Brigus and the Labrador fishery : an anthropological and historical study

• Main Author: Lewis, Robert Munro
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 1988
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/7994/; https://research.library.mun.ca/7994/1/Lewis_RobertMunro.pdf; https://research.library.mun.ca/7994/3/Lewis_RobertMunro.pdf

The Labrador fishery carried out from Brigus, which was to a great extent, representative of the Conception Bay Labrador fishery as a whole, was both an extension and successor of the resident Newfoundland fishery. The resident fishery, in turn, was at first an extension and then a successor of the British migratory fishery at Newfoundland. The socio-economic relations of the Brigus Labrador fishery were, as its predecessors had been, essentially capitalist in nature and remained so through to, at least, the beginning of the Second World War. -- The British fishery at Newfoundland was initially a migratory fishery organized along capitalist lines. Under the conditions of the migratory fishery the economic relations which existed between capitalists and between capitalists and workers were governed by British maritime law, in particular the different applications of the concept of maritime lien. After 1610 the fishery at Newfoundland took on an increasingly settled character. In the seventeenth century the production of dried cod was increasingly carried out by inhabitants or planters and bye boat keepers, while the trade in fish at Newfoundland (i.e. export),.was conducted by Sack ships, fishing ships, traders from the American colonies of Britain, along with a growing population of resident merchants; the suppliers of the trade were merchants in England, fishing ships operating as migratory merchants, and resident merchants. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century the traditional ship fishery had virtually died out. -- Conception Bay and Brigus were the site of the earliest English settlement at Newfoundland and their pattern of settlement and growth are nearly synonymous with the English settlement at Newfoundland. The period from 1750 to 1870 was one marked by growth and prosperity for Newfoundland and Conception Bay. In this period the resident fishery came to dominate the fishery while the cod and seal fisheries were the central and predominant activities for virtually all of the island. For much of ...