Canada and the West Indies: Some Issues in International Economic Relations

xi It has been observed on the floor of this House, as well as out side this House, that as the nine teen th ce ntury has been the cen tury of the Unite dState s, so the twentieth century would be the centu ry of C anad a. - Sir Wilfred Laurier, Debates, 1905 Canada and the . West Indies SOME ISSUES IN INTERNATIONALECONOMIC RELATIONS HAVELOCK BREWSTER For almost two hundred years, that is, since the revolt of the American colonies, there has been continuous debate of varying intensity, on the economic relations between the West Indies and Canada. This debate has always centred on sugar and has always had its source in events of a political nature initiated in the United States or Britain.1 Regular trade between the West Indies and Canada began at the time of the American War of Independence when Britain attempted to stifle the rebellious colonies by diverting the West Indian American trade to Nova Scotia and by employing, in conflict with this aim, the Navigation Laws. The attempt was not very successful and in 1822 the West Indies and America Trade Act. opened West Indian ports to enumerated American commodities. The effect of abolishing the system of slavery in the British empire together with the new British policy of free trade which reached its high point with the complete removal of preferential duties in 1854 forced the West Indies to look for new markets. They looked to the United Journal of Canadian Studies xii Lastcentury madetheworl daneighbour hood; thisce ntury mustma keitabrothe rhood. - J.S. Woodsworth, University Magazine, 1917 States and Canada. And the Canadians, after they had been rebuffed by the Americans who in 1865 terminated the Elgin reciprocity treaty of 1854, turned to the Caribbean. British policy at this time left the West Indies very little room for manoeuvre. On the one hand, the policy of free trade abandoned them to the full blast of European beet sugar competition. But the trade was not really 'free', for the Germans , French and Austrians were heavily subsidizing beet sugar and the British saw nothing wrong with this version of 'pure competition'. By 1895 the price for sugar was a little more than£10 a ton and the import share of beet sugar had risen to 78 percent from 51 percent in 1885. On the other hand, negotiations with Canada were blocked for the interpretation of British commercial policy was that special (differential) trading relations were not permissible within the confines of the empire. And in practice, it was hardly more acceptable outside the empire, for though it had often been implied that West Indians should seek their economic interests in America, the Gladstone administration in 1885 vetoed the West Indian attempt to secure a special relationship with the United States on the ground that it conflicted with most favoured nation treatment in the Anglo-Belgian and Anglo-German trade treaties. Out of the irregular pattern of American tariffpolitics in the last quarter of the 19th century there came the reciprocity treaties of 1892 in 25 which the West Indian territories, represented by Britain, were involved. The law had scarcely been in force two years when the succeeding administration managed to bring it to an end, only to be revived five years later under somewhat different conditions. Under these (Kasson trea- ,.. ties) the West Indian territories negotiated preferences on sugar and molasses from 121/2 percent to 20 percent. They were never, however, realized for the Spanish-American War broke out and with it any hopes of a special trading relationship between the British colonies and the United States. For, following the war, the United States entered upon a series of preferential arrangements with Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines. The impasse was eased, where Chamberlain was unable to do so, by an altruistic Canadian offer in 1898 of a unilateral 25 percent preference on raw and refined empire sugar. This did, indeed , save many of the West Indian territories from economic disaster, though Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago were less precariously placed. We find, in fact, that in 1911 23 percent of West Indian exports went to Canada whereas only 3 percent went there in...