Class conflict and colonialism : the coal miners of Vancouver Island during the Hudson's Bay Company era, 1848-1862
Date
1987
Authors
Burrill, William J.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
During the years 1848 to 1862 the Hudson's Bay Company began the mining of coal on Vancouver Island. In an attempt to assemble a skilled work force of coal miners, the Company sent out from Europe four separate groups of emigrant colliers. All of these men were bound to the Company by a written contract that imposed obligations and restrictions on both parties. This relationship was paternalistic. By the end of the period in question written contracts had become obsolete and the relationship between the miners and the Company had become a capitalist relationship.
This study is an analysis of that relationship and how it changed over time. The analysis was done within a theoretical framework originating in the ideas of Karl Marx. Principal amongst those ideas, and that which was used as an explanatory vehicle in this study, is Marx's concept of class. Class, according to Marx, is not only a social grouping of individuals but is also a relationship that exists between social groupings described as classes. This relationship is an exploitative relationship which involves the appropriation of surplus value, or profit, by the capitalist from the primary producer of the commodity being produced, in this case coal. Over the fifteen year period that the Company attempted to mine coal on Vancouver Island the means by which it appropriated the surplus value from the primary producers of the commodity, the coal miners, changed. The Company accomplished this by continuously reducing its obligations to the miners and the costs of those obligations. By the end of the period the sole nexus between the miners and the Company was purely cash payment.