in 1870. In this work, Ryerson turned to an analysis of land and land-holding as he recognises the importance of land to the colonial ruling-class. Gregory Kealey felt Ryerson overextended himself in his argument that the land-monopoly represented a "sort of commercialised feudalism" which "loomed as the dominating problem before the Canadas." But Ryerson's analysis of the 1837 Rebellions held true for Kealey, as he agrees with the classical Marxist formulation, that "potential production forces were stifled by dominant property relations; and as long as the latter couldn't be broken down progress remained illusory." Therefore, the rebellions of 1837 were an effort to break the "rule of a landlord-merchant oligarchy," blocking the development of industrial capitalism.