Humour Break: Japanese Whaling Ship Rams Batmobile

7 01 2010

This video doesn’t really have anything to do with Canadian history, but I can’t resist sharing it, perhaps because I like slapstick comedy. The video shows a collision between a Japanese research whaling vessel and the batmobile on water a futuristic boat owned by the Sea Shephard Society, which tries to interfere with whaling operations. What I find hilarious about this video is that the crew of the Japanese vessel continue to train water cannon on the protestors after the collision, thereby adding insult to injury.

Last week, we tried looking for whale meat in a Japanese supermarket. We couldn’t find any, which is just as well because the texture is tough. It really needs to be marinated with lime to be edible.


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Gerriets on Craig’s Backwoods Consumers

7 01 2010

EH.NET BOOK REVIEW
Published January 2010

Béatrice Craig, _Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists: The Rise of a Market Culture in Eastern Canada_. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. ix + 349 pp. $75 (cloth), ISBN: 974-0-8020-9317-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Marilyn Gerriets, Department of Economics, St. Francis Xavier University.

_Backwoods Consumers_ is an excellent contribution to the literature exploring the social and economic structure of early settlements in North America.  Craig studies the Madawaska region (in northwestern New Brunswick and northeastern Maine) from early settlement by Acadians and Canadiens in the late eighteenth century up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  The book’s primary theme is the evolution of the relationship between rural people and markets.

Madawaksa

The theme is developed within the context of two literatures, the largely Canadian literature first dominated by the staples thesis and now exploring local exchange, and the largely American literature tracing the rise of market exchange and capitalism in early settlements.  Her detailed description of the early process of settlement provides an excellent contribution to these literatures.  The wealth and variety of source material enriches the study.

Madawaska was not as isolated as its location might suggest; settlers had connections through correspondence and travel that kept them aware of external market opportunities and of opportunities to settle elsewhere.  Early settlers were drawn to the region by opportunities in the fur trade and on the excellent agricultural land along the Saint John River.  Preference to live with people of their own culture also led Acadians to move to the area and Catholics from nearby parts of Quebec were comfortable to join them.   Fur and wheat were the first goods exported from the region and from the earliest days settlers showed no reluctance to engage in market exchange.  When rust and midges made wheat production impractical, farmers shifted to fodder crops for the timber shanty market.  Fortunately, timber exports became viable in time to alleviate the difficulties caused by declining wheat production.  Timber production created immigration, but an agricultural community was already well established before it began.

Local production of goods for local consumption was important.  Sawmills built to produce lumber for export disappeared as soon as the timber industry declined, while custom saw mills providing boards for local construction persisted.  Along with grist, carding and fulling mills, the custom mills provided a focal point for the emergence of villages.  Craig’s sources enable her to determine that the charter families, the Acadians and Quebecois who first settled the region, invested in these mills.  They carefully sought out land with water power when they acquired farm land, apparently recognizing the value of an opportunity to exploit water power with a mill.

Squaring Timber in Madawaska

Craig traces changes in patterns of consumption as well as in patterns of production.  Initially, general store purchases were confined to inputs to production such as tools or cotton warps used in the weaving of homespun.  By the early 1860’s new consumption patterns had emerged.  Rather than acquiring a cotton gown “for ever,” less durable items in the current style were desired.  Young men purchased red flannel for shirts and black silk neckerchiefs. Tea, oil lamps and chamber pots became important household items.  The “world of goods” had clearly emerged by the 1860’s.

While her work clearly supports more recent Canadian research that stresses the importance of local exchange, Craig argues that the staples trades were important to the growth of the region.  Timber workers’ families provided good markets for a wide variety of agricultural goods.  Access to the shanty market for fodder was very important to settlers’ standard of living when surpluses of wheat could no longer be produced.  The timber industry helped to provide the income that permitted the growth of consumption.

