The Empire of the St Lawrence: A Study in Commerce and Politics

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The Empire of the St. Lawrence presents a compelling theory of
pre-Confederation development, grounded in Canadian geography and
informed by an understanding of the way in which the economic
opportunities and difficulties inherent in the continental and North
Atlantic environments shaped a succession of political responses that
culminated in Confederation.

History, for Donald Creighton, was the story of challenge and response.
For Creighton, the story of Canada between 1759 and 1849 was a great
historical drama in three acts. Part 1 of this reissue outlines the
strategy that the merchants of Quebec implemented to take advantage of
British hegemony over the eastern portion of the North American
continent. Part 2 details their responses to the divisive consequences
of the American Revolution, the division of Canada, the organization of
French-Canadian nationalism, and the impact all this had on the
mercantile community’s attempts to reorganize the commercial empire of
the St. Lawrence, so as to sell the new staples of timber and wheat into
a British market protected by the Old Colonial System.

Part 3 considers the tragedy that resulted when the British free trade
movement overturned the Old Colonial System at the end of the
1840s—the very moment when the merchants’ political and commercial
investments seemed about to pay off. The volume ends in 1849, with the
merchants in deep despair and the British connection in considerable
danger. Creighton went on to show how a Kingston Scot, John A.
Macdonald, responded to these bleak circumstances in his two-volume life
of Macdonald, The Young Politician and The Old Chieftain.

Sixty-seven years after its original publication, this iconic work
remains source of inspiration for students of Canadian history.