1 STUDIES OF COLONIAL ATLANTIC CANADA of necessity often take a multidimensional and comparative approach. Scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries quickly discover that an adequate understanding of individuals or colonies is only possible by drawing upon British, American, Canadian and indigenous peoples’ histories. Several worlds must be brought into focus to develop the significance of actions or events somewhat at a distance from the usual historical mainstream. Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (Toronto, Buffalo and London, University of Toronto Press, 1998) and Ernest Clarke, The Siege of Fort Cumberland, 1776: An Episode in the American Revolution (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995) both reveal this sensitivity to the broader contexts. This awareness and approach is required in order to understand fully what to some may appear at first glance narrowly parochial. Furthermore, at a time when American and British historians are urging a broader and more comparative vision,1 and when there might be more than one Seymour M. Lipset out there who "does Canadian scholarship the unusual honour of taking it seriously",2 studies that can shift easily and convincingly from London to Boston to Pemaquid, or from London to Philadelphia to Fort Cumberland, may acquire the scholarly attention they merit.
2 To be sure, John Reid’s commitment to understanding the marginal and peripheral, to better appreciate what others consider the all-important heartland, has been a feature of his scholarly work throughout his career. But in this study of the life and times of Sir William Phips, co-authored with Emerson Baker, the two writers combine not necessarily to rehabilitate Phips but to explain the man and his actions in the context of the several worlds in which he operated. Given Phips’s own literacy limitations (learning to read and write late and with difficulty) and the gaps in what is known about the man, the circles in which he moved, and the at times mysterious terrain he traversed, a resourceful use of limited sources is required. Baker and Reid argue that their perspective is influenced as well by what we know about the non-English peoples of northeastern North America, whether Wabanaki or Acadian, the approach to marine history exemplified by Marcus Rediker, the findings of historians of "the monied interests" (p. xvii) so vital to a "projector" such as Phips who needed patronage and support, and the "ongoing re-examination" of New England’s social history. It is the authors’ belief that imperial history requires "a new and dynamic three-way relationship" between imperial, colonial and aboriginal historiographies (p. xix).
3 This is a rather ambitious undertaking, and the frequently maligned and underestimated Phips might not be the easiest historical figure to explain in a balanced and thorough fashion. C.P. Stacey’s Dictionary of Canadian Biography judgment concerning Phips’s energy and courage as well as his "considerable native ability", which were more than offset by his military ineptness and the reality that he was "ignorant, brutal, covetous and violent", seems to be the most widely accepted portrait of the "New England Knight".3 Baker and Reid respond to this challenge by careful integration of the writings concerning Phips, from his contemporary supporter and advocate Cotton Mather to his more numerous 20th-century detractors. Phips’s limited correspondence, perhaps largely the work of his personal secretary Benjamin Jackson, is blended with Phips’s own references as well as clues marshalled from every conceivable available source. At times this diligent reading of the historical record teases out only circumstantial evidence, but usually the analysis and conclusions of the writers are shrewd and convincing.
4 Phips’s life span (1651-95) was not overly long, and it was only in the mid-1680s that he achieved real prominence, although admittedly his emergence captured considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Good luck, good connections, good timing and a resilient ability to conceal shortcomings or even misdeeds, marked his fascinating rise. Born on the edge of New England in what is now Woolwich, Maine, Phips came from a family whose holdings were not quite the "despicable Plantation" described by Cotton Mather in order to accentuate Phips’s humble beginnings. And yet the six children prior to his father’s death, eventually joined by at least eight more children after Phips’s mother married her deceased husband’s business partner, meant a very limited economic inheritance. Life on the northeastern Massachusetts frontier, "among a sizable Wabanaki population and on Wabanaki sufferance" (p. 11), was far from secure. When later seeking and achieving positions of power, Phips would underline the economic potential of his childhood region for both Massachusetts and England’s benefit, if the Wabanaki could be subdued and the French removed.
