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"The Limits of Rural Capitalism" is an important study of the social and economic development of the Municipality of Montcalm, a largely French-Canadian community in southern Manitoba. It challenges the view in prairie historiography that agriculture had commercialized before the west was opened to settlement, and that ethnic communities alone resisted the market's potential. Using a novel combination of demographic, financial, and legal evidence, Sylvester shows that both Ontario and Quebec migrants came west within family networks, and that neither economic individualism nor ethnic clustering overshadowed the importance of family strategies. In an environment where landed proprietorship was the norm, the demands of parents on the unpaid labour of their children constrained the growth of labour markets, and concerns for farm succession limited the accumulation of wealth.

In the shadow of an industrializing and urbanizing world, these people, who came mainly from the District of Montreal and eastern Ontario, sometimes via New England, raised large families, drew largely on the unpaid labour of kin, owned their own farms, limited financial entanglements with outsiders, and established multiple heirs. While household autonomy diminished over time, the limits of rural capitalism persisted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A leading example of Canadian rural history
One of the weaknesses of Canadian historiography is the way that history, political science and economics tend to be separated.There is less of the interdisciplinary approach which has done so much to benefit Anglo-American historiography since the sixties.As a consequence much analysis of economics and political science is confined by the abstractions of those disciplines, while much history tends to have a "high politics" or even frankly patriotic character.This has particularly hurt the study of rural history, where most Canadians lived before the second world war. Sylvester's monograph seeks to look more closely at the rural countryside.His book starts off promisingly by noting how American historiography has paid increasing attention to questions of how capitalist the countryside was.Sylvester looks at the francophone community of Montcalm, Manitoba, and he emphasizes that one cannot assume that the Canadian prairie was born capitalist.Instead the limits of rural capitalism persisted well into the twentieth century.He then goes on to helpfully discuss such matters as the demographics of prairie life, the limits of credit and commercial diversification, and how inheritance practices subtly changed as farmers sought to benefit their children while Montcalm society became more commercialized and less egalitarian.

All this is useful, but one wishes for more.There is not the kind of detail one finds in Christopher Clark's The Roots of Rural Capitalism, or Steven Hahn's The Roots of Southern Populism.Whereas class was central to these books, especially Hahn's, class and the details of commercialization are given much less focus.On questions like mutuality and common property there is almost nothing.More could have been said about divisions within the community; Sylvester prefers to concentrate on the family.More could have been said about gender:the most interesting role women play in Sylvester's account is when they inherit as wives.Indeed, there is rather little on capitalism per se, except to say that as long as most people were farmers they were not fully capitalist.A comparative account might lead one to suggest that in many ways 1880 Manitoba was clearly more capitalist that an 1880 Georgia struggling over the legacy of slavery.There is also surprisingly little on politics; there is a brief account of an election squabble in 1878 that led to bloodshed, but there is nothing on Progressivism, or the two party system, and next to nothing about rural registration.There is not much here about conflict at all. Considering that scholars such as Hahn, David Szatmary, Alan Taylor and Charles Sellars have seen "subsistence culture" as crucial to the rise of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, as well as later protest movements, the absence of such a discussion in Sylvester's account is striking.There are some comments on Catholicism and francophone identity, and there is a brief mention that most farmers did not appreciate the classical pretensions of francophone newspapers editors.There are some tantalizing accounts of francophone reaction to the first and second world wars, which seem to suggest a more national and anti-Petainiste attitude than one might have thought.But usually Catholicism and identity are taken for granted.Rather revealingly, when Sylvester talks about emigration to Winnipeg, he concentrates on the businesses that francophones formed, and not in their roles in unions or political parties.Much of the book is based on court records, and this unfortunately leads to a rather dry tone.Clearly, Canadian rural history is in no danger of running out of questions to answer. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Manitoba History, published by Manitoba Historical Society on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 1656 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Robert Wardhaugh, editor, Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture and History.(Book Review)
Author: S.C. Sharman
Publication: Manitoba History (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Manitoba Historical Society
Page: 45(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Manitoba History, published by Manitoba Historical Society on September 22, 2001. The length of the article is 1726 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940. (Reviews). (book review)
Author: David G. Burley
Publication: Manitoba History (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2001
Publisher: Manitoba Historical Society
Page: 39(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Chapters: Bigfoot, Music of Manitoba, Order of Manitoba, Music of Canada's Prairie Provinces, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, Franco-Manitoban, Manipogo, Manitoba Day Award, Royal Manitoba Winter Fair. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 56. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is purportedly an ape-like creature that inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid. The scientific community considers Bigfoot to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than a real creature. Scientific consensus does not support the posited existence of megafauna cryptids such as Bigfoot, because of the improbably large numbers necessary to maintain a breeding population, and because climate and food supply issues would make such purported creatures' survival in reported habitats unlikely. Nevertheless, Bigfoot is one of the more famous examples of a cryptid within cryptozoology and an enduring legend. A small minority of accredited scientists profess the view that evidence collected of alleged Bigfoot encounters warrants further evaluation and testing. Bigfoot is described in reports as a large hairy ape-like creature, ranging between 610 feet (23 m) tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds (230 kg), and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair. Alleged witnesses have described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, and a large, low-set forehead; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla. Bigfoot is commonly reported to have a strong, unpleasant smell by those who claim to have encountered it. The enormous footprints for which it is named hav...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=4009 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Labour/Le Travail, published by Canadian Committee on Labour History on March 22, 2003. The length of the article is 979 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940. (Reviews/Comptes Rendus).(Book Review) (book review)
Author: J.F. Conway
Publication: Labour/Le Travail (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2003
Publisher: Canadian Committee on Labour History
Page: 281(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on February 6, 2007. The length of the article is 1793 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: J-J-J-Joie de v-v-v-vivre! It's time to bundle up and celebrate Franco-Manitoba history and culture at the Festival du Voyageur; It's time to bundle up and celebrate Franco-Manitoba history and culture at the Festival du Voyageur.(Arts - Articles)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 6, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: d1

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