Economic golden age? Not in Nova Scotia

BY BRENT FOX

The Advertiser

NovaNewsNow.com

Maritime nationalists and romantics beware; there never was a Nova Scotia economic golden age.

Noted historian of the pre-Confederation Maritimes Dr. Julian Gwyn spoke to the Kings Historical Society’s annual general meeting Tuesday, May 27 on how he chose Maritime history as a field.

Gwyn had taught at the University of Ottawa until moving recently to Berwick. He is the author of a number of books on pre-Confederation Nova Scotia history, including Excessive Expectations: Maritime Commerce and the Economic Development of Nova Scotia, 1740-1870. The book notes that Nova Scotia’s economy was more limited than collective memory recognizes.

Gwyn pointed out that agriculture was the backbone of the province’s economy, more so than shipping.

The problem has included, however, the comparatively limited amount of good agricultural soil available in the province as a whole and the fact of the expulsion of the Acadians from the province in1755.

“Displacement of the Acadians in 1755 was a major blunder that set the economy back at least a generation,” Gwyn said. Their dyke culture was one of the most developed in North America at the time.

“Acadian agriculture was able to feed a rapidly growing population, and export to New England and Louisbourg.”

As for the motivation of the expulsion, Gwyn said, “the deportation was a poorly veiled land grab.” As well, many of those who took over the land were incompetent and many left.

The Golden Age myth

Gwyn said, “many doubt what I have said about Nova Scotia agriculture. Imagine, a Nova Scotia subject that’s controversial,” he quipped.

As for the myth of the pre-Confederation economic golden age, Gwyn said that such a thing would leave signs of conspicuous consumption. But the evidence isn’t there.

For example, Richard Uniacke’s house is evidence of an earlier era of about 1815.

“There was not a golden age, but a bronze moment of four years of full employment,” Gwyn said.

The railway project of the1850s had drained government resources. As well, Prince Edward Island outperformed Nova Scotia in agriculture. Newfoundland did so in fishing, and New Brunswick and Maine did so in forestry.

The province had ships all over the globe, but most of the shipping from here involved ports in the United States and the United Kingdom. Most of the money came from military projects.

On his way to choosing Nova Scotia scholarship, Gwyn acknowledged, “the study of Nova Scotia history was the making of me as a scholar.”

He noted he had read a book that had a profound effect on him in his younger years on writing history, and the message was that “before you look at the history, look at the historian.”

Needs controversy

Following studies at McGill and Oxford universities, he found that “unless history is controversial, it is dead history.”

So, he noted, his two theses – masters and doctoral, both on European issues – were dead history.

Gwyn became acquainted gradually with Nova Scotia history in the 1960s after he began university teaching. He was asked to do a report concerning Louisbourg, in the European context.

Until then, though his family had vacationed in western Nova Scotia, Gwyn hadn’t seen it as a focus of historical scholarship.

This changed when he found the amount of archival material in Britain. As far as studies of it went, though, there had been little beyond that in New England.

It was during this period that he met the late George Rawlyk, who was studying colonial and Maritime history.

It was soon apparent that colonial America was an increasing wealthy place, with the idea of “no taxation without -- or with -- representation” becoming popular.

As well, American historians of colonial topics focused on the original 13 Colonies, with little interest in the others such as Florida, Quebec or Newfoundland.

This has changed, Gwyn has found, because young American historians are more inclined to take an Atlantic view than before.