The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island, 1864–1867: Leasehold Tenure in the New World by Ian Ross Robertson (review)

134 The Canadian Historical Review The Tenant League ofPrince Edward Island, 1864-1867: Leasehold Tenure in the New World. IAN Ross ROBERTSON. Toronto: University ofToronto Press 1996. Pp. xxi, 397, illus. $60.00 cloth, $24.95 paper Between the summer of 1864 and the spring of 1867, Prince Edward Islanders founded one of Canada's earliest and more successful popular, rural protest organizations. Marked by mass meetings, protests , 'agrarian outrages,' and successful acts of resistance against the civil authority, the period of this remarkable collectivity's existence appears to have been the defining moment in a century-long struggle against the feudal-like land system that defined colonial Island history. The issue for the tenants themselves was clear enough: the dismantling of the proprietary land system. But support was strong throughout much of Island society. Many townspeople and merchants, for example, recognized not only the immediate hardships for the tenants themselves but also the broader issues ofleasehold's effects on business and politics in an emerging liberal-capitalist society. Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of conventional parliamentary politics, Islanders shifted their strategy to a series of direct actions designed to force the settlement of the 'land question.' Robertson gives µs a rich and at times fascinating account of what otherwise might appear to have been little more than a minor insurrectionary footnote in Canadian history. And it is an amazing story. In the popular imagination, PEI does not leap to mind as a centre of radical politics; we think of the agrarian life, but not agrarian radicalism. But here we have a popular-based, political organization, numerous incidents of armed and unarmed resistance to the civil authority, and an apparent sea-change in Island politics clearly rooted in Tenant League activities. This is an important story that might broaden our understanding of the basis of rural political struggles in nineteenth-century British North America. As well, the work offers suggestive hints for the better exploration of the links between popular and institutional politics and makes an exhaustive case for the importance of the league in Canadian historiography. There are significant problems relating to context, however. Despite the empirical rigour and the richness of the evidence, Robertson fails to provide the contextual and analytical breadth necessary for this story to stand as it could. The case is made exhaustively, but the details overwhelm the analysis and interpretation. The promised international comparisons are made, but in remarkably narrow contexts that forgo the possibility of any real expansion of our understanding of the broader patterns of nineteenth-century rural unrest. The author's Book Reviews I35 concern with elevating the league's stature is overdetermined. There is little doubt that, ultimately, the Tenant League was the crucial and determining moment in the defeat of the proprietary system in PEI; and there is little doubt that Robertson has told the tale of one of Canada's great moments of popular resistance. Yet, having read the book, I'm not sure I really understand why the league even existed, much less why it succeeded. Apart from the league's obvious purpose, we are left to assume too much about its program and ideas. The answer appears to stem from the broader North American norm of individual landownership. But in this startlingly dehistoricised account, the league's success must emerge from its own immediate context. If we compare the league with other popular uprisings, the numbers of participants is impressive, but it still seems odd that the actual moments of resistance (which in and of themselves were relatively minor events) actually had the effect Robertson insists they had. I was left to wonder how we could understand the league's success when we were offered so little understanding of its background. It is disappointing that Robertson makes only a brief attempt to link this story with the broader debates on the place of land and property in nineteenth-century rural society, a literature that might have produced the richest comparative context for the league, its program, and its history. Pointing to a 'freeholder ideology' - supported, curiously, not by a league member but by the twentieth-century view of Sir Andrew MacPhail - as 'an example of the power...