5 To articulate such schemes, however, Phips had to attract the attention of the great by convincing words or deeds. The pen might be mightier than the sword but Phips’s limited education (charges of ignorance and near-illiteracy were frequently raised by his enemies) meant that others must embroider his deeds and his case for him. With relatives who did reasonably well in England, his family was not totally unconnected, but dynamic actions or service to the even more powerful were the keys to success, and Phips was quick to grasp these realities of the turbulent late-17th-century world. After completion of a four-year indenture to a shipbuilder, Phips was off to Boston where he married a young, childless widow with a modest estate of £81, the daughter of a Charlestown merchant with ties to Maine. Phips’s wife, Mary Spencer Hull, functioned as "deputy husband" during his long absences, a "strong and intelligent woman" who was very much his partner (p. 17). The normal Boston route to success and fortune was bypassed by Phips as he chose to embark upon the search for sunken treasure ships in the Caribbean. In 1686-87 his ship, literally, came in. Baker and Reid theorize that, with letters of introduction from family connections in England, Phips was able to enlist the support of prominent patrons such as Sir John Narborough and the Duke of Albemarle. The result was 30 tons of silver, valued at roughly £210,000, recovered and carried safely to England to be divided among participants, patrons and the royal treasury. Phips’s share amounted to £11,000 as well as a knighthood, bestowed by the grateful James II, and an appointment as provost marshal general of the Dominion of New England.
6 The New England knight’s exploits were now the talk of Boston and London but, strangely enough, it was old England rather than New England which proved the most consistently receptive and supportive. His triumphant return to Boston was marred by the contempt and hostility bestowed upon him by Dominion officials, such as the governor, Sir Edmund Andros. Before his resultant quick exit to England, Phips attended North Church in Boston, in early June of 1688, to hear Cotton Mather preach. An alliance was formed with the Mathers (Cotton’s father, Increase, was already in England presenting criticisms concerning the Dominion of New England) which would serve Phips very well indeed after the demise of Narborough and Albemarle. Increase Mather moved easily from lobbying James II to audiences with William III after the Glorious Revolution. The elder Mather met with Phips in London and became a major champion of his cause. This connection brought Phips access to influential transatlantic networks of dissenting clergy and merchants epitomized by Sir Henry Ashurst, Whig parliamentarian, London alderman, member of London’s "pre-eminent Presbyterian merchant family" and firm supporter of the critics of the Dominion of New England. Back in Boston by the spring of 1690, Phips capitalized upon the emergence of the revolutionary regime which had replaced the Dominion in April 1689. Admitted to membership in Cotton Mather’s North Church, Phips assumed command of a military expedition against Port Royal. His capture and plundering of the centre of French Acadia was followed by a seaborne attack on Quebec which ended in disaster in October 1690.
7 As a former resident of the area in constant dispute between the contending French and British empires, whose resident Wabanaki and Acadian populations were the "Peoples in Between", Phips attempted to implement the dreams and schemes which were to remain at the core of his proposals for the rest of his career. Cotton Mather captured accurately Phips’s desire to extend English rule over the northeast and New France itself when he wrote: "CANADA was as much written upon Sir William’s Heart as Callice, they said once, was upon Queen Mary’s" (p. 108). Baker and Reid present a well-rounded picture of these campaigns which clearly exposes their moral and military deficiencies, and the personal enrichment motivations of their subject, while at the same time making it clear that the Quebec defeat was not the total military fiasco sometimes assumed. Yet, when the smoke of battle clears, Phips emerges with a "cheap victory over a disabled and dispirited enemy" at Port Royal (p. 93) and a follow-up Canada expedition that was "ill-conceived and had disastrous results . . . [but] was no more shameful either in design or execution than comparable attempts by regular British forces in the same period" (p. 103). Under attack for his excesses at Port Royal and easily blamed for the Quebec defeat, Phips quickly departed from Boston for London in January of 1691 to escape rising allegations and debts.
