Insular Exceptionalism

As the author points out, Bermuda has largely been ignored by historians. In this much-anticipated work, historian Michael J. Jarvis attempts to correct this oversight in a big book about a small island. He unravels Bermuda's social history from its settlement by Europeans through the end of the American Revolution. But there are several weaknesses (some of which lay beyond the control of the author) that make this effort less than fully successful or convincing.

In the first chapters, Jarvis traces the origins of the colony from its accidental occupation by the English in 1609, after a hurricane blew the aptly named Sea Venture onto its shores. The uninhabited islands seemed a paradise, providing the crew with plenty of food and a wonderfully healthy climate. In chapter one, the author patiently leads us through the early history of Bermuda, its period of government under the Somers Island Company, its brief period of tobacco production, the introduction of African labor, its shift to a coastal maritime trade in provisions between the mainland British colonies and the West Indies. In the second chapter, "Bermuda's Turn to the Sea," Jarvis considers how an agricultural economy transformed into a maritime economy as European farming depleted the island's fields. He points out how the transition to Crown rule on the islands was accompanied by increasing participation in maritime ventures, which might include piracy, salvage operations, smuggling, fishing, and the salt trade. The resultant prosperity brought distinctive island architecture and unique social relations, with women heading many households and enslaved Africans living with far fewer restrictions than in other colonies.

The heart of this book examines maritime trade and its influence on Bermudan society, both black and white. In the third and fourth chapters, Jarvis addresses the colony's maritime economy in more detail, discussing the distinctive Bermuda sloop, patterns of trade, manning Bermuda's vessels with both free whites and enslaved Africans, his conception of an "Atlantic Commons" involving the salt trade, salvaging shipwrecks, cutting timber, privateering, and whaling. He then moves on to Bermuda's populace as a maritime society in chapters five and six. Following in the intellectual wake of Danny Vickers, he assesses household wealth as well as the social costs associated with maritime societies: the preponderance of widows and the status of women on an island where the men were often absent. He then considers the familial connections Bermudians forged in North America and the West Indies in places like Charlestown and Statia, both among free white and enslaved black Bermudians. His point that the peoples of the Atlantic world were in motion, constantly forging and reforging social and economic ties, is well taken and aptly demonstrated by examples of Bermuda's unique architecture appearing in different seaports such as Norfolk, Virginia. One of the more interesting patterns that evolve from this exhaustive study is that Bermudians in the eighteenth century conducted remarkably little trade with Britain itself. The Bermudians operated a wide variety of maritime trades in the Western Hemisphere, far more closely linked to other colonial societies than to the imperial metropolis.

The last chapters place Bermuda within the struggles between the mainland colonies in North America and the British. In chapter seven, Jarvis considers the intriguing role of Bermuda in the War of Independence and the islanders' evolving relationship with British imperial authority. He ends with the decline of Bermuda in the wake of the Revolution and a brief conclusion on the development of maritime America. The struggle between Creole and imperial loyalties created considerable stress within Bermudan society, but the arrival of American Loyalists and British garrisons brought the island colony back within the colonial fold. The importance of Bermuda after 1783 would not be its role in supporting colonial economies, but as a British military base, with its most significant element the Royal Navy dockyard. A conclusion restates that Bermuda "is intrinsically interesting and important" and...