Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
The staple approach to the study of economic history is primarily a Canadian innovation; indeed, it is Canada's most distinctive contribution to political economy. It is undeveloped in any explicit form in most countries where the export sector of the economy is or was dominant. The specific terminology—staple or staples approach, or theory, or thesis—is Canadian, and the persistence with which the theory has been applied by Canadian social scientists and historians is unique.
The leading innovator was the late Harold Innis in his brilliant pioneering historical studies, notably of the cod fisheries and the fur trade; others tilled the same vineyard3 but it is his work that has stamped the “school.” His concern was with the general impact on the economy and society of staple production. His method was to cast the net widely. The staple approach became a unifying theme of diffuse application rather than an analytic tool fashioned for specific uses. There was little attempt to limit its application by the use of an explicit framework. Methodologically, Innis' staple approach was more technological history writ large than a theory of economic growth in the conventional sense.
Financial assistance for the summer of 1961 is gratefully acknowledged from the Ford Foundation. For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am indebted to J. H. Dales, W. T. Easterbrook, J. I. McDonald, A. Rotstein, and S. G. Triantis of the University of Toronto and C. P. Kindleberger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1 The American economic historian, Guy S. Callender, however, devoted considerable attention to the importance of international and interregional trade in staples in the United States, an aspect of American growth which has been much neglected but has recently been revived by Douglass C. North. See Callender, , Selections from the Economic History of the United States, 1765-1860 (Boston, 1909)Google Scholar, and North, , The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1961).Google Scholar
2 See his The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1930; 2nd ed., 1956)Google Scholar; The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Toronto, 1940; 2nd ed., 1954).Google Scholar For a collection of his writings in the Canadian field, see Essays in Canadian Economic History (Toronto, 1957).Google Scholar For a complete bibliography of his writings, see Jane Ward, this Journal, XIX, May, 1953, 236–44.
3 W. A. Mackintosh is sometimes given credit as a co-founder of the staple theory; see his “Economic Factors in Canadian History,” Canadian Historical Review, IV, 03, 1923, 12–25 Google Scholar, and “Some Aspects of a Pioneer Economy,” this Journal, II, 11, 1936, 457–63.Google Scholar
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5 Kenneth Buckley makes this point strongly; see his “The Role of Staple Industries in Canada's Economic Development,” Journal of Economic History, XVIII, 12, 1958, 442.Google Scholar
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23 Note the Canadian mineral discoveries consequent on railway building and hence linked ultimately to the development of the western wheat economy.
24 On external diseconomies generated by an expanding sector when factor supplies are inelastic, see Fleming, Marcus, “External Economies and the Doctrine of Balanced Growth,” Economic Journal, LXV, 06, 1955, 241–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the character of export-led booms in Canada, see the literature cited in n. 17.
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