Prof. Craig

Craig’s pragmatism and common sense enables her to provide an accurate description of markets and of commercialization in Madawaska.  Settlers eagerly engaged in market exchange from the first days of settlement; both store owners and farmers preferred payment in cash to payment in goods.  Craig argues that Madawaskan residents did not enter markets to resist change, as others have argued, but they entered the market in order to become “individualistic consumers.”  The issue of the emergence of market exchange and of capitalism has been a contentious in the American literature.  Craig argues that much of the contention has arisen from misconstruing definitions.  She carefully sets out her own definitions of a capitalist and of capitalism, drawing on Fernand Braudel.  I found no definition of capital, and she appears to equate financial assets with capital, an equivalence offensive to any economist.  This economist finds Braudel’s definitions peculiar, and would prefer reliance on standard economics for a definition of capital, Karl Marx for a definition of capitalism and Karl Polanyi for discussion of the emergence of market institutions.

Better definitions might enable her to see more deeply into the extent and the limits of capitalism in Madawaska.  Nonetheless she has done very well describing changes in the role of markets.  In particular, she discusses how in the early days of settlement, patronage and government favoritism were important to securing access to farm land, access to locations for inns or trading posts and to government appointments.  By the end of the period, political and economic activity had become more separate.  To use Polanyi’s term, the economy was becoming disembeded from society at large.

The book is very rich and addresses many additional topics.  Readers have good reason to pursue her discussion of the homespun textile industry, the divisions of Madawaskan society into groups defined by religion and date of settlement and the impact of the dispute over and the creation of a border between Maine and New Brunswick.  The study is unique in its linking of individuals and families to the evolution of the economy and society. Craig has done an excellent job of examining the economic and social history of a neglected region.

Marilyn Gerriets, an economic historian and a professor in the Department of Economics at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, is interested in the origins of differences in the paths of development of the Maritimes and Central Canada. She has written about agricultural resources and settlement, tariffs and trade and coal mining in Nova Scotia.

Copyright (c) 2010 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list.


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Text of the 1866 Annexation Bill

6 01 2010

In 1866, Republican Congressman Nathaniel P. Banks introduced a bill providing for the incorporation of British North America into the United States. For more on this bill and Banks’s motives, see Joe Patterson Smith, “American Republican Leadership and the Movement for the Annexation of Canada in the Eighteen-Sixties”, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, 14 (1935): 67-75.

You can read the original bill online thanks to the Library of Congress’s wonderful digitization project. I have posted the full text below in plain text on the off chance it may be useful to someone.

39TH CONGRESS, 1ST SESSION H.R. 754. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES JULY 2, 1866.

Read twice, refered to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and ordered to be printed. Mr Banks, on leave, introduced the following bill:

A Bill for the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States is hereby authorized and directed, whenever notice shall be deposited in the Department of State that the governments of Great Britain and the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Canada, British Columbia, and Vancouver’s Island have accepted the proposition hereinafter made by the United States, to publish by proclamation that, from the date thereof, the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia, with limits and rights as by the act defined, are constituted and admitted as States and Territories of the United States of America.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the following articles are hereby proposed, and from the date of the proclamation of the President of the United States shall take effect, as irrevocable conditions of the admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and the future States of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia, to wit: [edit]

ARTICLE I All public lands not sold or granted; canals, public harbors, light-houses, and piers; river and lake improvements; railway stocks, mortgages, and other debts due by railway companies to the provinces; custom-houses and post offices, shall vest in the United States; but all other public works and property shall belong to the State governments respectively, hereby constituted, together with all sums due from purchasers or lessees of lands, mines, or minerals at the time of the union.

