AbstractsEconomics

Agriculture was tl1e basis of the economic structure of Canada from 1763 to 1783. During this period the habitants increased the amount of landunder cultivation and also the agricultural production, growing more wheat and keeping more livestock. A good market for these commodities placedthe habitant in a sound economic position. He must have been better fed and better housed than he had previously been. At the same time Britishimmigrants enriched themselves by trade in wheat, lumber, fish, oil, and furs, and at Montreal there grew up a community of substantial merchants.Undoubtedly the first two decades of British rule were ones of economic development. [...]