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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2011
1 Innis, Harold A., The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1930; 1956)Google Scholar; Innis, , The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Toronto, 1940; 1954)Google Scholar; and Innis, , ed., The Diary of Alexander James McPhail (Toronto, 1940)Google Scholar.
2 For Mackintosh, , see in particular his The Economic Background of Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1939; 1964)Google Scholar and for Fowke, , The National Policy and the Wheat Economy (Toronto, 1957)Google Scholar. See also Britnell, G. E., The Wheat Economy (Toronto, 1939)Google Scholar; Easterbrook, W. T., Farm Credit in Canada (Toronto, 1938)Google Scholar; Buckley, Kenneth, Capital Formation in Canada, 1896–1930 (Toronto, 1955; 1970)Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., Democracy in Alberta: Social Credit and the Party System (Toronto, 1955; 1968)Google Scholar. These are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg of writings on the Canadian wheat economy; my choices, here and elsewhere in this essay, reflect my bias as an economic historian and political economist. Mention must be made of an article by Burton, F. W. with the sweeping and splendidly Innisian title, “Wheat in Canadian History,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 3 (May 1937): 210–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which lives up to its promise.
3 L. D. McCann, ed., Heartland and Hinterland: A Geography of Canada, 2d ed. (1987); Berger, Carl, The Writing of Canadian History (Toronto, 1976)Google Scholar; David McNally, “Staple Theory as Commodity Fetishism: Marx, Innis and Canadian Political Economy,” Studies in Political Economy (Autumn 1981).
4 The original article that found the wheat boom not to matter was Chambers, E. J. and Gordon, D. F., “Primary Products and Economic Growth: An Empirical Measurement,” Journal of Political Economy 74 (1966): 319–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the moment at least the last word goes to M. C. Urquhart for his carefully reasoned view, as I read him, that Mackintosh was right about the importance of wheat; see his “New Estimates of Gross National Product, Canada, 1890–1926: Some Implications for Canadian Development,” in Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, ed. Engerman, Stanley and Gallman, Robert, NBER Studies in Income and Wealth, 51 (Chicago, Ill., 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Notwithstanding further research, an excellent source on wheat in Upper Canada is McCallum, John, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Quebec and Ontario until 1870 (Toronto, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a balanced discussion that allows for the neglected role of women is Cohen, Marjorie Griffin, Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 For Clement, see in particular “Debates and Directions: A Political Economy of Canada's Resources,” in The Challenge of Class Analysis (Ottawa, 1988)Google Scholar, and The Struggle to Organize: Resistance in Canada's Fishery (Toronto, 1986). See also Marchak, Patricia, Green Gold: The Forestry Industry in British Columbia (Vancouver, 1983)Google Scholar; Richards, John and Pratt, Larry, Prairie Capitalism: Power and Influence in the New West (Toronto, 1979)Google Scholar; Ehrensaft, Philip and Armstrong, Warwick, “The Formation of Dominion Capitalism: Economic Truncation and Class Structure,” in Inequality: Essays on the Political Economy of Social Welfare, ed. Moscovitch, Allan and Drover, Glenn (Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar.
6 For Hirschman, see his Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar, as well as “A Generalized Linkage Approach to Development, with Special Reference to Staples,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (Supplement, 1977), reprinted in his Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (New York, 1981), and “Linkages in Economic Development” in his Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. My original article on the staple theory is “A Staple Theory of Economic Growth,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 29 (May 1963): 141–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Approaches to Canadian Economic History, ed. Easterbrook, W. T. and Watkins, M. H. (Toronto, 1967)Google Scholar. For a recent restatement of the staple theory, which draws on Hirschman's later writing, see my “Political Economy of Growth,” in The New Canadian Political Economy, ed. Clement, Wallace and Williams, Glen (Kingston, Ont., 1989)Google Scholar.
