Given the question, `What have been the very long run economic factors in the disintegration of Canada?', the significance of economic development in the Maritimes emerges only in comparison with what happened in the rest of British North America. What happened in the rest of British North America is evident only in the context of what happened in North America as a whole. The question is, then, `What were the similarities and differences between the different regions of the United States and British North America in the Canal Era?'
In the United States, at the beginning of the Euro-American Canal Era, in 1775, there were two economic regions. Other regions-to-be (The Midwest, the Far west, the Southwest and the Pacific Coast) came into existence during the Era. The Southeast, having been settled in circumstances that gave greater scope to the mercantilism and attenuated feudalism of seventeenth century England, was characterized by plantation farming and agricultural staple exports. During the Canal Era, this character was reinforced by a rapid increase in cotton exports. The Southeast experienced little if any canal building activity. The Northeast, with a more attenuated feudalism, and less constrained by mercantilism, in the late eighteenth century was characterized by small landholders and mixed farming. In the Canal Era, frontier style grain farming and its accompanying service and manufacturing industries passed to the Midwest. In the Northeast, manufacturing grew faster than it grew in other regions, and canal building reached the stage of `mania'.
The Canadian Maritime colonies were settled in a period in which British feudalism was even further attenuated than it had been during the settlement of New England. The Maritimes lacked the agricultural base of the northeastern States, and they lacked even New England's less than perfect connection with the agricultural frontier in the interior of the continent. They faltered in the development of manufacturing in the Canal Era, and they did not build canals. Like the southeastern States, the Maritimes relied more heavily on staple exports, but unlike the South its staples were largely common property natural products, fish, forest, and mineral products, the exploitation of which was organized without reference to feudal land tenure institutions. And, again, the Maritimes lacked the South's frontier in the interior.
Francophone Canada was the most definitively feudal and agricultural region in all of North America north of the Rio Grande, and it retained this characteristic until the end of the Canal Era. In the early Canal Era, francophones withdrew from the cities, and were largely absent from the principle commercial activities of the Canadas. They neither produced an agricultural staple export, nor tied their agriculture to the principle primary product export of the period. Except insofar as the development of the surrounding regions economy spilled over, Canal Era industrialization and canal building was nonexistent in the francophone economy.
The economy of the United Empire Loyalists, the Montreal--Upper Canada economy, was settled under land tenure institutions, like those of the Maritimes, more attenuated in their feudalism than those in force during settlement of the New England and the Middle Atlantic Colonies. Its exports were like the common property staple exports of the Maritimes, and the agricultural exports of New England, neither of which had the institutional foundation or the substantial importance of the staple exports of the southeastern States. Agriculture in Upper Canada was strong. It was more characterized by small holdings than was agriculture in the Middle Atlantic States, and much less specialized than agriculture in the southeastern States. The Montreal--Upper Canada economy, between 1800 and 1850, like the New York--Midwest economy, turned to manufacturing, and built canals to an agricultural frontier. It had Canal Era activities typical of Canal Era activities in Britain, Russia and the United States.
In the Canal Era, the economy of West Coast British North America was dominated by the fur trade, a common property staple export. In the middle of the Era, in 1822, the fur trade passed from Montreal to Hudson Bay, and the West Coast lost its connection with the eastern British North American colonies.
The distinctive characteristics of the north and south regional economies in the United States, as factors in political disintegration, were politically muted by the victory of the the North in the American Civil War at the end of the Canal Era. The distinctive characteristics of the regional economies of British North America, at the end of the Canal Era, were, and have continued to be, very long run economic factors in the disintegration of Canada.
The Canal Era in the Maritimes covers the period from the division of Nova Scotia into four colonies, in 1784, to the Charlottetown Conference. That is, from the American Revolution to Confederation. It covers the period in which the Maritimes were neither a part of New England nor of Canada. They were colonies in the British Empire, so they were not politically independent, but they were independent of any continental North American power. The Canal Era covers the final flowering of North Atlantic commerce in the Age of Sail, a flowering in which mercantilism transformed itself into laissez-faire in Britain, and into protectionism in emerging transcontinental economies. In these circumstances the Maritimes, especially Nova Scotia, aspired to mediate between continental North America and Britain in the economic activities characteristic of the last decades of Age of Sail. Mid nineteenth century growth in the Maritimes was not generated by the dynamics of early industrialism and canals, but by the dynamics of late mercantilism and the the last hurrah of the sailing ship.
