Book Launch: Flax Americana

Upstreet Craft Brewing, 41 Allen Street, Charlottetown, PEI
View Larger Map ›

Join Joshua MacFadyen at Upstreet Craft Brewing in Charlottestown for the launch of his new book Flax Americana: A History of the Fibre and Oil that Covered a Continent. 

Joshua MacFadyen is Canada Research Chair in Geospatial Humanities and associate professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prince Edward Island.

About the book

Farmers feed cities, but starting in the nineteenth century they painted them too. Flax from Canada and the northern United States produced fibre for textiles and linseed oil for paint - critical commodities in a century when wars were fought over fibre and when increased urbanization demanded expanded paint markets. Flax Americana re-examines the changing relationships between farmers, urban consumers, and the land through a narrative of Canada’s first and most important industrial crop. Read more >

“This is an impressive study of an important shift in the North American agrarian economy between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1920s. Readers will appreciate the care with which Joshua MacFadyen presents the environmental, economic and labour implications of this transnational agricultural sector and explores issues with novel methodologies.” Colin Coates, Glendon College, York University