The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy
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Published 1940
The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy is a 1940 book by Harold Innis.
After the publication of his book The Fur Trade in Canada (1930) Innis turned to a study of an earlier staple — the cod fished for centuries off the eastern coasts of North America.
Cod on a 1932 Newfoundland postage stamp.
The result was The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy, published 10 years after the fur trade study. Innis tells the detailed history of competing empires in the exploitation of a teeming, natural resource—a history that ranges over five hundred years. He begins by citing a report recounting John Cabot's 1497 voyage to North America that marvels about how "the sea there is swarming with fish, which can be taken not only with the net but in baskets let down with a stone, so that it sinks in the water."[2] This abundance attracted various European nations, but Spain dominated the fishery until the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The British then took over with the French and later, American colonists, as their main rivals.[3]
Throughout his 590-page study, Innis focuses on the complex inter-relationships among economics, culture and technology. He writes, for example, that the English were able to dominate the fishery after developing a method of curing their catches onshore, then transporting the dried fish to Mediterranean countries where there was a demand for a higher protein diet. This combined with consumer preferences for dried fish over cod packed in brine meant higher prices, especially in Catholic countries where the church required the regular consumption of fish. Thus, dried cod sold in Spain allowed England to receive substantial amounts of the precious metals that the Spanish were bringing from their colonies in the New World.[4] "Cod from Newfoundland was the lever by which she [England] wrested her share of the riches of the New World from Spain."[5]
Innis shows how the cod fishery was interwoven economically with the slave trade and international markets for such other products as sugar, tobacco and rum. He argues that rivalry between the British and the colonists in New England led to the American Revolution.[6] While his study of the fur trade focused on the continental interior with its interlocking rivers and lakes, The Cod Fisheries looks outward at global trade and empire showing the far-reaching effects of one staple product, both on imperial centres and on marginal colonies such as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England. Biographer, John Watson argues that the book foreshadowed Innis's later work exploring the relationships between communications technologies and the rise and fall of empires.[7]
Significance
Scholars have recognized Innis's extensive research on the cod fisheries as a seminal contribution to understanding its "role in the international economy and in the ebb and flow of empires" as well as in "the honing of a new, more critical perspective on economic development." After Innis's death, his colleague W. A. Mackintosh wrote that the depth of research in this book as well as in The Fur Trade in Canada would make them useful reference works "in the next century and beyond."[7][8][9]
1 2 Watson, Alexander, John. (2006). Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
↑ Macintosh, W.A. Journal of Political Economy 61 no.3 (1953) "Innis on Canadian Economic Development."
↑ Ivinson, Joshua. Historical Research vol. 94, no. 263 (February 2021) "To cleere the course scarse knowne’: a re-evaluation of Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Voyage of Master Hore’ and the development of English Atlantic enterprise in the early sixteenth century."
Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus Gadus, belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus Gadus is commonly not called cod.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada from the 1930s to 1960s, and continues to be a fundamental part of the Canadian political economic tradition.
The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a series of underwater plateaus south-east of the island of Newfoundland on the North American continental shelf. The Grand Banks are one of the world's richest fishing grounds, supporting Atlantic cod, swordfish, haddock and capelin, as well as shellfish, seabirds and sea mammals.
In economic development, the staples thesis is a theory of export-led growth. The theory "has its origins in research into Canadian social, political, and economic history carried out in Canadian universities...by members of what were then known as departments of political economy." From these groups of researchers, "the two most prominent scholars following this approach were Harold Innis and W.A. Mackintosh."
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
The 16th century in Canada saw the first contacts, since the Norsemen 500 years earlier, between the indigenous peoples in Canada living near the Atlantic coast and European fishermen, whalers, traders, and explorers.
Canadian historians until the 1960s tended to focus on the history of Canada's economy because of the far fewer political, economic, religious and military conflicts present in Canadian history than in other societies. Many of the most prominent English Canadian historians from this period were economic historians, such as Harold Innis, Donald Creighton and Arthur R. M. Lower.
An outport is the term given for a small coastal community in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Originally, the term was used for coastal communities on the island of Newfoundland, but the term has now been adopted for those on the mainland area of Labrador as well.
Fresh fish rapidly deteriorates unless some way can be found to preserve it. Drying is a method of food preservation that works by removing water from the food, which inhibits the growth of microorganisms. Open air drying using sun and wind has been practiced since ancient times to preserve food. Water is usually removed by evaporation but, in the case of freeze-drying, food is first frozen and then the water is removed by sublimation. Bacteria, yeasts and molds need the water in the food to grow, and drying effectively prevents them from surviving in the food.
Conche is a community on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Its population in 2021 was 149.
Dried and salted cod, sometimes referred to as salt cod or saltfish or salt dolly, is cod which has been preserved by drying after salting. Cod which has been dried without the addition of salt is stockfish. Salt cod was long a major export of the North Atlantic region, and has become an ingredient of many cuisines around the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean.
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador covers the period from habitation by Archaic peoples thousands of years ago to the present day.
The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History is a book written by Harold Innis covering the fur trade era in Canada from the early 16th century to the 1920s. First published in 1930, it comprehensively documents the history of fur trading while extending Innis's analysis of the economic and social implications of Canada's reliance on staple products. The book focuses on the far-reaching effects of new techniques and technologies in the contact between European and Indigenous civilizations and shows how co-operation and rivalries among French, English and Indigenous peoples shaped the history of the northern half of North America. Finally, the book tries to show how Canada emerged as a nation with boundaries largely determined by the fur trade. Canada, Innis argues, "emerged not in spite of geography, but because of it."
Harold Adams Innis was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communication theory. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of staples such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, mined metals and fossil fuels. Innis's communications writings explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC. But he warned that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity."
This page is a list of fishing topics.
Cod fishing in Newfoundland was carried out at a subsistence level for centuries, but large scale fishing began shortly after the European arrival in the North American continent in 1492, with the waters being found to be preternaturally plentiful, and ended after intense overfishing with the collapse of the fisheries in 1992.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it.
Cod fisheries are fisheries for cod. Cod is the common name for fish of the genus Gadus, belonging to the family Gadidae, and this article is confined to three species that belong to this genus: the Atlantic cod, the Pacific cod and the Greenland cod. Although there is a fourth species of the cod genus Gadus, Alaska pollock, it is commonly not called cod and therefore currently not covered here.
The Newfoundland Expedition also known as Bernard Drake's Newfoundland Expedition was an English naval expedition that took place during the beginning of the declared Anglo-Spanish War in the North Atlantic during summer and autumn of 1585. The area of conflict was situated mainly in an area known as the Grand Banks off present day Newfoundland. The aim of the expedition was to capture the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets. The expedition was a huge military and financial success and virtually removed the Spanish and Portuguese from these waters. In addition the raid had large consequences in terms of English colonial expansion and settlement.
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