From the beginning Nova Scotia exhibited the two-thirds-Yankee-one-third-British character that it held until the second half of the Canal Era. In 1755, because they supplied French forces at Louisbourg with provisions, and because they raided Dartmouth, killing several of the inhabitants, Acadians in the Annapolis Valley were rounded up and expelled. Their lands were portioned out to New England settlers. After the fall of Louisbourg, Isle St. Jean was captured and renamed Prince Edward Island. Yankees settled along the Bay of Fundy shore from St. John to the Isthmus of Chignecto. Scots, displaced by Highland enclosures, and some English, settled in Cape Breton and on Prince Edward Island. The South Shore (of Nova Scotia) was settled from New England. Halifax, the northern most point of the winter fishery, was English and Yankee until eventually engrossed with Scots and Irish. In 1772, three-quarters of the estimated 20,000 settlers in Nova Scotia were from New England. Acadian French, who had escaped expulsion or returned, made up the rest of the population.
Farming, fishing, and forest activities typical of New England in the period were taken up from the beginning. Masts were shipped to Britain from Halifax as early as 1772. Square timber first left Pictou in 1774. The New Englanders built ships, as they had in New England.
Settlement expanded in consequence of stress in other parts of the Empire. Following the American Revolution, United Empire Loyalists migrated northward, largely to New Brunswick. As the Scottish enclosures continued, the northeast received more settlers: Selkirk's Highlanders arriving in the 1820s. Famine in Ireland contributed its share of new arrivals, especially in the 1840s. By mid century the area had more than half of a million people: 277,000 in Nova Scotia, 194,000 in New Brunswick, and 72,000 on Prince Edward Island. There had been a five-fold increase between 1800 and 1850.
Immigration was a consequence of the advantages of the area for settlers, as well as of distress in the areas of origin. The advantages were not unqualified.
The constraint on settlement was not just want of arable land. The earliest settlers were soldiers, not the best of settlers in some cases, and they were located with a view to defence, rather than soil fertility and markets. Attenuated feudalism in the grant system caused further problems, in part because it encouraged speculation in unimproved lands, and in part because it created doubts about ownership. In the most agriculturally promising area, Prince Edward Island, problems with quit-rents and title drove settlers off the land into fishing and ship building, until 1806, when title, at least, was assured to those who worked the land. Even where title was secure and the land suitable, however, the Scottish crofters and the Irish who settled in the Maritimes were not well informed about advanced methods suited to frontier farming in North America.
For all of these reasons agriculture was weak, but subject to improvement. Loyalists and pre-Loyalist Yankees responded through recourse to the agricultural associations, the local fairs, and the agricultural publications that appeared in New England in the period. Following initiatives associated with the Scottish Enlightenment, which was contemporary with the Canal Era, Thomas McCulloch started a kind of agricultural college at Pictou. Given the general position of the Maritimes in contemporary adjustments in the British Empire, these efforts dove-tailed nicely with the ambitions of commercial interests in coastal towns, particularly in Halifax. In consequence, in the 1820s and 1830s, Nova Scotia experienced its `first industrial awakening' (Lomas.).
From one point of view, the policies of the period were the last hurrah of mercantilism in North America. With Bostonians out of the Empire, Haligonians hoped to take their place by having the old mercantilist rules applied against the rebellious colonies. Handling the fish and sugar trades, and the other commercial activities was not a problem for Nova Scotians. Developing an agricultural base that would allow Nova Scotia to substitute for New England in supplying the British and French West Indies was something else. Still, merchants and farmers co-operating, an effort was made. Because manufactured goods (barrels, ships effects, food stuffs) were also needed for the trade, there were clear grounds for co-operation between commercial, agricultural and manufacturing interests.
