A new book by Dr. Joshua MacFadyen, an associate professor in the Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture program in the Faculty of Arts at UPEI, examines the story of flax, a plant that went in a few decades from a specialty crop to one of the most commercially important farming products in a rapidly industrializing North America. Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent is published by McGill Queen’s University Press.
“Flax Americana touches on topics as diverse as Canadian Mennonites making homespun linen, escaped slaves and First Nations labourers participating in Ontario’s industrial transformation, and oilseed empires driving precarious agriculture into North and South American grasslands for the production of a luxury good—paint,” explained Dr. MacFadyen. “However, the book is really about what a deep dive into a single plant and the places that produced it can tell us about the emergence of commodity frontiers, industrial capitalism, and the modern world itself.”
Continue reading at University of Prince Edward Island.
Image via University of Prince Edward Island.