Frontier development

by Jeremy Adelman

This is a scholarly and stimulating study of settlement and expansion on the frontier lands in Canada and Argentina during their golden years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jeremy Adelman challenges many of the assumptions made about the economic 'success' of North America and the 'failure' of Latin America. Based on extensive primary research in Argentina, Canada, and Britain, Dr Adelman's book points to the central importance of property relations in economic history. The distribution, control, and use of land, labour, and capital shaped these emerging economies. At the centre of the analysis is the development of family farming in Canada, and large estates in Argentina. Each system presented opportunities and posed costs - Argentine estates proving more efficient than hitherto argued, while Canadian farms involved high social and economic costs. The approach taken here suggests directions for future research for comparative historians.