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Research Interests

Professor Forster is a specialist in Canadian business and economic history. His research interests include the social and legal history of business, business and government economic policy. He is currently working on history of Canadian furniture as cultural and industrial artifact.

Publications

A Conjunction of Interests: Business, politics, and tariffs 1825-1879 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1986).

From the Publisher

The advent of the National Policy in 1879 brought dramatic changes in the structure, magnitude, and objectives of Canada’s tarriff policy. No longer used primarily as a source of revenue for the government, tariffs on imported goods assumed a role as protector of Canadian industry against the encroachment of foreign imports on the Canadian market.
In this detailed account of events leading up to the adoption of the National Policy, Ben Forster explores a wide range of political and economic forces and traces their influence on successive Liberal and Conservative governments. He examines the pamphlet literature of the protectionists, the private correspondence of political leaders and protectionists, the public press of the day, and legislative journals and other public documents. He weaves the threads of various interests - business, industry, agriculture, and government - into a comprehensive account of the growth of protectionist feeling in Canada.
Forster's analysis illuminates a critical chapter in Canadian political history, one with implications for current discussion on import quotas, industrial policy, and free trade.

"The Diversity of Industrial Experience: Cabinet and Furniture Manufacture in Late-Nineteenth Century Ontario," with Kris Inwood, in Enterprise and Society Vol. 4 (2003): 326-371.

Doctoral Level supervisory privileges

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• bforster@uwo.ca