The Economic History of the Maritime Provinces

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

This study first appeared in 1939 as part of the work of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (the Roweli-Sirois Commission). It is now re-issued by Acadiensis Press, University of New Brunswick, with an introduction by T.W. Acheson in which he traces the career of S.A. Saunders.

The four sections comprise an historical summary of the economic development of the Maritimes followed by analysis of the basic industries, the manufacturing and service industries, and public finance in the region.

The work is both a monument to Saunders’ scholarship and an interesting product of its time. Like much else written between the wars it is unashamedly deterministic. Written within the framework of the staples thesis as developed by Harold Innis, the work now has a curiously dated flavour. It is statistical — in the descriptive rather than the analytical sense, of course; and because of its provenance it does not examine Newfoundland, which could have provided an interesting contrast to the Maritimes. But it remains a pioneer work of interest to economic historians and to those concerned with the evolution of regional economic thought in Canada.