New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons (review)

As I write this review, controversy is brewing over a movement for greater integration of the provinces and states of northeastern North America. 'Atlantica,' the name given to this cross- border entity, is the imagined community of business leaders and think-tank gurus, who argue that free trade and globalization make such an initiative necessary if the region is to avoid being left behind in the race for economic development. While this volume is in no way linked to those promoting Atlantica – indeed the editors are careful to point out that a continental frame of reference is not necessarily a stalking-horse for a continental agenda – it stems from the same context, which prompted the Canadian-American Centre at the University of Maine in Orono and the Gorsebrook Research Centre at Saint Mary's University in Halifax to co-sponsor a conference on New England and the Maritimes, in April 2000. Eighteen of the papers presented at the conference are published here. Written by archaeologists, folklorists, historians, and geographers, they range widely across time and topic. Although they are not held together by any theoretical or methodological framework (and even the geographical boundaries are fluid), as a whole they convey the complicated and changing forces that have, for over eleven thousand years, influenced the region.

In their introduction, the editors briefly describe the long-standing academic interest in Maritime–New England relations and note the recent scholarly embrace of borderland, comparative, and transnational studies that inspire many of the essays in this volume. They also highlight the distinctions between United States and Canadian historiography that make a critical approach to connection and comparison so potentially rich in outcomes. For the most part, the essays probe specific topics: Aboriginal occupation of the region in the pre-contact period; New England soldiers in the St John River Valley following the conquest of Louisbourg in 1758; smuggling in the Bay of Fundy; Nova Scotia's efforts to expand trade with the United States in the mid-nineteenth century; Maritime out-migration to New England. Others look at the fate of peoples on the Canadian-us border after 1783: the Passamaqoddy in southern New Brunswick and Maine; Yankee, British, and French settlers in the upper St John River Valley; the cross-border operations of the Shaw brothers' leather tanning company. Colin Howell conceptualizes a northeast region defined by a sports culture that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A few brave souls take up the challenge of comparative studies: Julian Gwynn on the comparative economic advantage of Nova Scotia and New England from the 1720s to the 1860s; Scott See on nativism and collective violence in Maine, Nova Scotia, and Quebec in the mid-nineteenth century; Robert Babcock on Portland, Maine, and Saint John, New Brunswick, in the early industrial age; Deborah Tufts on fisheries policy in the Gulf of Maine; Bill Parenteau and Richard W. Judd on game management in New England and the Maritimes. Three contributors bring a welcome global perspective on regional developments. Elizabeth Mancke examines what she calls 'spaces of power' in the early modern period and in so doing places the region at the centre rather than at the margins of historical developments where it has for so long been consigned by a historiography focused on continental and national frameworks. Reginald Stewart and M. Brook Taylor, meanwhile, survey the changing trends in Canadian and United States historiography and argue for co-ordinating time frames for periodization to achieve a better understanding of a greater North American history. In a fine essay ending the volume, geographer Graeme Wynn draws upon his wide reading in the literature relating to empires, borderlands, and regions to offer some coherence to the whole. He gently prods scholars of Maritime–New England studies to bring more theoretical rigour and inclusivity to their analyses. It would also be useful to broaden the time frame to include the second half of...