At first the Empire encouraged the aspirations of Nova Scotia, forbidding trade between the colonies and the United States. Even the United States co-operated at one point during the Napoleonic Wars by passing an Embargo Act that prohibited trade between United States citizens and the Empire. Still, England needed to escape the bounds placed on its new industrial development by its old mercantile system. It needed cheaper agricultural produce, and it needed markets for its growing output of manufactured goods. Britain's economic ties with its former American colonies were not easy to break. The Empire's swing toward free trade first came in the form of so-called free ports, through which goods could pass between the United States and parts of the Empire. The first such port was located in the West Indies, where the costs of New England's absence were most keenly felt. By the 1840s, there were free ports in the Maritimes, and the goal of commerce was no longer to replace New England, but to be the entrepot between New England and the Empire.
Nova Scotia's own commercial interests turned to a policy of free trade. In the 1840s, when Canada was producing a surplus of wheat and other produce for export, and when United States wheat could be milled in Canada and sold as Canadian flour within the Empire, Maritime shipping turned its attention away from the possibilities of local produce. Every port on the Nova Scotia coast petitioned to be a free port. Free trade was adopted in England in the 1840s, and between Canada and the Maritime colonies in 1849. Overexpansion to meet the new situation caused ominous problems during the financial crisis of 1849, but these first signs of fundamental weakness passed with the arrival of Reciprocity and prosperity after 1852.
By the late 1840s the earlier policy of complementary development of commerce, agriculture, and manufacturing was forgotten. Lieutenant Governor Harvey described the situation in a Speech from the Throne.
Nova Scotians are becoming to a large extent the carriers to Canada of tropical and foreign productions ... nature has designed Nova Scotia for a commercial country ... The farmer's sons in the midland counties, where shipbuilding is also carried on, become shipwrights, mariners, masters of coasters and plaistermen ... farther east the coal trade, the supply of West India produce to Canada or of agricultural products to Newfoundland offer the enterprising their attractions. The west has its grindstones, cord wood and other articles to carry to the United States.
Recovery not withstanding, the shape of things to come was evident in the depressed conditions of the late 1840s. There was a general `failure of trade' in 1848, with difficulties becoming evident in the timber trade in particular. In part the latter was a consequence of local factors. Nova Scotia had not retained feudal title to its forested areas. It had alienated them into private ownership as in the case of agricultural lands, but without comparably reliable surveys. The result was innumerable small operators outside of the possibility of government regulation, many of whom were unsure of their ownership, and, consequently, had little interest in conservation. They competitively slaughtered forests and glutted markets.
There may have been over expansion in the 1850s, as it is alleged there was in New England, during the California Gold Rush and the Crimean War. Even if there was not, however, factors terminating commercial expansion after the crisis of 1857 in New England also terminated expansion in Nova Scotia. The Clipper ships and the Blue Nose schooners, the West Indies trade, the chinaware trade, the whaling fleets, the ocean ports without rail connections to the interior of the continent, all became obsolete at once as the old mercantilist policies and empires passed from the scene.
Mid century commercial distractions notwithstanding, the possibilities of domestic agriculture and manufacturing in Nova Scotia were not forgotten in every sector of the economy, most of all not in the coal producing regions of the Northeast. In Cumberland County, arguments for free trade were matched by arguments for protection of naissant regional manufacturing interests. In 1838, these were involved in the production of flour and meal, spermacetti candles, nails, cordage, lines and twines, manila rope, paper, soap, candles, ale and porter, iron castings, brass castings, stoves, chain cables, furniture, shoes and boots, weaving apparel, tobacco and snuff, woolen and cotton cloth, hats, chocolate, wrought iron work, boats, blocks and woodwork, chairs, tin ware, wool and cotton cards, carriages, saddlery, coopers work, preserved and packed pork, beef, lard, butter, hams and cheese (Lomas, Appendix I.).
