Hope and Deception in Conception Bay: Merchant-Settler Relations in Newfoundland, 1785-1855

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sean Cadigan sets out to challenge the view in Newfoundland history that
merchants opposed economic diversification in agriculture and
manipulated existing laws governing wages and liens in the fishery to
prevent inhabitants from becoming economically independent of their
control. Particular attention is given to “truck,” a system by which
merchants exchanged supplies, provisions, and capital goods in return
for the fish and oil of resident fishermen.

Long vilified as a system of “debt slavery,” truck has recently
undergone a rehabilitation of sorts, one that Cadigan reinforces here.
It is now recognized as having had advantages for both merchant and
inhabitant. Through truck, the merchant acquired what he needed for the
fish trade, and the inhabitant could engage labor for his fishing
operation. Later, as residents switched from servant labor to household
labor, credit provided the means to survive the fluctuations of an
uncertain economy. However, government administrators and later reform
politicians were convinced that truck gave merchants an economic
thralldom over Newfoundland fishermen and that the merchants discouraged
agriculture to prevent fishermen from acquiring the means to escape
their situation. Cadigan refers to this interpretation as a
“chimera,” one based in part on an erroneous faith in
Newfoundland’s agricultural potential. In fact, agriculture was
discouraged by a harsh climate and a thin, acidic soil. Nevertheless,
the belief that agriculture not only was possible but was deliberately
dis-couraged by a ruthless merchant class developed into a cornerstone
belief of early 19th-century reformers, who used the issue to promote
their reform agenda.

The resulting analysis is a complex one, for Cadigan attempts to
develop an analysis of the economic and legal relations between
merchants and fishermen that he simultaneously applies to an
interpretation of Newfoundland political history at the national level.
The result is not always convincing, for this approach imposes an almost
monocausal perspective on Newfoundland politics, one that Cadigan
stretches to the limits in his conclusion by discussing events outside
the timeframe defined in his title or supported by his evidence.
However, within the parameters of the social, economic, political, and
legal history of 18th- and early 19th-century Newfoundland, this is a
book of unquestioned importance.