In War and Trade in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland, Olaf Janzen presents Newfoundland history in the broader context of the North Atlantic world. His book contains 12 essays written between 1984, when he received his Ph.D., and 2008, by which time he had become a seasoned academic. They therefore trace an intellectual journey, albeit one that is difficult to follow because the essays appear not in the order in which they were written and published, but in rough chronological order of their subject matter. The first paper, “‘A World Embracing Sea’: The Oceans as Highway, 1604-1815,” is the only questionable selection, dealing as it does with the general challenges of transatlantic commerce from the early seventeenth century to the early nineteenth. The remaining essays are more Newfoundland-focused and hew closer to the period of the book’s title. In their entirety they constitute a major contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century Newfoundland.

Any book about war and trade in Newfoundland must feature the Royal Navy, which was the preferred instrument for waging war and defending trade. Accordingly, the navy figures to a greater or lesser degree in nine of the essays. “The French Raid upon the Newfoundland Fishery in 1762: A Study in the Nature and Limits of Eighteenth-Century Sea Power,” describes the capture of St. John’s by the French in June 1762 and its recapture by British and American colonial forces that same September. Janzen was the first English-speaking historian since Evan Fyers in 1932 to offer a detailed narrative account of this episode of the Seven Years’ War, and the first to make extensive use of French sources. The recapture of St. John’s entailed co-operation between the Royal Navy and the British Army, as did the conquest of New France earlier in the war. That partnership recurs in “The Royal Navy and the Defence of Newfoundland during the American Revolution.” Owing to the dispersed nature of the fishery, the navy could not defend every major harbour and simultaneously protect British merchantmen plying the trade lanes south of the island, jobs that became even harder after 1778, when France entered the war on the Americans’ side. Only when land defences were strengthened was the navy able to push farther out to sea and offer greater protection to British transatlantic commerce. This is not to say that the navy’s role in the defence of Newfoundland has been overrated, because there is no denying its primacy; but Janzen’s work at least suggests that the army’s role has been underrated.

It is noteworthy that two papers — “‘Of Consequence to the Service’: The Rationale behind Cartographic Surveys in Early Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland” and “Showing the Flag: Hugh Palliser in Western Newfoundland, 1763-1766” — describe the navy’s role in asserting British sovereignty via cartographic surveys of coastal regions previously occupied by the French. This role is so important that the book could well have been called War, Trade, and Sovereignty in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland.

The French keep creeping into this review, and that is no accident. The island of Newfoundland was shared territory until 1713, and even though the Treaty of Utrecht established British sovereignty, French fishermen were allowed to fish on parts of the coast until 1904, and their offshore fishery was untouched by treaties. Like his fellow countrymen of the time, historian Daniel Woodley Prowse seethed at the French presence, and it showed in his work. Unlike Prowse and his modern acolytes, Olaf Janzen treats the French in mature and exemplary fashion. In “‘Une petite Republique’ in Southwestern Newfoundland: The Limits of Imperial Authority in a Remote Marine Environment,” he rightly describes the French men, women, and children who lived on the south coast before 1713 as true Newfoundlanders. In the same article he tells the story of the renegade French settlers of southwestern Newfoundland, who between 1720 and 1755 lived beyond the reach of metropolitan and colonial officialdom, French and British alike. In the companion piece “‘Un Petit Dérangement: The Eviction of French Fishermen from Newfoundland in 1755,” he explains the settlers’ eviction by the Royal Navy as a consequence of the struggle between Britain and France for global supremacy, and as a harbinger of the Acadian deportation. A similar perspective informs his “The Royal Navy and the Interdiction of Aboriginal Migration to Newfoundland, 1763-1766.” In short, this is history that is simultaneously inclusive and expansive.

Janzen’s other virtues include writing with great clarity. This takes effort as well as courage since, as Kurt Vonnegut has observed, clarity can be mistaken for “laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness.” It is anything but. For Janzen, as well, context matters as much as clarity, and he serves it up by the boatload. The book nonetheless has its limitations, most of which can be laid at the feet of its “publisher,” the International Maritime Economic History Association. Certain material is repeated in several of the articles and after a while becomes distracting; maps are few in number and dismal in quality; there is no index and no bibliography; and the cover, which is generic to the series, is flat-out ugly. On the face of the groundbreaking material presented here, the author deserves a better fate.

James E. Candow

Halifax, Nova Scotia