In these circumstances continental type economic policies, such as were adopted in Russia, the United States and Canada in the last half of the nineteenth century, were promoted and debated in the Nova Scotia press, particularly in 1851 and 1852. Commercial interests retained the upper hand in this, and defeated all protectionist measures presented in the legislature. In 1853, New Brunswick's movement towards a similar industrial development tariff was also defeated at the polls.
In the Maritimes, canals were never built. Protection was never adopted. The new world of transcontinental development was never more than a projection, and the Maritimes took the lead only temporarily as Imperial policy passed from mercantilism to free trade during the `last hurrah' of the Age of Sail.
Free trade won. Protectionism lost. Those who had dreamed of an integrated, balanced economy found themselves without support. And public support was necessary, because, despite its accomplishments, manufacturing remained a small part of the Maritimes economy. The Maritime market was too small for the larger scale operations that were associated with the steam engine, mechanization, and the factory system. Indeed, those who were most vocal in promoting the new protectionist policy knew that that was the case.
Before the canals could be built, railways became the chosen instrument of the promoters of a balanced Maritime economy. With railways, however, the need for a connection with the larger continental market was evident from the beginning. Joseph Howe began his campaign for a railway to Canada in the 1830s. Given the relative size and potential of the Maritime economy, he had to make a case for outside funding. He pointed to wasteful boondogling by private developers in the Canadas, and to the evils of private monopoly, and he called for government ownership and for an Imperial guarantee of the interest on the necessary issue of colonial bonds. Settlement was so sparse in the Maritimes, however, and the terrain so difficult to traverse that those with funds, including the Imperial government, would not support Howe.
Railways built in the Maritimes in the 1850s confirmed this judgement. As elsewhere, the first short lines were associated with coal mining: a very short line in Pictou in 1838, and six miles of railway connecting the Albion mines to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1839. In the 1850s, lines were built from Halifax to Truro and Windsor, from St. John to Shediac, from Shediac to Truro along the Isthmus of Chignecto, and from St. Andrews inland towards Woodstock. In every case the markets they served were too small to justify initial investments. Their promoters, and those who promoted general economic development with railway construction as a stimulant, clamoured for connections to larger continental markets.
The new world of iron, coal, and steam in transportation and manufacturing was beyond the capabilities of the individual Maritime colonies. This was the economic foundation of the move to Maritime Union that was to be discussed at the Charlottetown Conference in 1864. In fact, the new technology was beyond the collective capabilities of all the Maritime Provinces, taken together. This was the economic foundation of the move to Canadian federation that was actually discussed at Charlottetown.
The emergence of transcontinental national policies in Canada in the age of iron, coal and steam, responded to very long run factors in the Maritimes. Nonetheless, the consequences of those policies were not consonant with the projections of the development minded in that region. The dream and the realization passed to central Canada, leaving the Maritimes with an economy alien to, but dependent upon, a transcontinental nation.
During the Canal Era, agriculture in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island was a target of colonial policy. Policy improved, but did not fundamentally change the general situation. There were some roads in the Maritimes. There were railroads before the period ended. Nova Scotia had a surplus of coal, which it exported; and Bell Island iron ore was close enough by sea to supplement local deposits. There were financial means in the profits of commerce, and there were banks. That is to say, some of the elements commonly thought necessary for industrialization were present; but agriculture was relatively weak and, in consequence, the surplus for investment was small, and markets were too small to elicit the division of labour associated with the kind of economic development that occurred elsewhere during the Era.
Agricultural settlement in Nova Scotia was confined to valleys adjacent to the eroded mountain range that constitutes its principal geographical feature. In New Brunswick, agriculture was confined to narrow bands along its rivers. It flourished mainly along the St. John River, and in a small region about the east end of the Bay of Fundy. Prince Edward Island was simply too small to make the difference. Without a sufficient agricultural surplus to feed local industrial development, the Maritimes remained heavily dependent on exports of fish, minerals and forest products, and on commercial activity. There was a surplus in some lines of agriculture. Produce was exported as well as imported. Still, the critical level of productivity and population was not attained.
