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The Role of Staple Industries in Canada's Economic Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Kenneth Buckley
Kenneth Buckley
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

Applications of the staple approach by the late Harold Innis d by others influenced by Innis have produced many studies which, taken together, provide a remarkably coherent, plausible, and apparently consistent account of Canada's economic growth and history. In this paper I distinguish between the staple theory as a theory of economic development and as an economic interpretation of history and argue that the staple theory of Canada's economic development breaks down after 1820. In the conclusion I suggest an alternative, complementary approach to the study of the country's economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , December 1958 , pp. 439 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1958

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References

1 Mackintosh, W. A., “Economic Factors in Canadian History,” The Canadian Historical Review, IV (03., 1923), 12–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Reprinted in Innis, Harold A., Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), pp. 3–16Google Scholar.

3 See particularly The Fur Trade in Canada; An Introduction to Canadian Economic History, rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956)Google Scholar; The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy, rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Problems of Staple Production in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1933)Google Scholar; Lower, A. R. M. and Innis, H. A., Settlement and the Forest and Mining Frontiers (Toronto: Macmillan Co., 1936); and Essays in Canadian Economic History (referred to in n. 2)Google Scholar.

4 On the concept of direction of growth see Simon Kuznets, “Toward a Theory of Economic Growth,” reproduction, Feb. 1956, of an article of the same title from the volume National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad (New York: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

5 , Innis, Essays in Canadian Economic History, pp. 200–10Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 203.

7 Ibid., pp. 11, 39.

8 In a review Innis also criticized Chester Wright's Economic History of the United States for “an over-emphasis on self-sufficiency and on nationalism” and commented: “A Canadian is more sensitive to the importance of regionalism and to the essential problem of North America in the development of a continent with maritime institutions. The problem is more acute in Canada but it is not absent in the United States.” Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, VIII (05 1942), 307Google Scholar.

9 Easterbroolc, W. T., “Innis and Economics,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XIX (08. 1953), 296Google Scholar.

10 The regional character of the staple approach when it is applied to national economic development is apparent in Mackintosh, W. A., The Economic Background of Dominion Provincial Relations (Ottawa: Kings' Printer, 1939) and in many studies strongly influencedGoogle Scholar by Mackintosh, particularly Fowke's, V. C. treatment of agricultural areas as investment frontiers in Canadian Agricultural Policy: The Historical Pattern (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1946), my study,Google ScholarCapital Formation in Canada, 1896 to 1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955), andGoogle ScholarCurrie, A. W., Canadian Economic Development (Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1951). In a recent article,Google Scholar“Locational Theory and Regional Economic Growth,” Journal of Political Economy, LXIII (06 1955), 243–58. Douglass North urges the adaptation of the staple approach to the study of regional economic growth in the United States. His point of departure is that existing “theory of regional economic growth has little relevance for the development of regions in America.”Google Scholar

11 (Toronto: The Macmillan Co., 1956).

12 See n. 10.

13 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930).

14 Short descriptions of. this work and the regional concept employed appear in Annual Reports, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., New York, 1957 and 1958. I am indebted to the National Bureau for die opportunity as a research associate in 1956-57 to undertake the studies referred to in the text.

15 It is not possible here to document fully this observation, but a fair and quick test of its accuracy is to check every reference to Canada East, Lower Canada, and Quebec appearing in Easterbrook and Aitken, Canadian Economic History, the most reliable and comprehensive study of its kind published so far.

16 Henripin, Jacques, “From Acceptance of Nature to Control,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIII (03. 1957), 10–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 13.