The Spirit of Industry and Improvement: Liberal Government and Rural-Industrial Society, Nova Scotia, 1790-1862 (review)

Historians of colonial America have long debated the role of commercial production in the countryside and the nature of the transition to capitalist modernity in rural economies and societies. Readers of this journal will be aware that there are fundamentally two schools of thought on the question. On the one side are those who argue that the winds of change originated in the countryside, that the rural sector was innovative, individualistic, market oriented, and dynamic. Thus, the countryside launched capitalism not only in America, but also in the modern world. On the other side of the debate are those who argue that the winds of change blew in the opposite direction. Capitalism emerged first in the urban centers of Europe and America and from there penetrated the precapitalistic countryside. The refusal of those in the countryside to be part of the process of capitalist transformation has led many in this latter school to conclude that the ideas and activities of rural people were irrelevant to the coming of modernity in the New World.

In Canada, the tendency until recently has been to side with those in the latter school. The dominant paradigm of Canadian economic development—that is, Harold Innis's staple thesis—maintains that British North America was an extension of Europe, distinguished only by its abundance of natural resources and lack of capital, labor, technology, and markets. These factors along with the geographic contours of the vast northern territory led the first settlers to export a succession of staple products—fish, furs, timber, and wheat—to foreign markets. Capitalism came to Canada fully formed and uncontested. The focus of Innis and his many disciples, therefore, was firmly set on the commercial dimension of Canadian economic development.

In the past two decades, however, there has been a shift in the focus of Canadian historians as they turn their attention to developments outside of the commercial centers. The latest to do so is Daniel Samson. In his exceptional study of the making of liberal government in rural Nova Scotia between 1790 and 1862, Samson wades into the ongoing debate about the role of the countryside in the transition to capitalism. According to Samson, the coming of capitalist modernity was contested and entailed ambivalences, contradictions, ironies, and the use of force. In the process of making his case, Samson complicates and de-centers existing perspectives on state formation in North America, in part by dealing with the chaotic matter of the exercise of power. By examining the ideas and activities of rural people, Samson offers a view of change from the countryside rather than from the city, leading him to conclude that "capitalist modernity grew from within the countryside at least as much as it penetrated the countryside from without . . . modernity's seeds were firmly planted in many rural practices" (p. 6).

Samson's study concentrates on a region that extends some three hundred miles across northern Nova Scotia, from Joggins in Cumberland County to the northeast corner of Cape Breton. This region was economically and culturally diverse. Some people were poor and propertyless, while others had wealth and social status. Here traditional and modern practices met, clashed, merged, or existed side by side. The landscape was dotted with tree-filled hills, stony slopes, sandy plains, and some of the best and worst agricultural lands in Nova Scotia.

The region also possessed all the colony's coal. According to Samson, the coal-mining centers were more fully integrated into the countryside than previously maintained by historians. Miners farmed and farmers mined. The trade in coal began in the earliest days of settlement, carried out by poor settlers for their own use or for extra cash. The settlers left few records, but Samson uses what sources are available to paint a picture of the life...