ARTICLE II In consideration of the public lands, works, and property vested as aforesaid in the United States, the United States will assume and discharge the funded debt and contingent liabilities of the late provinces, at rates of interest not exceeding five per centum, to the amount of eighty-five million seven hundred thousand dollars, apportioned as follows: To Canada West, thirty-six million five hundred thousand dollars; to Canada East, twenty-nine million dollars; to Nova Scotia, eight million dollars; to New Brunswick, seven million dollars; to Newfoundland, three million two hundred thousand dollars; and to Prince Edward Island, two million dollars; and in further consideration of the transfer by said provinces to the United States of the power to levy import and export duties, the United States will make an annual grant of one million six hundred and forty-six thousand dollars in aid of local expenditures, to be apportioned as follows: To Canada West, seven hundred thousand dollars; to Canada East, five hundred and fifty thousand dollars; to Nova Scotia, one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars; to New Brunswick, one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars; to Newfoundland, sixty-five thousand dollars; to Prince Edward Island, forty thousand dollars.

ARTICLE III For all purposes of State organization and representation in the Congress of the United States, Newfoundland shall be part of Canada East, and Prince Edward Island shall be part of Nova Scotia, except that each shall always be a separate representative district, and entitled to elect at least one member of the House of Representatives, and except, also, that the municipal authorities of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island shall receive the indemnities agreed to be paid by the United States in Article II.

ARTICLE IV Territorial divisions are established as follows: (1) New Brunswick, with its present limits; (2) Nova Scotia, with the addition of Prince Edward Island; (3) Canada East, with the addition of Newfoundland and all territory east of longitude eighty degrees and south of Hudson’s strait; (4) Canada West, with the addition of territory south of Hudson’s bay and between longitude eighty degrees longitude ninety degrees; (5) Selkirk Territory, bounded east by longitude ninety degrees, south by the late boundary of the United States, west by longitude one hundred and five degrees, and north by the Arctic circle; (6) Saskatchewan Territory, bounded east by longitude one hundred and five degrees, south by latitude forty-nine degrees, west by the Rocky mountains, and north by latitude seventy degrees; (7) Columbia Territory, including Vancouver’s Island, and Queen Charlotte’s island, and bounded east and north by the Rocky mountains, south by latitude forty-nine degrees, and west by the Pacific ocean and Russian America. But Congress reserves the right of changing the limits and subdividing the areas of the western territories at discretion.

ARTICLE V Until the next decennial revision, representation in the House of Representatives shall be as follows: Canada West, twelve members; Canada East, including Newfoundland, eleven members; New Brunswick, two members; Nova Scotia, including Prince Edward Island, four members.

ARTICLE VI The Congress of the United States shall enact, in favor of the proposed Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia, all the provisions of the act organizing the Territory of Montana, so far as they can be made applicable.

ARTICLE VII The United States, by the construction of new canals, or the enlargement of existing canals, and by the improvement of shoals, will so aid the navigation of the Saint Lawrence river and the great lakes that vessels of fifteen hundred tons burden shall pass from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Lakes Superior and Michigan: Provided, That the expenditure under this article shall not exceed fifty millions of dollars.

ARTICLE VIII The United States will appropriate and pay to “The European and North American Railway Company of Maine” the sum of two millions of dollars upon the construction of a continuous line of railroad from Bangor, in Maine, to Saint John’s, in New Brunswick: Provided, That said “The European and North American Railway Company of Maine” shall release the government of the United States from all claims held by it as assignee of the States of Maine and Massachusetts.

ARTICLE IX To aid the construction of a railway from Truro, in Nova Scotia, to Riviere du Loup, in Canada East, and a railway from the city of Ottawa, by way of Sault Ste. Marie, Bayfield, and Superior, in Wisconsin, Pembina, and Fort Garry, on the Red River of the North, and the valley of the North Saskatchewan river to some point on the Pacific ocean north of latitude forty-nine degrees, the United States will grant lands along the lines of said roads to the amount of twenty sections, or twelve thousand eight hundred acres, per mile, to be selected and sold in the manner prescribed in the act to aid the construction of the Northern Pacific railroad, approved July two, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and acts amendatory thereof; and in addition to said grants of lands, the United States will further guarantee dividends of five per centum upon the stock of the company or companies which may be authorized by Congress to undertake the construction of said railways: Provided, That such guarantee of stock shall not exceed the sum of thirty thousand dollars per mile, and Congress shall regulate the securities for advances on account thereof.

