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Canadian Social History Series
Dominion of Capital

Dominion of Capital

The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947

by Don Nerbas

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Series: Canadian Social History Series

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

14 b&w illustrations

Digital download
9781442662803
Published: October 2013

Digital download
9781442662810
Published: December 2013

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Canadian Capital in the Age of Empire

Part One: Big Business from Triumph to Crisis

Chapter One
Provincial Man of Mystery:
Howard P. Robinson and the Politics of Capital in New Brunswick

Chapter Two
Charles A. Dunning:
A Progressive in Business and Politics

Chapter Three
The Dilemma of Democracy:
Sir Edward Beatty, the Railway Question, and National Government

Part Two: Continentalism and the Managerial Ethic

Chapter Four
Stewardship and Dependency:
Sam McLaughlin, General Motors, and the Labour Question

Chapter Five
Engineering Canada:
C.D. Howe and Canadian Big Business

Conclusion
Après le déluge

Endnotes

Don Nerbas is an associate professor and the St. Andrew’s Society / McEuen Scholarship Foundation Chair in Canadian-Scottish Studies in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University.

‘Don Nerbas has produced a lively work capable of appealing to undergraduates and the general public.’ ~Andrew Smith, Canadian Historical Review, vol 95:02:2014

‘This book will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students of history, political science, and business offering them a fresh perspective of historical developments that shaped an evolving relationship between capitalists and government during the twentieth century.’ ~Dustin Galer, Histoire sociale / Social History; vol 47:92:2014

‘This important contribution will be read with great profit by those both in and outside of Canada…The aims and goal here are laudable, the Dominion of Capital makes a great contribution to telling the story of the emergence of Canada’s more continental (branch plants and American investment) and mixed (with nationalized railways, for example) economy by the 1950s.’ ~Anastakis, American Historical Review October 2014

‘Nerbas’ volume is an important, thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of Canadian economic and business history in a neglected field of study.’
~Hugh Grant, Labour/Le Travail vol 74:2013