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Patriotism, Self-Interest and the ‘Empire Effect’: Britishness and British Decisions to Invest in Canada, 1867–1914

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03086534.2013.762155

1743-9329

Andrew Smith,

Scottish History and National Identity

Abstract This paper builds on the growing body of literature on the British World, which has shown that people in the dominions had a strong British identity and their claims to Britishness were recognised by people in the British Isles. It attempts to gauge the extent to which this British World identity influenced the global allocation of British capital. Much of the existing literature on British investment in the dominions dismisses the possibility that the pattern in Britain's capital exports was significantly affected by imperial patriotism. This article will suggest that imperial sentiment did indeed influence the destination of British capital exports. Imperialist sentiment influenced the legal and political institutions of the dominions in ways that encouraged British investment. Moreover, imperial ideology may have influenced investors' decisions in ways that the existing historiography does not adequately explore: at least some British investors may have been willing to accept a lower anticipated rate of return because they valued the psychological satisfaction of investing in territories that happened to be part of the British Empire. This article compares the experience of British investment in the United States, which has an ambiguous relationship with the British World, with that of investment in Canada with a view to understanding the impact of the British World identity on investment patterns. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Dimitry Anastakis, Bernard Attard, Andrew Dilley and Kevin Tennent, Vucetic's The Anglosphere was published too late to be incorporated into this article, but it substantially supports the case made here. Notes Buckner, Canada and the British Empire; Buckner and Francis, Canada and the British World and Rediscovering the British World; Fedorowich and Bridge, British World; Thompson, Empire Strikes Back. Adams, Bonar Law. Davis and Gallman, Evolving Financial Markets, Table 2:2–6, 67–68. Ibid., Table 2:2–7, 69. Ibid., Table 2:2–8, 70. These forces are discussed in Easterbrook and Aitken, Canadian Economic History, 400–407; Norrie, Owram and Emery, History of Canadian Economy, 186–203. Greasley and Oxley, ‘Tale of Two Dominions’; Simon, ‘New British Investment’. Brown, ‘Domestic Politics’, 392. Fenn's Compendium of the Funds, 253. Bordo and Rockoff, ‘Gold Standard’, 413. Ferguson and Schularick, ‘Empire Effect’. Wentworth, Representation of the Australian Colonies, 15. Toronto Globe, ‘A Needless Discussion’, 14 Sept. 1864, 2. Paish, ‘Great Britain's Capital Investments’, 177–78. Quotation from New York Times, ‘Great Britain's Investments’, 8 Jan. 1911. 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