Halfway between Newfoundland, which had no agriculture to speak of, and New England, which was a self-sufficient exporter of agricultural produce, the Maritimes aspired to, but could not achieve the economic character of the latter. Still, the region to which it should be compared is New England. The Maritimes were settled under the attenuated feudalism of English America, as was New England, though even attenuated feudalism fell to dead letter status in the Maritimes after the American Revolution. The institutional, and general informational environments of economic development in the Maritimes, like the population, were two-thirds Yankee and one-third British. The technological environment was virtually identical with that of New England. The difference lay in geography: lack of arable land, and lack of a dependent, expanding agricultural frontier. The Maritime colonies were not like the Southern States which had an expanding continental agricultural frontier and agricultural staples that tied them to metropolitan Britain.
If the development of the Maritimes is seen as a derivative of improvements in transportation and of consequent commercial development, then its relatively weak agricultural base goes unnoticed. Its economics seems dominated by technology. The sailing ship, with its characteristic commodities, financial institutions, and trade patterns, gives way to the iron steam ship and the steam driven railway with their characteristic commodities, institutions and trade patterns; leaving the Maritimes technologically and economically obsolescent. In this view the Maritimes used Confederation to hitch its economic future to the rising star of continental Canada. Nova Scotia's developmental hiatus associated with weak agriculture and un-constructed canals is not denied in this reconstruction of history. It is ignored.
In another interpretation, the development of the Maritimes is seen to be crippled by the consequences of Confederation and the National Policy of 1878. In this view, the Maritimes is seen to have been manipulated into Confederation by Imperial policy, but, having entered Confederation, it has had to pay the price of Canada's excessive investment in transcontinental railways and settlement. The interpretation concludes that the viability of the Maritimes' shipping and commerce, evident up to 1860, could have been continued into the twentieth century, had it not been for the successful political machinations of central Canada in the early years of Canadian national policy. If some of the money spent in the West had been spent in the East, particularly on shipbuilding and trade, Canada would be richer and the Maritimes would have a just share of national wealth and economic activity. In this view, too, the developmental hiatus of the Canal Era is not denied. It is simply ignored.
Neither those who see Confederation as a good thing for the Maritimes, nor those who see its unfortunate consequences, avert to the independent role of agriculture in the economic differentiation and disintegration of Canada. Neither looks to the Canal Era for the key to the distinctiveness of the Maritime economy.
T.C. Haliburton's Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia, contains a contemporary assessment of the state of Nova Scotia's agriculture in the 1820s and 1830s.
Many of the Loyalists who emigrated to this Country, and experienced a total failure of their hopes, in consequence of their precipitate and ill-judged attempts to make the formation of towns precede the cultivation of the land, [successful standard practice in the expansion of New England settlement] returned in disgust to the United States. ... We do not desire immigrants. We require all the unoccupied land of Nova Scotia for the expansive growth of our own population. ... The high price of labour, the cheapness of American flour, the previous habits of the people, and the great demand which the fleet and army made during the late war, for beef and pork, all contributed to render grazing the predominant and favourite system of farming ... The sheep of Nova Scotia are exempt from many disorders to which they are subject in Britain ... Hants and King's and Annapolis Counties are particularly distinguished for extensive plantations of apple trees ... Cider forms a considerable export from those counties (pp.~359 ff.).
Haliburton has left us with a sort of census of farm stock in the period. In 1808: 6,763 horses, 75,364 sheep, 56,972 cattle, and 17,695 swine. In 1827: 12,951 horses, 173,731 sheep, 110,818 cattle, and 71,482 swine.
The point is that Haliburton, and the people around him, Thomas McCulloch, Joseph Howe, and the others, knew that something different was happening in their colony. As A.A. Lomas put it at the beginning of his study of the period,
Nova Scotians became increasingly aware of the economic weaknesses of (i) an agriculture which produced livestock for navy and garrisons rather than sufficient grain and produce for provincial peacetime consumption, of (ii) depending predominantly on primary production and bulk exports in exchange for manufactured goods, and (iii) of being too closely tied to Britain's economy by the remaining colonial trade restrictions.
