| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Elaine Forman Crane. Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630–1800. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1998. Pp. x, 333. Cloth $50.00, paper $17.95.

What, Elaine Forman Crane asks, was the impact of an increasingly female population in the cities of colonial New England? Her surprising verdict is that increased numbers led to decreased power. Starting in Europe and including African-American and Native American examples, Crane concludes the story was one of decline. She accordingly swings the historiographic pendulum back from female agency in a patriarchal world to female victimization by a patriarchal world. In fact, stressing female agency, Crane claims, "lets patriarchy off the hook" (p. 3) and even "distorts history" (p. 4). 1

Crane finds a great deal of evidence in her sources that stubbornly refuses to conform to her paradigm. Such things she labels "puzzling" (p. 155), "rather surprising" (p. 219), an "irony" (p. 170), or a "curious exception" (p. 123). I would like to propose that what appears paradoxical may in fact reflect a more complex truth. The first sentence of the prologue states that "this is a book about today" (p. 3) because female urban poverty is still with us. I think this statement reflects a common tendency to look at the colonial past through modern eyes. Historical lives can be poorly interpreted using our own sense of what we would prefer as women in the present. For example, we look at institutions of colonial America and find women absent. We then make the assumption that women would have wanted to be present. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that women felt excluded or even victimized. Are we really sure this kind of formulation is appropriate? . . .

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