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This study examines the changing mentalité as well as the shifting accumulation and political strategies of Canada's big bourgeoisie during the transformative period from 1917 to 1947. Engaging literatures from a range of disciplines and subfields within history, the study pursues biographical case studies of five leading business and political figures from different regions and associated with different sectors of the economy. The group includes Howard P. Robinson (1874-1950), Charles Dunning (1885-1958), Sir Edward Beatty (1877-1943), Sam McLaughlin (1871-1972), and C.D. Howe (1886- 1960). In an era when American investment surpassed British investment for the first time and created a new dependency for the country's economic elite, the crisis of the old political economy of the National Policy period became apparent as business leaders and institutions struggled to maintain their economic and political power. This challenge became more pronounced with the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of social democratic and socialist alternatives, including a strong labour movement. For members of the economic elite whose residual worldview was associated with finance capital, compromise on key issues was difficult and some members questioned the efficacy of democratic governance in a time of economic crisis, but the eventual political defeat of this response cleared the way for ideological and political adjustments. The tendency of the scholarly literature to focus on the themes of economic dependency and political continuity in this period has concealed the more complex story told in this study: of finance capital's political failure and the eventual triumph of a form of managerial capitalism that accepted government intervention without ceding ideological ground.
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This article reviews the book, "Smart Globalization: The Canadian Business and Economic History Experience," edited by Andrew Smith and Dimitry Anastakis.
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In the critical decades following the First World War, the Canadian political landscape was shifting in ways that significantly recast the relationship between big business and government. As public pressures changed the priorities of Canada's political parties, many of Canada's most powerful businessmen struggled to come to terms with a changing world that was less sympathetic to their ideas and interests than before. Dominion of Capital offers a new account of relations between government and business in Canada during a period of transition between the established expectations of the National Policy and the uncertain future of the twentieth century. Don Nerbas tells this fascinating story through close portraits of influential business and political figures of this period - including Howard P. Robinson, Charles Dunning, Sir Edward Beatty, R.S. McLaughlin, and C.D. Howe - that provide insight into how events in different sectors of the economy and regions of the country shaped the political outlook and strategies of the country's business elite. Drawing on business, political, social, and cultural history, Nerbas revises standard accounts of government-business relations in this period and sheds new light on the challenges facing big business in early twentieth-century Canada. --Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Big Business from Triumph to Crisis. Provincial Man of Mystery: Howard P. Robinson and the Politics of Capital in New Brunswick -- Charles A. Dunning: A Progressive in Business and Politics -- The Dilemma of Democracy: Sir Edward Beatty, the Railway Question, and National Government. Part 2: Continentalism and the Managerial Ethic. -- Stewardship and Dependency: Sam McLaughlin, General Motors, and the Labour Question -- Engineering Canada: C.D. Howe and Canadian Big Business -- Conclusion -- Après le déluge -- Endnotes.
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The article reviews the book, "The Rise of Canadian Business," by Graham D. Taylor.
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