Smart Globalization: The Canadian Business and Economic History Experience ed. by Andrew Smith and Dimitry Anastakis (review)

In their Introduction, Smith and Anastakis explain that the greatest direct influence on this book is the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, who has argued that selective globalisation is the best way for a country to develop. This is a middle way between neo-liberals who seek the removal of all barriers to international trade and investment and those who are totally opposed to globalisation. Rodrik does not explicitly draw upon the Canadian historical experience. However, the editors of this book believe that Canada provides a good case study of Rodrik’s concept of smart globalisation.

In the first chapter, Dilley shows how in the early years of the twentieth century the Canadian province of Ontario invested in the generation and distribution of cheap publicly generated hydroelectric power in order to force down prices by breaking the monopoly of a company owned by City of London investors. Dilley argues that the fact Ontario overcame the City’s opposition shows that in practice the first age of globalisation was not constrained by a ‘straitjacket’, as many have argued, including Rodrik, but was instead governed by a loose-fitting set of rules. The second chapter, by Mark Kuhlberg, provides evidence of the opposite of smart globalisation. His case study of the Ontario provincial government’s mismanagement of the spruce forests from 1890 to 1930 shows that wood was exported unprocessed, allowing the pulp and paper industries in the United States to gain the added value from manufacturing. Daryl White’s exploration, in the third chapter, of how Anglo-American tensions during the First World War led to change in the balance of power between American capital and the Canadian and Ontario governments in the relatively new Canadian nickel mining industry suggests that smart globalisation was sometimes an unintended policy outcome. The fourth chapter is a statistical study of the natural resources export-led growth linkages in north-western Ontario and South Australia during 1905–15. In the fifth chapter, Michael Hinton makes a very convincing case that the traditional view of the Canadian cotton industry as a failed infant industry is wrong. The sixth chapter is a study of how Canadian tariff and trade policy impacted on the making of a modern Canadian automotive industry. In the seventh chapter, Graham Taylor analyses the international expansion of the Seagram Company during the period 1933–95 and explains why it was ultimately unsuccessful. The final chapter by Matthew Bellamy analyses the Canadian brewing industry’s failure to globalise.

This book is a significant addition to the literature on Canadian economic and business history. The chapters by Dilley and Hinton are particularly insightful. It is therefore odd that the book has no conclusion – Smith and Anastakis have missed an opportunity to provide a framework for further research.