An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia by Geoffrey Plank (review)

224 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 ration. In summary, Spirit Wars covers much ground rather well but is, certainly unintentionally, incomplete and somewhat misleading. Also, in assuming a reader with a background in Native religious traditions, the author is unwittingly presenting material, although brought up to date, which in the main is probably familiar to such a reader. (JORDAN PAPER) Geoffrey Plank. An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia University of Pennsylvania Press. x, 240. US $29.95 This is a book of subtleties and nuance in a field that has all too often been portrayed by historians in stark and misleading relief. Geoffrey Plank=s An Unsettled Conquest explores the British conquest of Acadia/Nova Scotia as >a process rather than a brief event.= The military conquest in 1710 of Port Royal, the administrative centre of Acadia, was followed three years later by the Treaty of Utrecht=s confirmation of the British claim to Nova Scotia B although with profound ambiguity over its boundaries. Plank traces the interrelationships of the post-1713 British regime in Nova Scotia with the non-British peoples of the region, the Acadians and the Mi=kmaq, as well as recognizing the important context of the French presence in Ile Royale. His analysis reaches forward to the era of the Acadian deportation (1755B63) and the last major phase of British-Mi=kmaq treaty-making (1760B61). While ascribing active and autonomous roles to the non-British peoples, Plank is also sensitive to the internal divisions that existed within each. In explaining the behaviour of British officers and officials, he strikes a balance among ideologies, shifts in imperial policy, and military pressures. >The Acadian removal,= Plank argues, >belongs to a particular moment in the evolution of British imperial policy,= following the repression of Catholicism in the Scottish Highlands during the 1740s and coinciding with a general increase in imperial use of violent measures against aboriginal North Americans. The British succeeded, the book concludes, in separating Acadians and Mi=kmaq from one another B and yet, >both became proud peoples, living on a continent dominated by Anglo-Americans and stubbornly remaining distinct.= Plank=s argument is convincing. The book=s treatment of imperial ideologies is surefooted, and is appropriately informed by recent scholarly reworkings of our understanding of the importance of the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707 and the resulting construction of a >British= identity. At the same time, frequent biographical explorations of individual governors of Nova Scotia give ideology a human aspect. Equally effective are the portrayals of the Acadian merchant Jacques Maurice Vigneau and the Mi=kmaq chief Jean-Baptiste Cope; while neither is presented as HUMANITIES 225 archetypical of his people, each provides an effective lens through which to examine the pressures and difficult choices of the 1750s. At all times, the complexity of loyalties in a fluid context of multicultural negotiation is made clear. Definitions of identity B either of places or of people B were never simple, and Plank is successful in teasing out the nuances of terminology that underwrote, for example, the description of Acadians as >French neutrals.= The book also adds significantly to the already voluminous literature on the Acadian deportation, both in its persuasive linkage of the deportation=s origins with the post-1746 pacification of the Scottish Highlands and in offering a new perspective on the vexed question of whether Acadian families were deliberately separated. >Strictly speaking,= Plank argues, >most of ... [the women and children] were never apprehended .= Rather, they were first separated from their imprisoned menfolk and only later instructed to find and accompany them in what amounted to a deliberate >family-breakup-and-reunion tactic.= There are passages that are less satisfying, although they are few and do not detract from the overall conviction carried by the author=s arguments. The most significant concern the British-Mi=kmaq treaties and the negotiations leading to them, which are discussed for the most part in general terms. More extended analysis, at a level of detail equivalent to the treatment of the Acadian deportation, might have yielded additional insights on ideology and intercultural exchange. Overall, however, Plank=s achievement is striking. This is a bold...