Harold Innis and Staples Theory

This page is for use of my students in HIST 382: Canada, and also those in HIST 431: North American Plains. It explains the concept of staples theory and introduces its greatest exponent in Canada, the economist Harold Innis. Late in life Harold Innis became interested and influential in communication studies; his name is frequently coupled with that of Marshal MacLuhan, his colleague at the University of Toronto, for their powerful impact on thinking in that field. If you want to find out about all that, then check out this Harold Innis page. Our concern here is more with Innis's main contribution to the economic history of Canada, which is staples theory. Another page that explains staples theory can be found in Canada's Digital Collections.

Berger on Innis

In his classic work of Canadian historiography, The Writing of Canadian History, Carl Berger devotes a full chapter to Harold Innis. I draw here on Berger for an introductory discussion of Innis.

Some basic Innis bio: born 1894 on a farm in Ontario; died 1952 in Toronto; educated at McMaster University, Toronto; served in the artillery during World War I and was wounded in action; returned to do his master's in political economy at Chicago with a thesis on the CPR (which became his first book); served thereafter on the faculty of the University of Toronto; and, as an economic historian, published a succession of substantial works on major economic sectors in Canada.

Innis was a tireless, meticulous researcher and a vigorous, verbose writer. He also was an inveterate traveler who traveled to all parts of Canada (sometimes by canoe) and to major universities abroad to glean insights from field and academy. Berger says,

These travels to university centers in the old world and to the Canadian frontier highlighted the discrepancy Innis perceived between a political economy based on European experience and the distinctive requirements of an economic history of new countries. . . . New countries, Innis insisted, develop in relation to old countries. . . . The nexus was the staple commodity in demand in Europe and relatively easily exploited in Canada. Innis's call for an economic history more appropriate to Canadian experience was, in terms of cultural history, a direct parallel to the insistence of the painters of the Group of Seven for a more authentic, indigenous art freed from the bondage of European paradigms.

Now inserting my own comments: Like Frederick Jackson Turner in the U.S., Innis stands at the headwaters of Canadian national history. Canadian historians rejected Turnerian frontier historiography as an inapplicable Americanism and instead embraced the staples theory of Innis. The story of Canada became, at its heart, a story of political economy, how Canada developed through the successive exploitation of particular staples in demand by the distant metropolis. Key factors in determining how this staples story played out in Canada were technology (such as the railroad) and geography (availability of natural resources, opportunities or difficulties of transportation). Berger says,

Perhaps the main idea that historians took over from Innis was the belief that Canada developed not in spite of geography but because of it, that there was a naturalness and solidity to the very structure of the country that lay far deeper than political arrangements.

Major Works

Innis, Harold A. A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1923. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Though almost two centuries and a half elapsed between the date of the earliest attempt to discover the North-West Passage and the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, both occasions were landmarks in the spread of Western civilization over the northern half of North America. This spread of civilization was dependent on the geographic characteristics of the area and on the character and institutions of the people involved. The rapidity and direction of the growth of civilization were largely dominated by the physical characteristics, the geological formations, the climate, the topographical features, and the consequent flora and fauna which these conditions produced. . . . Early civilization was confined by these limits to three distinct areas. The Canadian Pacific Railroad was tangible evidence of the growth of civilization beyond these boundaries.

The history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad is primarily the history of the spread of western civilization over the northern half of the North American continent. The addition of technical equipment . . . was a cause and an effect of the strength and character of that civilization. The construction of the road was the result of the direction of energy to the conquest of geographic barriers.

On the whole, important as the movement in western Canada must become for the future development of the country, the dominance of eastern Canada over western Canada seems likely to persist. Western Canada has paid for the development of Canadian nationality, and it would appear that it must continue to pay. The acquisitiveness of eastern Canada shows little sign of abatement.

Innis, Harold A. The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930. Rev. Ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956.

The history of Canada has been profoundly influenced by the habits of an animal which very fittingly occupies a prominent place on her coat of arms.

Fundamentally the civilization of North America is the civilization of Europe and the interest of this volume is primarily in the effects of a vast new land area on European civilization. . . . The economic history of Canada has been dominated by the discrepancy between the centre and the margin of western civilization. . . . As a consequence, energy in the colony was drawn into the production of the staple commodity. . . . Canada remained British in spite of free trade and chiefly because she continued as an exporter of staples to a progressively industrialized mother country.

The northern half of North America remained British because of the importance of fur as a staple product. . . . Canada emerged as a political entity with boundaries largely determined by the fur trade.

Innis, Harold A. The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940. Rev. Ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954.

In a region with the extensive waterways which characterize the northern part of North America economic development is powerfully directed toward concentration on staples for export to more highly industrialized nations. It is not too much to say that European civilization left its impress on North America through its demand for staple products.

The history of the northeastern maritime region of North America has been dominated by the fishing industry, but it is significant that the cod (Gadus callarias Linnaeus), the staple fish, has secured recognition only grudgingly as the basis of economic development. . . . Whereas in Canada the beaver was fittingly chosen as a symbol of unity, in Newfoundland the cod was largely responsible for disunity.

The economic history of the regions adjacent to the submerged areas extending to the northeast of America's north Atlantic seaboard is in striking contrast to that of the continental regions.

The transition from dependence on a maritime economy to dependence on a continental economy has been slow, painful, and disastrous. . . . The effects of the tragedy of the replacement of commercialism by capitalism call for a long period of expensive readjustment and restoration.

HIST 382