Divergent Paths: How Culture and Institutions Have Shaped North American Growth

Graham Adams, Jr., is a professor of American history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

In 1750, French Canada and the 13 Atlantic colonies, later states,
ranked as economic equals. A century later the eight most northerly
states had completely outdistanced both Quebec and the five most
southerly states. Cultural, religious, and institutional values, Marc
Egnal declares, played major roles in producing this divergence.

English Protestants in the northerly states believed in the concept of
“the calling”—that is, you best served God by working hard at your
vocation. This idea kindled an entrepreneurial spirit, which induced the
people in this region to develop a thriving commercial and industrial
capitalism that generated North America’s highest standard of living.

In contrast to the profit-driven north, both French Canada and the
American south emphasized hierarchy, tradition, and social order. In
French Canada, the nobility and the wealthier clergy employed the
seigneurial system to control vast tracts of land tilled by peasants.
The Catholic Church, which completely dominated education, disdained
business and steered its more talented students into the professions of
law, religion, and medicine. Quebec’s Quiet Revolution in the 1960s
broke the Church’s grip on education, and government took the
unprecedented step of encouraging entrepreneurial activity. In the
south, the ruling elite of plantation owners rested the region’s
social/economic system on Black slavery and made certain that nothing
disturbed the pre-eminence of agriculture. With the abolition of
slavery, landowners maintained their supremacy through the sharecrop
system. Change did not occur until the late 1940s, when mechanical
harvesting of cotton and tobacco undermined the cropper economy and
stimulated manufacturing.

Egnal tends to view entrepreneurialism as an engine of unalloyed
progress. He pays insufficient attention to the fact that unbridled
capitalism led to the 12-hour day, the six-day week, inadequate wages,
child labor, unhealthy working conditions, job insecurity, and a grossly
unequal distribution of wealth—all of which were mitigated chiefly by
government intervention. Nor does his work examine the deeper question
of whether assiduous money-getting represents the highest attainment of
society and serves as the ultimate measure of a civilization. This
criticism aside, the author has provided us with a highly valuable and
perceptive analysis of the evolution of these three important regions in
North America.