What occurred during the Canal Era was a self-conscious attempt on the part of the Maritimes, of Nova Scotia, in particular, but of New Brunswick too, to achieve agricultural and industrial development. That is, to divert attention from overseas, commercial ventures, to domestic, land-based development. By the end of the Canal Era it was evident to Charles Tupper that continental type, industrial development was the key to the future, and that Nova Scotia could not achieve it without a continental connection. To Joseph Howe and his associates among the Halifax commercial elite, it seemed evident that the Maritimes would be economically and politically marginalized once the continental connection was made.
Under the circumstances, economic policy in the Maritimes waffled between maritime mercantilism, laissez-faire, and continental protectionism; the latter in what surely would have been a vain attempt to construct a continental economy without a continent.
It is estimated that, between 1770 and 1814, 500,000 Irish immigrants settled in British North America; between 1815 and 1863, 1,243,040; between 1864 and 1890, 606,311 (Guillet, p.~246). Over the whole period, Irish immigrants numbered 2,345,350, in the Canadas and the Maritimes. Since the entire population of Canada, in 1891, was 4,883,000, the Irish contribution cannot be considered insignificant.
The Maritime provinces were also recipients of Irish immigrants throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, but they did not industrialize to the same extent as Canada. It could be concluded from this that the availability of Irish Catholic immigrants was not the critical factor in the industrialization of either economy, and that other factors have to be sought in explaining the difference between the two.
The crude hypothesis to be rejected is that property-less, unskilled Irish Catholics, forced to emigrate in the darkest days of `the famine', saw no alternative in Canada to employment as wage labour. In consequence, they constituted the industrial proletariat necessary for expanding manufactures in the Montreal--Upper Canada economy during the Canal Era. One part of the hypothesis is that industrialization, of the sort that characterized Britain and the United States in the Canal Era, occurred in Canada, in that Era. Another part of the hypothesis is that the availability of immigrant Irish Catholic workers was the critical element in Canadian industrialization (Pentland.).
A contradictory hypothesis is that the Irish Catholics who came to Canada between 1846 and 1852 passed through Canada and across the virtually open borders of the United States, affecting the economic development of Canada hardly at all. Two thirds of the Irish in Canada, in 1847, were Protestant. In 1871, Protestants still accounted for two thirds of the Irish, and the pattern of Irish settlement and employment had not changed over the intervening years. The famine-peak, Catholic immigration of the 1840s and 1850s, in this contradictory hypothesis, made no difference (Akenson.).
Both hypotheses (as stated here) imply that there was a substantial difference in Irish immigration before and after 1845; that is, that the famine was a phenomenon of the late 1840s, and that there had not been agricultural distress, or distress of any kind, in Ireland, before 1845. This was not exactly the case, but the implication is not totally without foundation. There was serious agricultural distress at least from the turn of the century on, and there was emigration from Ireland over the whole of the first half of the nineteenth century. Those who could afford it left in the early years. Not all of those who could afford it were Protestant, though most were. Some, like those brought out as navies to dig the Rideau Canal, were Catholic and not well off (Mackay, p.~165.). In the late 1840s, the distress was more acute, and Catholics were a significantly larger portion of the emigrants.
The question is, did this difference in immigrants' characteristics, in both Canada and the Maritimes, constitute a critical element in their economic development? There are two parts to the answer. First, the character of the mid century immigration may have been somewhere between the all-Catholic-passing-through and all-Catholic-labourer-staying types that substantiate, separately, the two contradictory hypotheses. That is, in both Canada and the Maritimes, the immigrants may have stayed for a generation and then passed on. Second, because industrialization was different in the Maritimes, indeed, not really occurring in the Maritimes, the immigration pattern, being the same in both areas, could not have constituted a critical element in their economic development.
With respect to the first part of the answer, both Montreal and Toronto had Irish Catholic districts in the 1860s: Giffentown, near the factories by the Lachine Canal in Montreal, and Cabbage Town (to be) along the lake front in Toronto (Mackay, pp.~323--325.). Evidently some Catholics stayed and were wage labourers. Some, in fact, came before the 1840s and settled.
