The History of Canadian Business: 1867-1914

by R.T. Naylor, Eric Kierans (Foreword by), Mel Watkins (Introduction)

This reissue in one volume of the 1975 classic tells the story, sometimes grand, more often sordid, of the development of Canadian big business - of banks and railways, industrial trusts and commercial cartels - from Confederation to the First World War. It is at once a treatise on economic development and of what would today be called white collar crime.
Broadly praised and roundly condemned at the time of publication, since then The History of Canadian Business has been acknowledged by the Social Sciences Federation of Canada as one of the most outstanding works ever written in Canadian economic history, on a par with Harold Innis's The Fur Trade In Canada.

358 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Laurent Carbonneau]

I will cop off the top that I did not read this cover to cover - it was for research for a book project - but this is a strong contribution to the corpus of Canadian economic history doorstops, with a strong development/dependency lens and a focus on the machinations and fractures of capital that sets it apart from liberal business history and more straightforwardly Marxist analysis. Particularly excellent in its treatment of post-Confederation development, the railways, the National Policy and the turn-0f-the-century economy.