Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (review)

Readers of this journal might wonder why they should be interested in a monograph about Newfoundland. Yet, for anyone interested in the social and economic development of the early modern Atlantic world, Pope's Fish into Wine warrants a close reading on three counts: It is a brilliant and meticulous historical reconstruction of the seventeenth-century fishery; it offers new hooks for understanding the place of Newfoundland and the fishery in the Atlantic world; and it raises provocative questions about the meaning of modernity.

In the 1980s, archaeologists in Newfoundland and Labrador began major excavations at a number of early modern sites, most particularly at Ferryland on the Avalon Peninsula, where George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, first planted a settlement in 1621, and Red Bay, Labrador, where sixteenth-century Basque whalers had a large plant to render whale oil. Archaeological remains from these sites indicate a far higher level of European investment in the region than previously thought, thus forcing reassessments. Pope's book is the first major monograph that systematically reanalyzes the seventeenth-century documentary record against the archaeological record, using social and economic theory, and comparisons with developments elsewhere in the early modern world, to tease out the story.

The book's narrative thread centers on the Kirke family in Newfoundland. In the late sixteenth century, Gervais Kirke had commercial ties in England and France, which his five sons extended into the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. In 1638, David, the oldest, appropriated Baltimore's settlement at Ferryland, and substantially rebuilt and expanded the facilities, spending at least £10,000 over the approximately £20,000 that the Calverts had already invested. David Kirke, also involved in the trade in fish and wine between England, Newfoundland, and Spain, was probably the most prominent merchant to settle in Newfoundland and run a fishing plantation as a way to guarantee a regular supply of fish. His family resided at Ferryland until the French attacked the plantation in 1696 and took the surviving sons, George, David, and Phillip, to Plaisance, where they died in prison in 1697. For Pope, the challenge was to explain this "well-capitalized resident industry," which the standard historical interpretations of Newfoundland could not explain (8).

Pope contextualizes the Kirkes within the international trade in fish and wine, the competition for maritime laborers that produced high wages for men employed in the fishery, the local economy that made the consumption of tobacco and wine more commonplace in Newfoundland than in England, the diversification of the plantation fishing economy into agriculture and the hospitality trades, and the domestic and international struggles to control the fishery, one of the most productive of the transatlantic trades in the seventeenth century. Pope shows that settlement in Newfoundland was not episodic, but a continuous and consistent part of the English fishery beginning in the early seventeenth century. The society that emerged was stratified with a "merchant gentry" at the top who owned the largest plantations, employed the most laborers, and provided a modicum of governance, much of it through patron–client relations. Below them were small planters, equivalent to yeomen or tradesmen in England; a third class was divided between skilled and unskilled servants. The integration of these classes into capitalist and transatlantic networks made them integral parts of the emerging modern world rather than peripheral to it.

Fish into Wine exemplifies the best interdisciplinary work, in which apparent strengths can just as easily be weaknesses. Some of its comparisons are strained, but a book that is boldly conceived is preferable to one that is too cautiously argued. Fish into Wine is also a cautionary tale in an academic world where young scholars are urged to do interdisciplinary or comparative work but also required to publish quickly. These kinds of books are time-consuming to craft; Pope's took twenty years of steady work to complete. If the profession wants more interdisciplinary books, then...