In reply to my suggestion that colonial policy restricted the availability
of land in 'Canada', and so retarded capitalism relative to that in the US,
Paul P. asked for any evidence that access to land was more restrictive in
Canada and retarded settlement.
My evidence is pretty thin (I was hoping Paul would help here). Wakefield's
Appendix in Lord Durham's Report advocates higher land prices in Canada but
complains that lower land prices in the US limited how high 'Canadian'
prices could be set. While Wakefield's specific proposals were not
implemented, I think the Appendix indicates the US land system was
considerably freer. I don't think farmers in the US faced the burden they
did in Canada where at least 1/7 of all land aliented was granted to the
clergy. R. Gourlet's survey in the early part of the 19th century
documented that church lands were considered a major obstacle to settlement
because they were often left 'wild' (no roads through them, etc.) and did
not pay any taxes. Certainly the colonial land system was a central issue
in the 1837-38 rebellions (Canada's failed bourgeois-democratic
revolution), including the issue of feudal tenure in Lower Canada ('Quebec').
I suggested that the colonial land policy caused high out-migration, while
Paul wrote he instead connected this to Kondratief-wave depressed commodity
prices. I don't have the data for migration to the US before the 1850s, but
I understand that during much of the first half of the century migration
rates to the US from Canada were very high, especially from Lower Canada
(Quebec) to New England states. Certainly the data does show that in the
last 4 decades of the 19th century, out-migration from Canada (presumably
mostly to the US) exceeded in-migration. I assume Canadian farmers produced
similar commodities as in the northern states. So I wonder whether the
pattern of commodity prices explains very much here, and if the 'political'
explanation of land policy is better.
Paul wrote:
>I think I would disagree here. Though the American west settled
>before the Canadian, the "great American desert" which includes
>the Palliasers triangle in Canada was not settled until the same
>time as was the contiguous area of Canada. Fowke, and others,
>argue (I would say persuasively) that the settlement of this area
>had to await the development of "dry-land techniques" and the
>development of crops that could mature within the frost cycle. If I
>am not mistaken, settlement of the western Canadian prairies did
>not precede the settlement of the Dakotas, Montana and the
>contiguous American prairies.
I think this is right, but my suggestion is that the western settlement was
unlike that in Eastern Canada, that is, it broke with the earlier
restrictive land policy and instead copied the 'American' pattern. It had
to, or Britain-Canada would have lost the west to the US. As I think Paul
wrote, it was the development of the west that spurred industrial
capitalism in Central Canada. My theory is that industrial capitalism in
Canada would not have been a generation or more behind that in the US if it
had a freer land system, e.g. been a democratic republic.
Paul wrote:
>Hold it, is this not one of my prime contentions in this thread -- that
>exploitation of the aboriginal population is one of the most
>important modes of primitive accumulation in Canada/UK in this
>period? If not, I have failed to communicate my main message.
My point is that the land system (seized from Natives, handed out to
colonial favourites and clergy for speculative profit) is rarely an
important part of the 'staples' explanation of Canadian political economy.
Instead of this political-national issue, it focuses on commodity markets
and the differences between commerical and industrial capital, etc. It
seems to me these are also the central issues in Paul's account. Again, my
question is whether the 'political economy of land' shouldn't occupy some
of the space usually given to the 'political economy of staples'.
Bill Burgess
