Nineteenth-century Cape Breton : a historical geography ...

• Main Author: Hornsby, Stephen J.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2010
• Subjects: Breton Island
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0097287; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0097287

This thesis is an historical geography of Cape Breton Island in the nineteenth century. It aims to provide a geographical synthesis of the Island over a hundred years, elucidating the changing relationship between the Island's population and their environment. The Island is considered as a region and the scale of enquiry is at the regional level. The patterns of population, settlement, economy, and society are identified, and the processes that created them are discussed. Finally, the wider relevance of the Cape Breton experience is suggested. Three distinct and largely separate patterns of settlement, economy, and society coexisted in early nineteenth century Cape Breton: the old commercial staple trade of the cod fishery, semi-subsistent family-farms, and industrial coal mining. After the end of the French regime on the Island, British and Nova Scotian capital was invested in the inshore cod fishery, creating specialised fishing settlements, a fishing population, and an economy tied to distant, ...