Cod is not the answer.

That isn't a mis-typing of "God is not the answer." Newfoundland's reason for existence was cod, and the mainspring of its economy was cod -- and the source of many of its problems was cod.

Newfoundland, like many parts of the British Empire, gradually developed self-government in the nineteenth century. By 1855, it had full charge of its internal affairs -- in effect, it was a dominion of the British Empire, just as Canada and Australia and New Zealand were or would become. But by 1933, it had done such a poor job of governing itself, and racked up such a huge public debt, that it could no longer function. In that year, it reverted to the status of colony and was run by a government committee set up largely by the crown -- "Commission of Government."

This book tells the story of that ninety year span of independence. It is one of the fullest books on the topic that I have seen.

That is not a recommendation.

For starters, it's a very tough read. Patrick O'Flaherty was a Professor of English, but he certainly doesn't seem to have studied the art of writing good prose. The text is very ponderous -- the average paragraph length is probably more than half the length of the (large) pages. There are few divisions in the text. The sentences are long. And he's always introducing people without telling us who they are; you have to know a lot of Newfoundland history to read this history.

I suppose writing a popular book that reads like a graduate school text might be acceptable if the content were better, but O'Flaherty also comes in with tremendous biases. He is the ultimate Newfoundland patriot. Yes, Newfoundland had no exports except cod, and no prospects of any, and it refused to market a reliable product -- but it doesn't matter; Newfoundland had a productive economy. Yes, Newfoundlanders kept electing scoundrels and political hacks like Premier Richard Squires, who would eventually be convicted of graft -- but it doesn't matter, Newfoundlanders always had good government. Newfoundland was far behind the rest of the British Empire in economic development -- but it doesn't matter, everyone was doing well. The book is a constant litany of things that went wrong -- and a constant refusal to admit that, when there are that many problems, there must be something deeper going on. (I'd nominate Newfoundland's ridiculous school system, which created religious schools for everyone, even if it meant that a town with only a two dozen school-age children had to have two or even three schools, Anglican and Catholic and maybe Methodist, so that the teachers were underpaid and inept; even in the early twentieth century, many Newfoundlanders were illiterate.)

O'Flaherty even denies the toxicity of the politics that led to Commission of Government. Maybe he's right that Newfoundland could have defaulted rather than selling its independence back to Britain -- but it really did need to get rid of the Squireses and Morrises who had gotten it into that mess, and Commission of Government did that. And Commission of Government did not force Newfoundland into the hands of Canada in 1949, when the Commission shut down; the people voted to join Canada. If Newfoundlanders were so great at self-government, why didn't they figure out a way to make it work? They had the choice.

Don't get me wrong. It saddens me that much of Newfoundland's culture was lost when it confederated with Canada. I wish it had not been so. But I don't delude myself with the notion that Newfoundland could have stayed as it was. And if O'Flaherty wanted to make that case, rather than his constant insinuations about why it should have been otherwise, he really should have tried to write a readable book to make his case! ( )