N Say
Posts: 0
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 12:40 am
there's a guy called RT Naylor (aka Tom Naylor) who apparently has done the definitive study on the creation of our branch-plant economy. It's his epic "History of Canadian Business 1867-1914". I've got it from my school library & it just about every chapter is like a book inside a book. There are hundred-page chapters with 240-300 sources at the end. & somehow people don't know about it! here's the description by from the publisher**:<br />
"This reissue, in one volume, of the 1975 classic tells the story, sometimes grand, more often sordid, of the development of Canadian big business--of banks and railways, industrial trusts and commercial cartels--from Confederation to the First World War. It is at once a treatise on economic development and of what would today be called white collar crime.<br />
Broadly praised and roundly condemned at the time of publication, The History of Canadian Business has been acknowledged by the Social Sciences Federation of Canda as one of the most outstanding works ever written in Canadian economic history, on par with Harold Innis' The Fur Trade in Canada.<br />
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Part I on the banks and finance capital, tells the story of the growth of the Canadian chartered banking system. Included is an analysis of the many bank failures, and an explanation of the techniques used successfully by the largest chartered banks to dominate banking and finance in the new Canadian confederation. Several chapters deal with hitherto unrecorded facets of the development of the financial system of Canada, the major financial institutions and the types of operations they financed.<br />
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Part II tells the story of the development of manufacturing and industry. The rapid growth of foreign branch plants which followed the National Policy are closely examined, as are business assistance measures like patent laws, tariffs, government subsidies and municipal 'bonusing.' Naylor offers detailed accounts of the rise of big business through the formation of cartels and mergers assembled out of smaller independent operations. This section includes Canada in the Post-Columbian Age which deals in part with the decline of the Canadian federal system."<br />
http://www.web.net/blackrosebooks/histcanb.htm<br />
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here's what Mel Watkins had to say about it:<br />
<B>"the Social Science Federation of Canada decides to honour the 20 most outstanding books among the some 2,000 titles that have been subsidized over the 50 years in which this has been done. Two books in Canadian economic history make the list. The first is the monumental Fur Trade in Canada by the great Harold Innis. The second is History of Canadian Business 1867-1914 by R.T. Naylor. Enough said. Read on."</B><br />
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** the publisher is Black Rose, which is a nonprofit collective, perhaps similar to South End Press in the US. They've got all kinds of other good radical stuff, including lots of environmental & anarchist books.
George Bush has declared the war on terrorism to be the cause of his generation. The cause of Canadian sovereignty will be ours. -- John Godfrey, MP for Don Valley West