8 Far from broken by the Canada adventure, Phips was on a new crusade to rally British support for another attempt at conquest. His timing was impeccable, as the ever active Increase Mather campaigned for the restoration of the Massachusetts charter and the Whitehall authorities were ready to make the changes that shaped Massachusetts for the remainder of its colonial history. In this period Phips demonstrated his abilities as a survivor and opportunist and revealed himself, Baker and Reid argue, as "far from the passive and indolent tool of Mather" (p. 132), although the importance of Increase Mather cannot be understated. Presented to Queen Mary as a loyal soldier, appearing before the Lords of Trade, active in discussions with Ashurst and the Earl of Nottingham, Phips emerged not as a discredited figure but as an acceptable candidate for the Massachusetts governorship under a revamped charter. In November 1691 he received Privy Council approval for his governor’s commission and departed for Boston in April 1692, a vindicated man.
9 Phips’s province took in everything from Cape Cod to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and he hoped to add Canada to it. Privately he looked to personal profit-making from the northeast’s resources. He was to be a governor rarely if ever "focused on Massachusetts itself to an extent unaffected by his interests farther north and east" (p. 110). Alas, his handling of domestic politics and other issues, despite his successful ending of the witch trials (an achievement which even Stacey praises), brought his limitations to the fore. In July 1694, Phips was recalled to England to answer various charges, and the following February he died in London prior to a Privy Council decision concerning his performance. During his governorship, Fort William Henry had been constructed at Pemaquid, a written peace treaty was signed by Wabanaki representatives, and some Acadians confirmed their allegiance to the English. Nevertheless, the northeast remained a contested area and the economic rewards that Phips and his London-based merchant backers anticipated never materialized. Likewise his pleas to be allowed to lead another Canada expedition went unheeded. Internally, accommodating the supporters of the old charter and the opposing royalist faction proved difficult if not impossible. Meanwhile, the usual rash of complaints flowed back to London concerning the abrasive and abusive governor. Throughout the study, Baker and Reid weigh and analyze Phips’s boorishness, random cruelties and undisciplined violent outbursts. Even his falling out with Richard Short has a more plausible explanation after their scrutiny. The governor’s much-reported confrontation and caning of Short, one of the complaints received in London, revealed not cruelty and violence but "the public chastisement of a disloyal client by a governor whose patronage powers were so weak that he could not afford to overlook Short’s change of heart, which had been at least partly inspired by the advice of an opposing political faction" (p. 215). Calculated verbal abuse was a common weapon used by Phips, they conclude, whereas personal violence was a rarity. Indeed the writers hint that with alienated patrons coming back on side and Phips as resourceful as ever in his own defence, Fitz-John Winthrop’s prediction that "all would have been well" had Phips lived might have been realized (p. 248).
10 Baker and Reid set out to write a "life and times", and their treatment of the times is more convincing than the life. While they seem to recognize the difficulty of converting a sow’s ear into a silk purse, their sometimes intricately argued explanations of the extenuating circumstances behind Phips’s more questionable actions read like a lawyer’s brief designed to secure the client at least a hung jury or some measure of exoneration. The man remains an enigmatic and ambiguous figure while his closest supporters, despite the authors’ intensive mining of limited sources, are not in clear enough focus to enlighten us concerning what characteristics of Phips brought these people to his side. Thus, his wife, his personal secretary, his London and Boston merchant supporters, and particularly, the Mathers, play supportive roles, but the explanation of their interest and dedication rarely moves beyond an obvious loyalty and immediate personal gain to a connection inspired by some deeper motivation or qualities of "PHIPPIUS MAXIMUS". Nonetheless, much new light is shed upon William Phips while, as a study of his times, Baker and Reid have made an outstanding contribution. Laid bare are the problems and triumphs of a promoter or projector of schemes in the late-17th-century empire, the intricacies of the colonial and imperial corridors of political power, the limitations of patron and political support on both sides of the Atlantic and the artful skills of a very uncourtier-like courtier. Above all, the more marginal, usually neglected, geographic part of New England, and the contested territory in between, are given the attention they deserve, while the Boston elite’s treatment of those from the periphery who do not quite fit shines forth. But if Boston was a hard nut to crack, Phips’s successes and the attention he received in England revealed the fluidity of advancement within the empire at this time. Far from revealing a "simple" or "ridiculous" figure, Phips’s career demonstrates that obscure colonials could aspire to achieve great things and were sometimes rewarded on the broader imperial stage.