Of the 580 families in the southern region of Montague Township, where it follows the Rideau River near Smiths Falls, Catholics who had settled there early -- workers on the canal -- had the best lots and therefor prospered as well as or better than Protestants (MacKay, p.~326.).
It is an established hypothesis in the history of Canada that after Upper Canada was settled, about 1865, immigrants who had stayed in Canada for a generation or more moved on to the United States, as another wave of immigrants came from Europe. This `Displacement Theory' suggests that the Irish immigrants of the mid century stayed for the years between 1847 and 1867, and then moved to the frontier in the United States. Further, the three decades from 1840 to 1871 neatly enclose the period in which Crown lands in Canada were alienated by sale. The purpose of land sales was to prevent newcomers from immediately acquiring land, and to force them into the cities to work. The policy should be assumed to have had some effect. By the end of the period, even by the early 1860s, the frontier had moved into Michigan and beyond. When the mid century wave of immigrants were ready to purchase land there was little to be purchased. The Canadian frontier closed in the 1860s, and stayed closed until the Northwest opened up in the 1880s. In this light it is altogether possible that the immigrants of the mid century contributed their wage labour to Canada, between 1847 and 1871, and passed on, without leaving a mark on the pattern of settlement.
What is certain is that the Montreal-Upper Canada economy began industrializing in the 1850s, and that it emerged as the industrial core of Canada between 1870 and 1890, surpassing, perhaps eventually suppressing, industrialization in the Maritimes. What is in doubt is the role of Irish immigration in this. From this doubt rises the question, can anything be learned by examining the role of Irish immigration in the economic development of the Maritimes in the same period?
In general, the role of late Canal Era Irish immigration in the development of the Maritimes economy is as doubtful as its role in the development of the English-speaking Canadian economy.
Irish emigration to the Maritimes began early, before 1800. As in the case of the Canadas, the numbers migrating increased over the first half of the nineteenth century, and the percentage of Catholics among the migrants grew.
The first Irish in Nova Scotia (and New Brunswick) were Anglo-Irish Loyalists and, largely, Protestant. Although most of the Irish in early nineteenth century Halifax were Catholic, the city's mercantile and professional elite included many Protestant Irish. The migrants of the famine crisis years of 1847 through 1851, who arrived in Nova Scotia, truly did not stay. In 1877, the Irish constituted only one sixth to one fifth of Nova Scotia's combined English, Scottish and Irish population. If this were the only case to be considered, it could be concluded that Nova Scotia's long run relative weakness in manufacturing, which was in fact related to a scarcity of labour, was a consequence of its inability to attract immigrants in the mid century.
The early history of Irish immigration in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick was similar to that of Nova Scotia, except that the percentage of the population that was Irish was higher. In fact, both Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick petitioned the Crown to have their names changed to New Ireland. Despite the large number of loyal Protestants among the Irish in the two colonies, the republican tendencies of the Irish in Ireland seems to have convinced the Crown not to do so. Both Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick attracted immigrants in the crisis years from 1847 to 1851. By 1877, the Irish constituted close to one half of the Island's combined English, Scottish and Irish population, and about two thirds of New Brunswick's. Some of the mid-century immigration went into farming. Much of it went into expanding timber, lumber, ship building and shipping industries. Irish Catholic immigrants played a significant role in the labour supply necessary for industrialization in the two colonies. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, however, suffered from the long run, relative weakness in manufacturing that characterized Nova Scotia. Apparently, in the Maritimes, even where immigration played the role in industrialization that, in one interpretation, it is alleged to have played in Canadian industrialization, Canadian type industrialization did not occur.
In the last third of the nineteenth century, manufacturing grew faster in Nova Scotia than in New Brunswick, and faster in New Brunswick than in Prince Edward Island. In all three provinces, by 1900, it had fallen definitively behind Ontario's advance. In the long run, the availability of Irish Catholic immigrant labour did not make the critical difference between Maritime and Canadian industrialization.
