The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia 1710–1760 (review)

This study documents the tensions and violence that marked inter-ethnic interactions in Nova Scotia in the initial half-century of British rule, or rather attempted British rule, of the region. The complexity of the politics and conflict is revealed by John Grenier’s careful use of ethnonyms to designate players in that arena. Those officials and soldiers, part of the colonial establishment, whose origin is in Great Britain are referred to as Britons or British. New Englanders are designated Yankees or Americans. Francophone inhabitants of the maritimes, descendents of the initial French colonization of the area, are Acadians. Canadians is utilized to distinguish the inhabitants of New France from the Acadians, while French is reserved for those serving in the French colonial establishment, including priests, nuns, and brothers in the church hierarchy. All of these had to deal with the indigenous population, predominately the Mikmaq in Nova Scotia, but also including the Maliseet and Abenaki. Other complications enter the picture, such as the Mohawks from New York recruited to fight alongside the Yankee Rangers against Mikmaq and Acadians.

In 1710, in the midst of Queen Anne’s War (the War of Spanish Succession), a force of British marines and provincial troops from Massachusetts captured Port-Royal on what is now mainland Nova Scotia. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave Britain nominal control over the lands of mainland Nova Scotia, while άe Royale (Cape Breton Island) and the remainder of what is now maritime Canada remained in French hands. The British renamed the settlement they captured Annapolis Royal and its defenses Fort Anne in honour of their queen.

With their occupation of Annapolis Royal and their claim to the rest of Nova Scotia, the British faced two potentially hostile populations. On the one hand there were the mobile Mikmaq peoples, who had firmly embraced the Catholic faith and supported resident French missionaries. On the other hand there was the even-more Catholic francophone population, the Acadians, who had invested enormous amounts of labour to build dykes to hold back the sea while they wrested farmlands on the hostile Nova Scotia shores.

Britain was ruled by a Protestant monarchy, but the Stuarts living abroad still lay claim to the throne. Thus even in their homeland, Britons were anxious that all declare loyalty to the reigning monarch. They continually attempted to force the Acadian population to swear loyalty to the British throne, but for most of the period examined in this study they lacked the military might to compel the Acadians to do so. When Britain finally did have the power to enforce its will, the Acadians still refused the loyalty oath and the result was the expulsion of a large portion of the Nova Scotia Acadians from their homes to various distant lands, an event still remembered with bitterness by descendents of those who either escaped removal or later returned to Nova Scotia.

Grenier presents a picture of the British conquerors initially only able to exert any sort of control in the immediate vicinity of Fort Anne. Eventually fishing interests led the British and New Englanders to establish a presence at the opposite end of mainland Nova Scotia, at Canso. Between the formal wars, from the Treaty of Utrecht to King George’s War (the War of Austrian Succession 1744–1748) and then to the French and Indian War (in Europe the Seven Years War 1754–1763) tensions and open hostilities between British and Yankees on the one hand and Acadians and Mikmaq on the other persisted in the region.

The region never seems to have been really at peace, and Grenier’s chapter headings indicate the major periods of conflict in this 50-year war. These are the Maliseet-Mikmaw War, 1722–1726; King George’s War, 1744–1748; Father Le Loutre’s War, 1749–1755; and The Guerrilla War, 1755–1769 (the Seven Years War).

Some of the hostilities were encouraged by particularly belligerent leaders on both sides. Thus John Gorham led...