11 In comparison, Ernest Clarke might seem to have chosen a much narrower theatre in examining what some consider a comic-opera affair on the remote isthmus of Chignecto almost a century later. Clarke’s prize-winning book, The Siege of Fort Cumberland, deals with the residents of Nova Scotia who were caught between their British mother country and their rebellious sister colonies in the early years of the American Revolution. A slave owner, farmer and representative of Cumberland township in the Nova Scotia assembly until 1775, Jonathan Eddy was a resident of the isthmus who voiced and led American patriot support in the colony. Seconded by John Allan, who was elected as a member for Cumberland in 1775 and a resident of the Chignecto area, their sympathy for the rebellious colonies and solicitation of American support almost made Nova Scotia the 14th colony to embrace revolution. Almost, but not quite. A hastily re-garrisoned Fort Cumberland, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, was recognized by all sides in 1776 as "the key to the whole province" (p. x). Clarke contends that the British fort and the surrounding area were geopolitically well placed to influence not only the Planter settlers, both Yankee and Yorkshire, in the immediate vicinity, but also the Acadian, Mi’kmaq and Maliseet residents throughout the colony, as well as other Nova Scotia communities listening intently to rumours of an American invasion. Moreover, in its ethnic complexity, economy and political divisions, the Chignecto area was representative of the province as a whole.
12 Consequently, while the reinforcement, siege and relief of Fort Cumberland might not rank as brilliant exercises in military history, the eventual British victory was a critical turning point in Nova Scotia’s loyalist course. The November 1776 defeat suffered by Jonathan Eddy’s invading force badly weakened "local republicanism", demonstrated the loyalty of the "planter majority" and caused "native nations" to handle American overtures and proposed alliances cautiously and noncommittally. Only at the head of the Bay of Fundy and well up the St. John River at Maugerville did substantial communities get an opportunity to greet an American army of liberation (if a force which grew in size from a few dozen to fewer than 200 men at its peak can be so described) and to declare their choice. In these areas and throughout Nova Scotia, Clarke attempts to measure the extent of the revolutionary contagion. Among Planter settlers, even where under the spell of the gospel of liberty and occupied or visited by Eddy’s army, he finds that a loyalist majority view prevailed or at least persisted.
13 Since the pleas and activities of revolutionary leaders such as Jonathan Eddy and John Allan attracted attention "from London to Philadelphia and from George Washington and George III" (p. x), Clarke deftly moves his study from Cumberland to Cambridge, from British naval vessels cruising the Bay of Fundy to Eddy’s rag-tag force moving out of Machias and along the Fundy coast. Part of the charm of Clarke’s writing is the way he transports the reader from the rebel side to Halifax deliberations, from within the walls of Fort Cumberland, where faithful loyalist residents gathered, to meeting halls in Massachusetts, where the Nova Scotian rebel requests for aid were considered. Throughout the narrative manoeuvres, Clarke demonstrates his gift for the poignant and ironic touch. While John Allan was wined and dined in Boston, for example, his poor wife huddled homeless in the woods with her five little children (the most recent arrival christened George Washington Allan) near their Chignecto farm, burned out by the counter-attacking Fort Cumberland British forces. Likewise Samuel Wethered carefully plotted a British cannon bombardment on his own tavern, visited by the besieged during the day and by the besiegers every evening. At Wethered’s signal, Fort Cumberland’s gunners were to open fire, but a premature candle in the windows brought bombardment not only while Eddy’s invaders were on their bar stools but while Wethered stood at his tavern bar. With half his buttocks blown away, Wethered died a lingering death, a poor reward for loyalism!
