| This thesis traces the transformations in state, class, and politics in British North America from 1760-1860, and how these facilitated the emergence of wider economic change. Building on recent studies in political economy, Marxist and economic history, as well as historical sociology, it employs a class power model of historical change to explain how and why colonial Canada's political economy developed. The argument also draws upon comparative political economy to highlight how different class structures and different forms of political institutionalization shaped political economic regimes and long-run forms of economic growth.;By the mid-19th century, with greater autonomy, colonial governments across the North American colonies designed institutions, laws, and policies to improve taxation, build infrastructures, enhance the rule of law, and extend the contractual equalities necessary to commercialize the economy. With greater class embeddedness, broader class coalitions of agrarians and merchants actively reshaped agrarian property and agricultural labour to conform to the structures of a market economy, and enacted new market law to allow for the expansion of free labour markets, trade, commerce, and small manufacturing.;Looked at comparatively, the thesis claims, 19th century colonial British North America emerged as a 'Liberal Settler' society, led by a diverse coalition of agrarians and merchants. Despite its many state and class particularities, this crystallization of settlers, merchants, and Imperial market-directed politics made colonial Canada a variant of Britain's own liberal political economy, and very similar to other growing settler countries such as the United States. Exploring the connections between state, class, and politics, the thesis concludes, can tell us much about why and how these distinct historical patterns emerged, and why 19th century political economies changed in ways that fostered the development of capitalism.;The case study analysis of British North America within a wider comparative context demonstrates that class interests, institutions, and policy making were critical to state building and changes in state-society relations, above all to state 'autonomy' and class 'embeddedness'. Agrarians and commercial classes struggled over economic benefits and the reins of political power. But how these classes forged coalitions and how their conflicts were institutionalized within the state determined whether or not new productive dynamics emerged. |
