Bryan D. Palmer - Capitalism & Colonialism: The Making of Modern Canada 1890-1960

Volume two of Bryan D. Palmer's trilogy on the history of Canada begins where the previous book left off. But, as Palmer immediately notes, Canada on the cusp of the twentieth century "was remarkably different than the disparate collection of British North American colonies" that had come out of the 17th century. Canada was now a fully fledged capitalist nation, with economic crises to prove it, and part of a global capitalist economy. Capitalism was "most assiduously cultivated in the open yeaes of the twentieth century" writes Palmer. The country "took off" economically in the period before 1914 and by every aspect of measurement the economy was growing. New technologies were introduced, whole new industries appeared, and class relations were "reconfigured".

The opening chapters explore this growth in different sectors. This was a period of class struggle from below and above, and one of consolidation of the economy. Palmer writes:

The layers of colonialism in which Canada was richly enveloped grew increasingly complicated, with capital imports rising to £100 million annually in 1911-1913. British capital supplied three-quarters of this influx... securing the loyalty of the Canadian chartered banks"... On the eve of the First World War, 60 per cent of Canada's government debt was held abroad, and servicing this borrowing consumed one-quarter of the country's export earnings.

At the same time the Canadian government was continuing and expanding its colonial control at home. New laws oppressed Indigenous people still further, and "Ottawa also worked diligently to extend the domination of the Dominion into the last frontier of capitalist exansion, an enclve of the preservation of Indigenous ways of life: the resource-rch North." Finally, "francophone Quebec" was further subordinated within the Confederation. There were also significant examples of workers' resistance and organisation in this period. But the key line of development was the increased centralisation and consolidation of capital.

While there were significant economic differences through the Canadian regions, there was a general growth in large corporations such as steel manufacturing, coal and industrial farming. But the wealth from these accrued to a small minority of the population. Hard work by miners, industrial workers and farmers drove capital accumulation, but they were not its main beneficiaries. Take farming. Palmer explains that on the prairies:

It was wheat... that proved the major engine of capital accumulation... the single most important crop enticing homesteaders. They settled on some ninety-nine million acres of land between 1870 and 1927, successfully patenting 58.2 million acres by 1930. Settlers bought more land than they acquired for free through federally overseen pre-emptions, with fifty million acres purchased from the railways, Hudson's Bayt Company and other agents... These lands, traditionally the territory of various First Nations, sustained the wheat economy of the Canadian west. Harvests of the prairies proved a juggernaut of capital formation for the railways and their beneficiaries, the monopolistic grain elevator owners who controlled the sales and distribution of what. Powerful interests like these bled farmers dry.

Such growth required massive numbers of workers. Between 1901 and 1931 Canada's population nearly doubled. Urban centres like Toronto and Vancouver grew at astonishing rates. The immigrants who came arrived from enormously different areas, and experienced appalling racism.

The prejudice and poverty faced by these recent arrivals disfigured Canada, the intolerance they confronted paralleling the marginalisation and discriminatory treatment accorded the country's original colonised peoples. Confederation's economic margins now included First Nations, Métis, Inuit, Québécois, the labouring poor, the immigrant masses, most Maritimers and wage-earning women, whose pay in the 1920s averaged 54-60 per cent that of males.

These immigrants had arrived hopeful of owning and farming land. The Canadian government "extolled the virues of European peasants as the kind of human material best suited to the settlement of the West" but most lacked the experience and resources and instead usually "ended up as itinerant harvesers... peripatetic railroad navvies...miners; or the lowest-paid labourers in industrial factories." 

There was, inevitably, a racist dimension too. These immigrants "became the racialised 'other', scapegoated in the social construction of a Canada htat had to be constantly remade in the image of a British Dominion championed as 'White, forever'."

One of the great strengths of Palmer's histories of Canada is his subtle exploration of the relationship between capital and colonisation. Thus he traces the impacts of capitalism's expansion on the First Nations, Métis and Innuit peoples and its impact on the workers. The growth of new industry, followed by the industrial decline and depopulation of the Maritimes or the expansion of capital and resource extraction into the North and the displacement and genocidal policies against the Innuit. These are handled with care and thought, and never once does Palmer dimminish the horror of what happened to First Nations, the oppressed and exploited. Canada's colonism wasn't just internally. It was central to expansion of the British Empire into the global south: "Sugar refineries in Canada, for instance, were at the centre of capital's expansion in the 1890-1914 years". Imports of sugar from Asia transformed the people and economies of places like Fiji. These were now part of the "sphere of influence" that Canadian capital cultivated. Canadian banks were at the forefront of expansion into South America and the Carribean. 

The middle part of the book covers the Great Depression and the horror experienced by working people in the 1930s, it also covers a great period of resistance. Massive strikes, in particular in the "year of rebellion" 1937, saw millions of workers fighting back over pay and conditions. This also saw an expression electorally with the growth of the Communist Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. Palmer traces the evolution of these groups, and their intersection, well. For those on the Canadian left this is probably a well trod path. For most of us outside of Canada it will be very new material. 

Canadian capitalism did not recover until World War Two. Palmer accurately describes this as "capital's saviour". But production of food, weapons and ammunition drove the Canadian economy to new heights, bringing new opportunities for women workers'. Economically it was also transformative. US capitalism spent "nearly $12 billion" in Canada during the war, which "helped keep the wartime domestic economy huming and further solidified the Dominion's integratin into a new continentalism, driven by rising American demand". Uranium mining in Canada also meant the country, and its government, became closely linked to the US atomic bomb programme. Coming out of the War the Canadian government needed to implement a Welfare State - much like in Britain, fear of further workers' rebellion fuelled the belief in reforms to buy off the potential threat. But it is striking to learn that so racist was the Canadian state that the original plans for Welfare did not even feature the poorest Canadian people - the First Nations.

By the end of the period, "obvious voices of anti-capitalism" and anti-colonialism were "quieted" and "in retreat". the left was weaker and the post-war consensous seemed to have gained for the trade union movement "much of what it had long sought to attain". But the 1960s were to be a "decade of tumultuous change and oppositional turmoil" and would see Indigenous movements, those of the oppressed and organised workers, and the left, grow and pose radical challenges. But, argues Palmer, these changes were all rooted in a the longer trajectory of colonialism and capitalism boom and slump across Canada.

This book tells a wonderful, if frustrating, story. In the face of a vicious, settler, state power, working and Indigenous people were sacrified to the interests of capital. Resistance was almost continuous. But with the exception of the period after World War One and the later 1930s, rebellion did not fundamentally challenge capital. Palmer tells the story of the few brave radicals who led that fight, and more emerges in the final period in the third volume. But this reader felt that there were too many missed opportunities for radical resistance.

I enjoyed volume two almost as much as Palmer's first volume. I was surprised at the ommission of two things. One was any mention of the experience of Canadian troops during World War One. I had expected that the slaughter in the trenches would have had a political impact back home, but this was not discussed. Secondly I was surprised that there was little discussion of far-right and Nazi politics in Canada in the 1930s. Was there such a movement like much of the rest of the world? Was there anti-fascist resistance? These omissions aside, Palmer's sweeping history is excellent.

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Palmer - Colonialism & Capitalism: Canada's Origins 1500-1890