This thesis attempts to revise the existing historiography of British Columbia by
first. establishing the growth and presence of a significant and diversified manufacturing
sector between 1860 and 1890 and second. by charting the relative and absolute
decline of the secondary manufacturing sector between 1890 and 1915.
It adds to the literature which argues that British Columbia has been an industrial
society since before the 1880's. Even by 1890 a higher percentage of British
Columbians were engaged in manufacturing than elsewhere in Canada and output per
capita in British Columbia exceded that of any other province. Comparing total
manufactured output. British Columbia moved from the seventh largest producer to
third among Canadian provinces in the three decades after 1880. Through the whole
study period British Columbia factories tended to be larger than their counterparts
elsewhere in Canada.
The core of the thesis describes the manufacturing sectors of British Columbia.
both primary and secondary. at an aggregate level utilizing census. directory. tax. and
credit data. In attempting to account for the pattern of growth and decline it considers
the two main approaches to Canadian political economy. the export base (staple)
approach and the dependency approach and concludes that a third, "production system."
approach inspired by recent work in economic anthropology provides a better
framework to discern the causal factors.
Utilizing the production system framework this thesis explores some of the reasons
for the decline of the secondary manufacturing sector after 1890 by using one of
the central industries. the boiler and engine industry. as a case study. The thesis
' identifies three factors that were important in explaining the decline of the boiler and
engine industry: discriminatory railway rates. high labour costs and. the transfer of
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ownership of much of the economy from local to non-local capitalists. This thesis
reveals that although regional manufacturers were responding to the relative prices of
transport and labour. these prices were the product of the interaction of social and
institutional factors located both within and without the region. The third factor. the
shift of ownership outside the region. is an example of how structural changes affect
the whole economy.
These three factors also point to a revised understanding of how regional industries
are linked to one another and how frontier regions or "peripheries" are linked to
the metropole. The increasing amount of ownership of the resource extractive. primary
processing and transportation industries by non-locals meant that linkages that formerly
connected these sectors to local manufacturers. were transferred outside the
region. The thesis concludes that these linkages are socially. rather than technologically
defined.
The thesis argues that the de-industrialization of British Columbia was one aspect
of a larger process which. viewed from central Canada. has been called "centralization".
Set in a global context the British Columbia experience was one part of an international
process which saw industry concentrate in other regions like southeastern Ontario. the
American northeast. and parts of Great Britain as it left regions which then became the
"periphery". / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/7802 |
| Date | 16 February 2017 |
| Creators | Lutz, John Sutton |
| Contributors | Baskerville, Peter A. (Peter Allan) |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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