Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Commission of Government, Culture, and Place in Newfoundland, Canada, 1933-1949

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines Newfoundland's ambiguous position from 1933 to 1949, a crucial time period in its formation as a region and province. In 1933, following the Great Depression's catastrophic effects and Newfoundland's own impending bankruptcy, representative government in Newfoundland was suspended, as the Dominions Office in London concluded that Newfoundland needed large-scale social, economic, and political reform. In response, a six-man Commission of Government and governor was installed and remained in power until Newfoundland's Confederation with Canada in 1949. This period of Commission rule, although often overlooked, is key to wider debates in Canada over federal-provincial transfers and resource access, as well as broader controversies over Newfoundland's 'culture' and nationalist sentiment. It is also central to Newfoundland's current political, cultural, and economic situation within and beyond Canada. This project will investigate the Commission's role in transforming Newfoundland socially and economically. Through an analysis of Commission archives in Newfoundland and the Dominions Office in London, it will investigate how economic and social restructuring policies in Newfoundland were framed and understood by Commission officials, how such policies were applied and fought over across Newfoundland, and how they were linked to wider theories of development, ethnicity, and empire circulating in this time period. The analysis will focus on places in the archive where contest and protest over the Commission's legitimacy and actions are especially clear, seeking to understand why such challenges to Commission reform efforts were socially and geographically uneven across Newfoundland. In identifying these moments of contest and conflict in the archival record of Newfoundland's Commission government, the project will document and further investigate direct attempts by the Commission and those opposed to them to transform daily material life in Newfoundland. This research will provide new insight into Newfoundland's 'place' within and beyond Canada. By historically examining questions of economic modernization, cultural identity, sovereignty, and 'development' in Newfoundland, it will advance understandings of how and why the region has been framed as a traditional and backward place. Understanding these historical framings of Newfoundland matters even now, as despite rising standards of living and a greater measure of economic prosperity, Newfoundland continues to be seen as distinct within both a Canadian and North-American context. More broadly, this research will show how particular historical geographies are used to justify and legitimate certain paths of economic success, 'modernity,' and 'development'. The framings of Newfoundland produced during the Commission government and examined in this project endure into the present, with clear political, economic, and policy implications. Thus understanding the period of Commission rule sheds light on contemporary circumstances in this province at the margins of Canada but central to wider colonial and modernizing practices of the early twentieth century. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.