ABSTRACT
Arising out of this plenitude of fish and human activity, Innis’ monumental work The Cod Fishery: The History of an International Economy (1954) provides an interesting commentary on an industry that is now-on the east Coast of Canada in the 1990s-in a state of almost complete ecological and economic collapse. Innis’ emphasis on the cod as a staple in the colonial period can inform an environmental perspective on the political economy of depletion and dependence. Central to the correlations between Innis’ work and those based on depletion and dependence are the relationships of international political economy which promote overexploitation in particular geographic realities and natural processes, and at the same time, foster frameworks of dependence which leave local communities in exceedingly vulnerable positions as they attempt to cope with the aftermath of ecological and economic collapse. It is this condition of depletion and dependence which links the plight of Atlantic Canadian coastal communities with that of local cultures in the South as they struggle for survival in the context of resource overexploitation and international trade and debt arrangements.