14 Clarke’s mastery of the primary sources and secondary literature combine with his abilities as a writer to re-create a brief 12-month period, and an even briefer siege, with verve and insight. Readers not so fortunate as this reviewer to reside in Westcock, within viewing distance of the Fort Cumberland site, might cry out for maps. Others might be jarred by the author’s quick leaps from land to sea and the details in both instances which enliven and delight but which, to some, might drown the analysis and final outcome. Blow by blow, however, Clarke guides us through a province where dissent did exist alongside loyalism, both of which were exacerbated by Governor Francis Legge’s capacity to alienate almost all parties. Dissent was strongest in Cumberland and Maugerville, although there were settlers in Cobequid, Pictou and Passamaquoddy also ripe for the revolutionary message. Changes in the governorship, the evacuation of Boston and the military and loyalist presence thus created in Halifax, the decision to re-garrison Fort Cumberland carried out in June 1776 — these all meant that while an attack was not expected in the late fall, the province was better prepared. On the other side, splits developed among the patriot supporters early on, with Eddy calling for an immediate American invasion while Allan took a more moderate approach and did not participate in the invasion when it came. American interest and support were critical, and George Washington, while receiving and listening to the entreaties and delegations issuing from Nova Scotia, never approved a substantial invasion force. The basic plan nonetheless remained an invasion of some sort, local leadership of a patriot army that would grow like a snowball, and a Native insurrection. Fort Cumberland was always the first objective, and its fall would be followed, it was assumed, by the rest of the colony dropping like a ripe fruit.
15 Even while the revolt was in what Clarke labels its indigenous stage, there were signs that not all the province was as alienated as distant Chignecto and Sunbury. When colonial Americans rushed to attack the British in Boston, some Nova Scotians rushed supplies to the beleaguered garrison. While there was hostility to Legge’s taxes and militia edicts, in the summer and autumn of 1775 a willingness existed to enlist in the two provincial regiments raised by the British in Nova Scotia. There were criticisms of the governor, but they were not directed at the government and were addressed to London, not Philadelphia. Once the revolution moved from indigenous to imported, as Clarke phrases it, these bonds of loyalty would be tested. As Eddy’s force opened its siege of Fort Cumberland in early November, recruits had been added from Passamaquoddy, Maugerville, Cobequid and Cumberland, along with Acadians from the Memramcook and Chignecto areas and a small number of Maliseets and Mi’kmaq. It remained, however, an unimpressive force. In actuality, those within the walls of Fort Cumberland outnumbered their attackers, although neither side knew the opponent’s true strength. In addition, both Maliseets and Mi’kmaq failed to commit themselves to more than a token presence, instead taking a neutral position, "waiting not so much to find out who was right as who was stronger" (p. 56). Acadian tenant farmers of John Allan probably had little choice but to serve on the rebel side, while their Memramcook cousins, before enlisting, sought and received a promise of proper payment. Complicating matters even further, the Machias men, who made up the original invasion party, quarrelled with the Cumberland patriots. Holding such a force together was difficult, and the early victories of Eddy soon were outweighed by the failure of the allout attack on the fort in mid-November. Eddy’s star now declined both in his military camp and among the revolutionary council established to govern the Chignecto region. When his patriot supporters turned to plundering and burning loyalist property, the local rebellion lost its popular appeal. The tide had turned. It was now a waiting game, as Eddy hoped that without relief the fort would surrender. Despite British bungling, reinforcements finally arrived. A counterattack was launched, and Eddy and his followers were routed by late November. The revolution in Nova Scotia was over.