Neither labour conditions nor the presence of a primary product export, specifically timber, made the critical difference in industrialization in the Maritimes and Canada, before 1866. Further, there was no substantial difference in the capitalistic and market oriented nature of economic institutions in the Maritimes and English-speaking Canada. There was a great difference, however in the availability of arable land, and in the consequent size of their respective markets.
`Reciprocity' between Canada and the United States, 1854 to 1866, was an episode in a long process by which Britain separated politically from North America while remaining economically united to it. As part of that process Canada asserted political autonomy, first with respect to the United States, and then with respect to Britain, without undermining the economic forces integrating the three economies. In the mid nineteenth century an implicit question in Imperial policy was, how to build an economic foundation in British North America that was consistent with continental British-American political realities? Internal contradictions in British North American economic policy became evident in Canada's adoption of the Galt tariff four years into the period covered by the Reciprocity Treaty. Continental integration was leveraged into the beginnings of transcontinental industrialization. In the Maritimes the basis for such leverage was missing. Protection was rejected, and the Reciprocity Treaty was significant largely for the access that it gave New England fishermen to Nova Scotian Waters.
For those who wish to show that the Maritimes have been unjustly damaged by Confederation and by the transcontinental national policies adopted by the federal government in Canada, the 1850s are seen as a period of prosperity for the Maritimes. Subsequent relative decline in the Maritimes, is seen to be a consequence of Confederation and the tariff structure of the National Policy. In an attempt to discredit this proposition, and to show that the Maritimes was better off in Confederation than out, S.A. Saunders argued that absence of trade barriers during Reciprocity was not the cause of prosperity in the Maritimes, in the 1850s. Other factors (the Crimean War, the onset of the United States Civil War, and a North American boom in railway construction) according to Saunders, raised demand for Maritime products quite apart from the Treaty. Whatever the merits of the sides in this debate, the evidence supplied by Saunders makes another point quite clear. The character of the Maritime economy did not change in the first half of the nineteenth century, not even under the stimulus of the numerous factors generating prosperity in the 1850s, whether Reciprocity was one of them or not.
There were some minor adjustments in the Maritime economy. The Opening of grain growing and stock raising areas of the mid continent, by canal and railway communications, changed the price structure of agricultural produce in the Maritimes, as it did in New England. Vegetables from all regions and oats from Prince Edward Island became the region's principal agricultural exports. New Brunswick continued to export largely timber, lumber and ships. Nova Scotia's principal export remained fish, though one-tenth its exports were coal and gypsum, and it had some agricultural exports. Shipbuilding and shipping remained an important part of the economies of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward island. The missing elements in the Maritimes economy, when compared to northeastern United States, were canals, manufactures, and a strong connection with the continental interior. The relative decline of the Maritimes economy occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century, not the second.
Having closely examined the data, Saunders concluded,
The overwhelming dependence of the Maritime provinces upon the United States as a source of supply rather than as an outlet for agricultural products is apparent. ... Despite the much greater dependence of the Maritime Provinces upon foreign trade, their exports per head to the United States were considerably lower than those of the Province of Canada. ... the relative scarcity of rich arable land, which made it more economical to purchase supplies from outside sources than to produce them locally. As the interior of the continent was opened up, Western grains and Western meats were poured into the market at prices that could not be met by local producers. The effect on the Maritime Provinces was obvious in the [eighteen]forties, and increased in strength during the remainder of the period. ... The Maritime provinces obtained most of their imports from Great Britain and the United States. From Great Britain came manufactured goods; from the United States food stuffs and, towards the end of the period, manufactured goods and re-exports from the West Indies and elsewhere. (Saunders, 1939, pp. 152, 254.).
Having a weak agricultural base, and no continental connections of its own, the Maritimes failed to participate in the industrial beginnings of the Canal Era. At the time of Confederation, that is at the beginning of the Railway Epoch, it was already behind. Subsequent attempts to bring it up have not succeeded, and the lag has remained a very long run factor in the disintegration of Canada.
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