ARTICLE X The public lands in the late provinces, as far as practicable, shall be surveyed according to the rectangular system of the General Land office of the United States; and in the Territories west of longitude ninety degrees, or the western boundary of Canada West, sections sixteen and thirty-six shall be granted for the encouragement of schools, and after the organization of the Territories into States, five per centum of the net proceeds of sales of public lands shall be paid into their treasuries as a fund for the improvement of roads and rivers.

ARTICLE XI The United States will pay ten millions of dollars to the Hudson Bay Company in full discharge of all claims to territory or jurisdiction in North America, whether founded on the charter of the company or any treaty, law, or usage.

ARTICLE XII It shall be devolved upon the legislatures of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Canada East, and Canada West, to conform the tenure of office and the local institutions of said States to the Constitution and laws of the United States, subject to revision by Congress.

SEC 3. And be it further enacted, That if Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, or either of those provinces, shall decline union with the United States, and the remaining provinces, with the consent of Great Britain, shall accept the proposition of the United States, the foregoing stipulations in favor of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, or either of them, will be omitted; but in all other respects the United States will give full effect to the plan of union. If Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick shall decline the proposition, but Canada, British Columbia, and Vancouver island shall, with the consent of Great Britain, accept the same, the construction of a railway from Truro to Riviere du Loup, with all stipulations relating to the maritime provinces, will form no part of the proposed plan of union, but the same will be consummated in all other respects. If Canada shall decline the proposition, then the stipulations in regard to the Saint Lawrence canals and a railway from Ottawa to Sault Ste. Marie, with the Canadian clause of debt and revenue indemnity, will be relinquished. If the plan of union shall only be accepted in regard to the northwestern territory and the Pacific provinces, the United States will aid the construction, on the terms named, of a railway from the western extremity of Lake Superior, in the State of Minnesota, by way of Pembina, Fort Garry, and the valley of the Saskatchewan, to the Pacific coast, north of latitude forty-nine degrees, besides securing all the rights and privileges of an American territory to the proposed Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan, and Columbia.


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Shortage of PhDs in Canada?

6 01 2010

Two days ago, I posted AHA data on the glut of history PhDs in the United States. Today, the Conference Board of Canada, the mouthpiece of big business in this country, has published a study complaining that Canada produces too few PhDs.   In Canada, 209 people complete PhDs out of every 100,000 between the ages of 25 and 29 . The figures in other countries are: the United States  289 per 100,000; France 259 per 100,000; and Japan 210 per 100,000.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? I don’t know. People with PhDs helped to plan the Iraq War.


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Historian Jack Granatstein on Immigration and Social Memory

6 01 2010

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My Christmas Break Reading

5 01 2010

Here is a list of the books I read over the Christmas break, in no particular order.

Neal Stephenson, Anathem

Andrew Lambert, The Gates of Hell: Sir John Franklin’s Tragic Quest for the North West Passage

Daniel Headrick, Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present

Robert E. Wright, One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe.

Peter F. Hamilton, Judas Unchained

Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Part of the Oxford History of the United States series. Fantastic book. Scholarly yet accessible to ordinary people– the type of historical book I admire the most.

Robert E. Wright, The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance


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Gerald Friesen on University History Teaching

4 01 2010

In this two-part video, University of Manitoba historian Gerald Friesen talks about effective history teaching at the university level.


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Job Market News for History PhDs

4 01 2010

The American Historical Association has released statistics regarding the job market for history PhDs in the United States.


I’m going to quote some of the more interesting things in the report:

“Openings for historians working on the United States, for instance, fell by 30.3 percent, while openings for specialists in the history the Middle East and the Islamic World fell by a slightly larger 34.5 percent. Most of the other broad fields suffered declines of around 20 percent, including world and transnational history (down 20.9 percent), European history (down 19.7 percent), and Latin American history (off 18.8 percent). Only two fields saw declines of less than five percent—African history (down 4.4 percent) and Asian history (off 3.1 percent).”

