Standing on the campus of the University of Toronto in 1929, Harold Adams Innis, the giant of the second generation of Canadian economists, asked the question: ‘What are the very long-run factors in the integration of Canada?’ His examination of the question led him to formulate the staple thesis – Canada's most original contribution to political economy. The pattern and pace of early Canadian development, Innis and his many disciples maintained, was determined by the export of primary products – fish, fur, timber and wheat – to foreign markets. According to Innis, therefore, economic growth and development were best explained by what was taking place in the staple trades.
Once treated as gospel by Canadian historians, the staple thesis has fallen out of favour of late. In part, this is because the question that preoccupied Innis is not that which consumes the majority of historians today. But even those who work in the lingering shadow of Innis have become increasingly sceptical of the universality of his conclusions.
The latest to add her voice to the chorus of criticism is Beatrice Craig, a professor of social and economic history at the University of Ottawa. In Backwoods consumers and homespun capitalists, Craig examines the development of the Madawaska territory, a relatively remote community in the Upper Saint John Valley in the backwoods of New Brunswick, and argues that the development of the region was far more complex than the staple thesis would suggest.
Traditionally, the development of the Madawaska valley has been explained by focusing on what was occurring in the international timber trade. But, according to Craig, this emphasis on export-led growth has created many ‘blind spots’ (p. 221). While she does not deny the role played by timber exports, she states that the trade was significantly less important than has customarily been assumed. Having described the origins and subsequent development of the forest industry and the activities of the men who bet their fortunes on the timber trade, Craig argues that the ‘road to riches’ was not paved with wood. Indeed, the timber trade was an unreliable source of income for timber merchants, lumber operators, labourers, farmers and storekeepers alike. To the extent that the timber trade played any role in the region's development, it did so by bringing in money and people to the region, as well as by keeping ‘mental horizons wide open’ (p. 21).
So if it wasn't the international trade in timber that fuelled the region's development, what was it? The answer to this question makes up the bulk of the book. In the final five chapters, Craig examines the role played by the territory's ‘principal men’ (i.e. that small group of elite males who owned real estate and acted as intermediaries between the local producers and external markets), the ‘local entrepreneurs’ (i.e. the individuals who acted as links to the outside world and always created commercial relations) and the farmers and their families. These local men and women were central to the territory's development. They acted as neighbourhood capitalists, investing in local enterprise and infrastructure, and as backwoods consumers of imported and locally produced goods. As producers and consumers, they made the most of their opportunities, pursuing their own material, psychological or social advantages. While these local people were critical to development, they were not consciously trying to create a market culture. Rather, as Craig demonstrates in vivid detail, they were stumbling towards that destiny, a destiny that was neither pre-ordained nor predetermined. The men and women of the region were trying to solve the concrete, mundane problems of everyday life, from putting a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs to raising their children and improving the quality of their lives: ‘The economy was an extension of the household, not the other way around’ (p. 227). Thus, Craig concludes, the development of the Madawaska territory was primarily the result of local and regional forces, and human agency played a not insignificant role in the process.
Craig's conclusion makes her part of an increasingly influential school of Canadian economic historiography – a school that might best be labelled as ‘post-Innisian’. Like Doug McCalla, Robin Neill, M.C. Urquhart, Marvin McInnis and Frank Lewis, Craig moves beyond the staple thesis, with its emphasis on external forces, and examines the endogenous factors in economic growth and development.
If this book has any shortcoming it is that, at times, it reads like a collection of essays. This should not prevent the work from obtaining the wider readership it so richly deserves, however.
