Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T22:17:20.722Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Innis and Economics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

W. T. Easterbrook
W. T. Easterbrook*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Extract

Over the three decades of teaching and research allotted Harold Innis, no subject concerned him more than, the state of economics. He looked to economic history to enrich and broaden economic thought, and he sought to explain fashions in economics and to make economists intelligible to themselves. Although Veblen's influence left its mark on his work, Innis remained throughout a disciple of Adam Smith and no name appears more frequently in his observations on economics past and present. His plea was, as he put it, for “a general emphasis on a universal approach” and in his unfinished paper he writes, “The economic historian must test the tools of economic analysis by applying them to a broad canvas and by suggesting their possibilities and limitations when applied to other language or cultural groups.”

Apart from this search for perspective in economic thought there were other elements of continuity in Innis's thinking which give his life's work a coherence and a unity whether his interest centred on Canadian economic history or the duration powers of empires. It is scarcely necessary here to refer to his dislike of concentrations of power in any form or to his uncompromising belief in the free and creative powers of the individual, attitudes which stamp his research from beginning to untimely end. In his writings on economic history, technological change, free or controlled, links past and present. In his more specific references to economics, the pricing system provides the key to his reflections on the state of the subject. Early in his work there is present the same price-technology dichotomy that is to be found throughout Veblen's writings; later Innis sought to resolve this dichotomy in his studies of communication in which he saw technology and pricing as elements interacting with politics, law, and religion in a larger network of human relationships.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , August 1953 , pp. 291 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Association in London, June 5, 1953.

References

1 “The Decline in the Efficiency of Instruments Essential in Equilibrium,” American Economic Review, 05, 1953, 17–18.Google Scholar

2 Toronto, 1933.

3 The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (New Haven, 1930).Google Scholar

4 This appeared in Papers and Proceedings of the Canadian Political Science Association, VI, 1934, 17–31 Google Scholar and in revised form in the Introduction to the volume The Canadian Economy and Its Problems edited by Innis, H. A. and Plumptre, A. F. W. (Toronto, 1934).Google Scholar

5 The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Toronto and New Haven, 1940).Google Scholar

6 Journal of Economic History, vol. II, Supplement, 12, 1942, 1–33.Google Scholar

7 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada, 1947, Appendix A, Presidential Address, 83–108.Google Scholar

8 Oxford, 1950.

9 Brady, Alexander, “Harold Adams Innis, 1894–1952,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XIX, no. 1, 02, 1953, 92.Google Scholar

10 Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, X, no. 1, 1929, 56–68.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 64.

12 Ibid., 65.

13 Ibid., 66.

14 Ibid., 67.

15 Ibid., 66.

16 Commerce Journal, 1933, 5–8.Google Scholar

17 “A Bibliography of Thorstein Veblen,' 67–8.

18 Contributions to Canadian Economics, in University of Toronto Studies, History and Economics, II, 1929, 52.Google Scholar

19 A more complete survey would include reference to the influence of J. M. Clark. In the economics of overhead costs, Innis found much of the dynamic of change in both Canadian expansion westward and the spread of industrialized communications on a world scale. See Innis, H. A., “Unused Capacity as a Factor in Canadian Economic History,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, II, no. 1, 02, 1936, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Commerce Journal, 1936, 24–30.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 1936, 30.

22 Ibid., 1938, 5.

23 Ibid., 1938, 6.

24 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, IV, no. 3, 08, 1938, 299–319.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 307.

26 Ibid., 318.

27 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, VI, no. 1, 02, 1940, 95–6.Google Scholar

28 American Economic Review, 03, 1953, 180.Google Scholar

29 See his “Transportation as a Factor in Canadian Economic History,” Papers and Proceedings of the Canadian Political Science Association, III, 1931, 166–84Google Scholar, also his “Significant Factors in Canadian Economic Development,” Canadian Historical Review, XVIII, no. 4, 12, 1937, 374–84.Google Scholar

30 Empire and Communications, 5–6.

31 Journal of Economic History, vol. IV, Supplement, 12, 1944, 80–97.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 83–4.

33 Ibid., 86–7.

34 Ibid., 92.

35 Ibid., 97.

36 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, X, no. 1, 02, 1944, 107.Google Scholar

37 Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association, in American Economic Review, XLI, 05, 1951, 202.Google Scholar

38 International Journal, I, no. 1, 31.Google Scholar See also his “The Problem of Mutual Understanding with Russia,” Queen's Quarterly, LIII, no. 1, 1946, pp. 92–100.Google Scholar

39 “Reflections on Russia” in Political Economy in the Modern State (Toronto, 1946) 262.Google Scholar

40 Toronto, 1951.

41 Toronto, 1952.

42 There are strong suggestions of ideal type method in Innis's approach, e.g., his references to the oral tradition of Greece, the durable bureaucracy of the Byzantine Empire.

43 A Plea for Time. Sesquicentennial Lectures, University of New Brunswick. (Fredericton, 1950), 8.Google Scholar

45 “The Concept of Monopoly and Civilisation.” A paper read at a meeting under the chairmanship of ProfessorFebvre, Lucien, Paris, 07 6, 1951.Google Scholar

46 Review: Keynes, John Maynard, Two Memoirs—Dr. Melchior: A Defeated Enemy; and My Early Beliefs, in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XVI, no. 2, 02, 1950, 107–9.Google Scholar Also Review Article: “Sub Specie Temporis,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XVII, no. 4, 11, 1951, 553–7.Google Scholar

47 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XV, no. 4, 11, 1949, 457–76.Google Scholar

48 Sesquicentennial Lectures, University of New Brunswick. (Fredericton, 1950.)

49 The Common Law with its flexibility and receptivity to change, its emphasis on facts and their interpretation, favourable to the scientific tradition and to industrial development, is contrasted with Roman Law and its appeal to principles and its greater emphasis on continuity and duration.

50 “Charles Norris Cochrane, 1899–1945,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XII, no. 1, 02, 1946, 97.Google Scholar