Explain how the economic situation in the 1860s would encourage the BNA Colonies to unite…
According to the article about the Canadian railways there was a need for transport and trade to be able to survive as people needed food and supplies from other places and so the railways needed to be built. This connected many towns and specifically the BNA colonies because the train traveled from one place to another and hence there was bound to be interaction between the colonies. Also Britain had tariffs on Canadian grain (corn law) about taxing the grain import from Canada lower than america to be able to level out the price. So the colonies united in an effort to lower/ completely take away the tax so that food wasn’t so expensive almost to the degree that people were going into starvation. It did bring economic depression though. The Reciprocity treaty was brought forth in an effort to bring Canada out of it economic strain and bringing america as a partner with it. Eventually they did sign it because they needed to sell the products from the British colonies and that brought confederation.
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