Abstract
Export of capital from Britain saw the high wartermark between 1900 and 1914. It is well-known that Canada was the greatest importer of the British capital at that time. It was vital for young Canada, who had succeeded in forming a confederation only in 1867 and was confronted with the threat of economic annexation by the United States, to introduce voluminous foreign capital so that she might be able to build up independent 'national economy'. This paper is an attempt to analyze in terms of the process of reproduction the role of the British capital in Canada in the period of her extraordinary expansion, with the intention of detecting structural characteristics (i.e. basic contradictions) of Canadian capitalism. Consequently the subject of study here is confined to railway, iron and steel industry, and agriculture, all of which were most directly connected with the British capital. Canada, at the strong initiative of the Federal Government, concentrated the British capital, on speculative railway ventures to create demand for domestic industrial products, intending to foster iron and steel industry. Although that line of industry attained speedy development by virtue of British rentier capital (Leihekapital), subsidies from the Federal Government, and protective tariff, it gave way to American industrial capital with overwhelming productivity, and the latter came to hold almost complete dominion over the internal market of Canada by the time immediately before the War. On the other hand agriculture was reorganized by the Government in order that it might assume tbe basic part in inducing the British capital, the driving force of Canadian economic expansion, by exporting wheat to Britain. Thus the rapid advance of Canadian capitalism in this period inevitably deepened the following basic contradictions. (1) Managerial crisis, and increased dependence on the state, of the speculative railway ventures. (2) Virtual domination by the United States over Canadian iron and steel industry. (3) Upsurge of farmers' complaints against the state policy of industrialization. When the British capital was manifestly withdrawn from Canada after the First World War, Canadian capitalism hitherto dependent on the British capital was put under the pressure of necessity to make a great structural change, which brought as a corollary complete domination by the United States over Canadian economy.