7 The references to Hirschman are to his 1977 article. For a sampling of the Canadian references: on fur/wheat, see Innis's The Fur Trade; on wheat and oil in the West, see Caves, Richard E. and Holton, Richard H., The Canadian Economy: Prospect and Retrospect (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 206–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on fur trade and oil in the North, see my “From Underdevelopment to Development” in Dene Nation: The Colony Within, ed. Watkins, Mel (Toronto, 1977)Google Scholar.
8 The 1984 series was subsequently published as Kahn, E. J., The Staffs of Life (Boston, Mass., 1985)Google Scholar. See also Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.
9 On fish and oil in Scotland, Norway, and Atlantic Canada, see Fish Versus Oil: Resources and Rural Development in North Atlantic Societies, ed. House, J. D., Social and Economic Paper no. 16, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John's, 1986)Google Scholar. Solberg's other book is Oil and Nationalism in Argentina: A History (Stanford, Calif., 1979)Google Scholar.
10 Laxer, Gordon, “The Political Economy of Aborted Development,” in The Structure of the Canadian Capitalist Class, ed. Brym, Robert (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar, and “Foreign Ownership and Myths about Canadian Development,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 22 (Aug. 1985): 311–15Google Scholar.
11 See Clark-Jones, Melissa, A Staple State: Canadian Industrial Resources in Cold War (Toronto, 1987)Google Scholar.
12 Some years ago, I suggested that the case of Australia had more similarities to Argentina than did Canada. A reading of The Prairies and the Pampas has only confirmed my earlier suspicion. See my “El método comparativo en la historia: Argentina y Australia (1850–1930),” in Argentina y Australia, ed. Fogarty, J. et al. (Buenos Aires, 1979)Google Scholar.
13 I was a little surprised to find part of Solberg's theoretical position on regional development linked to the name of Douglass North (see p. 3).
14 Another very clear instance where I disagree with Solberg's thesis is his characterization of the governments (both conservative and radical) of the period. See my “El Roquismo,” Todo es Historia 100 (Buenos Aires, 1975)Google Scholar, and “Society and Politics in Argentina, 1870–1916,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 5 (Cambridge, England, 1986)Google Scholar.
15 Scobie, James, Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910 (Austin, Texas, 1964)Google Scholar.
16 In fact, the customs duty was not so low in Argentina, and between 1880 and 1930 there was rapid industrial growth. See my “Agrarian Expansion and Industrial Development in Argentina, 1870–1930,” in Latin American Affairs, ed. Carr, Raymond (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar.
17 I am not suggesting that the monetary policy was adequate; indeed, I believe the opposite. I am emphasizing only that this policy did take the farmers' demands into consideration. Customs duties were also lower in Canada, making Argentinian farmers better off than their northern compatriots in this respect. For the 1890s, see my Farmers in Revolt: The Revolutions of 1893 in the Province of Santa Fe, Argentina (London, 1976)Google Scholar.
18 The analysis of the Argentinian case would have benefited from giving greater attention to the research work of Roberto Cortés Conde—for example, his El Progreso Argentino, 1880–1914 (Buenos Aires, 1979)Google Scholar. For the origins of the landowners and for the lease problem, see my La Pampa Gringa (Buenos Aires, 1983)Google Scholar.
19 Brown, Jonathan C., A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776–1860 (New York, 1973), chap. 8Google Scholar.
20 Ferns, H. S., The Argentine Republic, 1516–1971 (Newton Abbot, England, 1973), 91–99Google Scholar.
21 Lamb, W. Kaye, History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (New York, 1977), 216Google Scholar.
22 Ibid., 257.
23 Ferns, H. S., Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, England, 1960), 334Google Scholar.
24 Armstrong, Warwick, “The Social Origins of Industrial Growth,” in Argentina, Australia, and Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, 1870–1965, ed. Platt, D. C. M. and Tella, Guido di (London, 1985), 76–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Donnelly, M. S., The Government of Manitoba (Toronto, 1963), 79Google Scholar.