“Unfortunately, the growing number of applications for each available job was not the only problem this past year, as an unusually large number of positions were cancelled after the job was advertised—and in many cases, even after applications had been received. Of the 338 advertisers that responded to the survey, 22 percent (representing 75 positions) reported that the search had not resulted in a hire by fall 2009. Of that number, 51 indicated that the budget line had been cancelled, 9 indicated that they were still trying to complete the hire, and the rest reported that they either could not find a worthy candidate or their choice(s) had taken another offer.”

“The differences in the average number of applicants in particular fields were also reflected in the satisfaction of the job advertisers and their success in completing the search. While close to 90 percent of the advertisers for U.S. and European history jobs expressed satisfaction with the applications received, less than 80 percent of the advertisers in the fields of African, Asian, and Latin American history expressed similar satisfaction with their pool of candidates. Openings in fields outside U.S. and European history were also less likely to have successfully resulted in a hire—either because negotiations were still ongoing or the candidate had accepted another position.”

The report also said this:

“One real alternative now for many history PhDs seems to lie in employment outside of academia. As our recent study of public history professionals demonstrates, history PhDs employed outside of higher education are generally quite satisfied with their jobs and earning salaries comparable to, if not better than, the salaries in academia. Unfortunately, very few programs prepare their students for jobs outside of academia, placing most of their emphases and expectations on preparing their students for the relatively small—and at least for the present, diminishing—number of jobs at research universities. Until programs reduce the number of students in their programs and revise the culture of history doctoral training, the sense of crisis in the job market for history PhDs seems only likely to grow worse for the foreseeable future.”

As I said above, this data relates to the history job market in the United States. If someone has equivalent data for Canada, the United Kingdom, or other countries, please send it to me so that I can post it online.


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The Politics of the Film Avatar

4 01 2010

Tim Fernholz & David Weigel discuss the politics of Avatar.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "The Politics of the Film Avatar", posted with vodpod


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Quebec Culture Lessons for Immigrants

4 01 2010

A few days ago, the Toronto Star ran a series of stories by reporter Andrew Chung on the Quebec government’s new immigration policies. (For the benefit of my growing number of non-Canadian readers, I should explain that while Quebec is part of the Canadian federation, Quebec largely runs its own immigration system). Immigrants to Quebec must now sign a contract promising to abide by Quebec’s values, speak French in public, and attend a 90 minute seminar designed to inculcate such values. The instructor in the seminar visited by reporter Mr Chung stressed the rights of women and homosexuals, which prompted one Algerian immigrant to say that the hierarchy of rights in Quebec “goes like this: children first, then women, then dogs … then men”.

I don’t agree with everything Andrew Chung says in his article. For instance, he states that visible minorities are under-represented on Quebec TV relative to programs in English-speaking Canada or the United States. I don’t know if this is entirely a fair comparison, since almost half the population of the United States is non-white. Moreover, as someone who watches a fair bit of Quebec TV in the interests of improving my French, I can say that there are a fair number of visible minority TV personalities in that province, such as Gregory Charles. Nevertheless, the series by Chung is very interesting to me as a Canadian historian. In recent blog posts, I have spoken about the federal government’s new citizenship guide for immigrants, Discover Canada, and have linked to historian Jack Granatstein’s opinion piece on immigration policy.  Unlike the Quebec integration seminars, the Discover Canada guide says very little about women’s rights and is strangely silent on the issue of homosexuality.

I thought I would bring people’s attention to some online resources on the topic of immigration history. First, have a look at the relevant entries in the Encyclopedia of Quebec history. You should also check out historian Harold Troper’s entry for “Immigration” in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Folks should also check out this article, which was published just before Christmas: “Quand la tourtière remplace le couscous“. Also have a look at the film Génération 101.


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