Merchant Credit and Labour Strategies in Historical Perspective

Maurice J. Scarlett is a professor of Geography at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland.

This volume results from a conference on merchant credit and labor
strategies held in St. John’s in August 1987, at Memorial University
of Newfoundland. Six conference sections are represented, three dealing
with the fisheries and one each with the fur trade, agricultural
communities, and mature economies. The time span is from late eighteenth
to mid-twentieth century, and the spatial range is from Virginia in the
United States through New England and southern Ontario to outport
Newfoundland. Contributors include geographers, historians,
sociologists, anthropologists, and economists. Not surprisingly, nearly
half are from Memorial University.

The approach the 17 papers take varies, but for the most part they have
a good deal of factual information marshalled to make a case. Theory is
largely absent. Some have a broad-brush approach, like McCalla’s
overview of rural credit and rural development in Upper Canada from 1790
to 1850; some, like Macdonald’s examination of Newman and Company’s
dealings on Newfoundland’s south coast from 1850 to 1884, are very
limited. All sections of the conference were followed by discussion, and
the invited commentaries and salient points of discussion are reprinted.

Overall, this conference brought together a wide range of scholarship
in an interdisciplinary context that appears to have been fruitful.
Despite the enormous disparities between the economies discussed—from
mature, as in New England, to relatively primitive, as in outport
Newfoundland—contributors addressed a common theme with success.

To the reader who was not present, this volume makes interesting
reading. The editor has put together a text free of error, with a
seven-page introduction that adequately outlines the themes and
viewpoints displayed. The conclusion, by J.M. Price, performs a useful
service by distinguishing between credit and truck, and by placing this
distinction in a wider context than most contributors had done.

The book is highly recommended. To the specialist, it is a valuable
bringing-together of the fruits of much painstaking research. To the
educated layman, it is a fascinating glimpse of an important topic.