16 In Cumberland the triumphant British and their supporters initially inflicted equally harsh treatment on their rebel enemies. Homes were burned and "300 or more men, women, and children" (p. 206) were forced to flee the province, in many cases receiving American provisions, land and pensions in compensation for their sacrifices made in the patriot cause. Divisions persisted between rebel supporters who remained in Chignecto and their loyalist opponents, although here, and more so in other parts of Nova Scotia, former patriots were quick to make their peace with the loyal majority. Clarke concludes that the siege and attempt to conquer the colony aroused "a passive population to overt loyalty" and provoked a "divided administration into concerted action". Eddy is found guilty of "premature action", a mismanaged siege and bringing "calamity to Cumberland" (p. 205). The Cumberland conflict, however, was one in which "loyalists prevailed" and loyalty, rather than rebellion or neutrality, was the norm through most of the colony.
17 Clarke makes clear at the outset that his book is an attempt to revise J.B. Brebner’s neutral Yankee thesis, particularly its neglect of the latent loyalism existing in Nova Scotia.4 Clarke makes a powerful case, but he stretches the analysis a bit too far at times. Clearly Nova Scotia was more complex than Brebner assumed, and the loyalty to Britain deserves the attention Clarke devotes to it. But when he argues that Janice Potter-MacKinnon’s elitist loyalist ideology was at work in Nova Scotia,5 indeed that it may well have been "the colony most receptive to loyalist ideology" (p. xiii), questions must be raised. The closest evidence of a loyalist ideology offered by Clarke is the people’s gratitude for all that the British government had granted them: land, rations, relief in difficult times, religious freedom and political representation. Even Henry Alline’s Great Awakening message is pressed into service as loyalist ideology: a people should be appalled by revolution, grateful for dangers avoided and kind favours received, "a people", in short,"highly favoured of God" (pp. 208-9).6 But was the loyalist ideology, developed among some of the articulate elite in the American colonies as an alternative to the patriot ideological message, considerably more than gratitude to a generous mother country? To what extent was this ideology at work in pre-revolutionary Nova Scotia and shared by the rank and file of the emigrants who moved into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as Loyalists after the revolution? Do the political divisions which emerged in Loyalist Saint John and post-revolutionary Nova Scotia reveal a political stance against arbitrary appointed governors seeking guidance from appointed executive and legislative councils attempting to control and curb the powers of elected assemblies? Clarke contends that the indigenous loyalism present at the beginning of the revolution "could link the political and social development of planters in the 1760s and early 1770s with the post-revolutionary period" (p. 211). He is correct that pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary political cultures need comparison and analysis. Elizabeth Mancke has suggested that by the mid-1760s New England settlers in Nova Scotia were aware of the political boundary they had crossed in migrating northward, where "political rights had a configuration different from what they had known in the New England colonies".7 But this political configuration must be more closely examined and linked with the political cultures of the 1780s and 1790s. A Loyalist elite view might be mixed with quite different rank and file perceptions, along with other emerging ideologies, and even a patriot-oriented tradition of dissent, as demonstrated in Sunbury County’s political choices in the new Loyalist New Brunswick.8
18 Despite this qualification, Clarke’s study remains an excellent choice for the Albert B. Corey Prize, while Baker and Reid’s examination of Phips should also emerge as a major contender for this same distinction. Taken together, these two books are excellent vehicles for a fuller comprehension of the nature of the worlds of reciprocal impingement which existed in Acadie/Canada in the late 17th century and in Nova Scotia in the revolutionary era. Borderland areas and residents, often relegated to the unexplored margins, could have an impact on Massachusetts and imperial policies, while external events and discourse could at times divide and provoke complex internal responses in these same areas. Both clearly reveal, to borrow from David Armitage, "that ‘British’ history did not always happen in Britain, or only to Britons, just as ‘American’ history was not always the creation of Americans, nor did it take place solely in the Americas".9 A willingness and effort to understand individual and local motivations and responses, while capturing the broader context and forces at work, moves us closer to an acknowledgement of what J.G.A. Pocock describes as the "complicated continuity" of Canadian history as "an American, Atlantic and British history not identical with that of the United States".10 Despite external pressures or internal inclinations, the history of the area northeast of Massachusetts moved in a different direction from that of the sister colonies to the south.
W.G. GODFREY.
Notes