Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists

The Rise of a Market Culture in Eastern Canada

Bibliographic Data

ID19929686
AuthorsBéatrice Craig (corresponding author)
Year2009
Pages320
Publication date2009-01-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBackwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press (PUBLISHER • CA)
DOI10.3138/9781442687394
OpenAlexW645220495
ISBN9781442687394
Open LibraryOL33427938M
LanguageEN
Citations received7

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a local economy made up of settlers, loggers, and business people from Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and New England was established on the banks of the Upper St. John River in an area known as the Madawaska Territory. This newly created economy was visibly part of the Atlantic capitalist system yet different in several major ways. In Backwoods Consumers and Homespun Capitalists, Beatrice Craig examines and describes this economy from its origins in the native fur trade, the growth of exportable wheat, the selling of food to new settlers, and of ton timbre to Britain. Craig vividly portrays the role of wives who sold fabric and clothing to farmers, loggers, and river drivers, helping to bolster the community. The construction of saw, grist, and carding mills, and the establishment of stores, boarding houses, and taverns are all viewed as steps in the development of what the author calls homespun capitalists. The territory also participated in the Atlantic economy as a consumer of Canadian, British, European, west and east Indian and American goods. This case study offers a unique examination of the emergence of capitalism and of a consumer society in a small, relatively remote community in the backwoods of New Brunswick

Archaeology · Business · Capitalism · Clothing · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Fur trade · Political science · Canadian Identity and History · History · Law · canada · Economic conditions · Rural conditions · Rural development

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