Merchant Capital, the State, and Labour in a British Colony: Servant-Master Relations and Capital Accumulation in Newfoundland’s Northeast-Coast Fishery, 1775-1799

• Published in: Journal of the Canadian Historical Association
• Main Author: Cadigan, Sean T.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: The Canadian Historical Association/La Société historique du Canada 1991
• Subjects: droit; hist; Newfoundland; Terre-Neuve
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7202/031026ar; http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/031026ar

This paper uses a case study of class struggle in the late-eighteenth-century Newfoundland fishery to examine the relationship between merchant capital and the employment of wage labour in staple production in early colonial development. Using a modified version of the staple model which emphasises the role of the class relations and institutional structures of staple industries on long-term development, it finds that British regulation of wages to protect the migratory fishery stymied the extensive employment of wage labour by resident planters. Evidence drawn from court records suggests that fishing servants used the law to prevent erosion of wages due from planters at the end of a fishing season by ignoring mandatory preseason contracts or account overcharges. Servants enjoyed less, but still formidable, success in winning suits brought about by masters for neglect. By using wage law beyond the intentions of its British makers, servants forced planters increasingly to rely on family labour rather than wage labour. The struggles of wage labourers with their employers, rather than merchant conservatism as such, contributed to Newfoundland's long-term domination by merchant truck with fishing families. La lutte des classes au sein des pêcheries de Terre-Neuve, à la fin du dix-huitième siècle, présente un cas privilégié pour l'étude des relations entre capital marchand et travail salarié, dans le secteur de l'extraction de matières premières, et dans le contexte d'une jeune colonie. Cet article met à profit une version amendée de la théorie de laproduction de matières premières ("staples"), qui jette un éclairage renouvelé sur le rôle des rapports de classe et des structures institutionnelles dans l'évolution à long terme de ce type de production. Il montre que les politiques britanniques de réglementation des salaires, liées à la protection des pêches migratoires, placèrent les maîtres locaux, qui utilisaient le travail salarié de façon extensive, dans l'impasse. Un examen des archives judiciaires fait ...