Halifax Merchants and the Pursuit of Development, 1783&Ndash;1850
DAVID SUTHERLAND HalifaxMerchants and the Pursuitof Developme t, 7S-$5o THEIMAGE of the businessmanin Canadianhistory is in a stateof flux. Once viewed as the architectof nationhood,more recently he has tended to be portrayedas the agentof continentalassimilation.• Until now, assessmentof entrepreneurialperformance has largely concen- trated on activitieswithin centralCanada. This paper seeksto broaden the geographicscope of the inquiry by analyzingthe eighteenth-and early nineteenth-centurydevelopment strategy of the merchantcom- munity in Halifax, Nova Scotia.The inquiry seeksto establishthe extentto whichthis east-coast business Elite consciously attempted and in fact succeededin building a northern regional economydistinct from that of the United States.The analysisfocuses on the period betweenthe end of the American Revolutionand the coming of free trade. 2 Any assessmentof Halifax's functionmust begin with acknowledg- ment of its distinctivegeographic characteristics. Although endowed with a large,secure, ice-free harbour and situatedadjacent to the major transatlanticshipping lanes, the port suffersone crucialliability. Un- like the ports of the St Lawrence, Halifax lacks river accessto the • For classicstatements of the opposingpoints of view,see Donald Grant Creighton, TheEmpire of the St. Lawrence (Toronto • 956); R. Tom Naylor, TheHistory of Canadian Business,•867-•9•4, 2 vols. (Toronto •975). 2 Generalstudies dealing with Maritime regionaleconomic development include Harold AdamsInnis, TheCod Fisheries: The History of an InternationalEconomy (To- ronto • 94o); Gerald Sandford Graham, SeaPower and BritishNorth America, ß783 -• 82o: A Studyin BritishColonial Policy (Cambridge, Mass. • 94 •); Andrew Hill Clark, Acadia:The Geography of EarlyNova Scotia to ß 760 (Madison,Wisc. • 968); Robin F. Neill, 'NationalPolicy and RegionalDevelopment: A Footnoteto the Deutsch Reporton Maritime Union,'Journalof CanadianStudies, IX, •974, • •-•o.
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