Flax Americana : a history of the fibre and oil that covered a continent / Joshua MacFadyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

MacFadyen, Joshua, author.

Series:

McGill-Queen's rural, wildland, and resource studies series ; 10.

McGill-Queen's Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies ; 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Flax industry--Canada--History.

Flax industry.

Flax industry--United States--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (291 pages).

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2018]

Summary:

Farmers feed cities, but starting in the nineteenth century they painted them too. Flax from Canada and the northern United States produced fibre for textiles and linseed oil for paint – critical commodities in a century when wars were fought over fibre and when increased urbanization demanded expanded paint markets. Flax Americana re-examines the changing relationships between farmers, urban consumers, and the land through a narrative of Canada's first and most important industrial crop. Initially a specialty crop grown by Mennonites and other communities on contracts for small-town mill complexes, flax became big business in the late nineteenth century as multinational linseed oil companies quickly displaced rural mills. Flax cultivation spread across the northern plains and prairies, particularly along the edges of dryland settlement, and then into similar ecosystems in South America's Pampas. Joshua MacFadyen's detailed examination of archival records reveals the complexity of a global commodity and its impact on the eastern Great Lakes and northern Great Plains. He demonstrates how international networks of scientists, businesses, and regulators attempted to predict and control the crop's frontier geography, how evolving consumer concerns about product quality and safety shaped the market and its regulations, and how the nature of each region encouraged some forms of business and limited others. The northern flax industry emerged because of border-crossing communities. By following the plant across countries and over time Flax Americana sheds new light on the ways that commodities, frontiers, and industrial capitalism shaped the modern world.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Edge of Industrialization

Everyday Exchanges

Flax Fabrications

Covering the Earth

Saving the Surface

Cover Crop

Saving Flax

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780773553958

0773553959

9780773553965

0773553967

OCLC:

1055044969