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Book Review
| Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement. By Rusty Bittermann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. xii + 382 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. Paper $29.95.
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| Rusty Bittermann's exhaustive study of the Escheat movement is a must for academics interested in Prince Edward Island history in the first forty years of the nineteenth century. |
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The Escheat movement had its roots in Britain's decision following the Seven Years War to divide Prince Edward Island into lots and distribute them to influential men in Great Britain. In return for this land, the landlords promised to settle one-hundred Protestants (none of whom could be from Great Britain) in each lot within ten years, and pay an annual quit rent. Most owners ignored these obligations, and many sold their land within the first few years. By 1800, a small number of people controlled most of the colony's resources. About one-third of the rural population held lands as freeholders, while the remainder were tenants or squatters. Since it took many years of backbreaking work to build a farm that generated sufficient income to pay the rent, most tenants fell behind in their rent payments. As nonpayment could lead to eviction (without compensation for improvements), especially for the large number of tenants without written contracts, this situation created a sense of insecurity. |
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From the early 1830s to 1842, the idea of an escheat court dominated politics. This court, most tenants hoped, would uncover which landlords had not paid their quit rents or settled the required number of people on their land and the government would subsequently confiscate the land of these landlords and sell or give it to the tenants. As this idea swept through the Island, a small group of landlords in Great Britain organized themselves into a powerful lobby group to oppose it. In 1838, supporters of the escheat idea rode the emergence of an organized rural protest movement that united individuals of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, into control of the House of Assembly. The origins, growth, success, and ultimate failure of the Escheat movement in 1842 are the subjects of this book. |
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Using material from primary source collections in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ottawa, Dublin, Edinburgh, Belfast, Warwick, and London, Bittermann provides an exhaustive and balanced study of the rhetoric, motives, and actions of the participants, from tenants and landlords to island governors and Colonial Office officials, and illustrates how the movement responded to the broader forces that were shaping politics in Great Britain and the Atlantic world. |
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Bittermann expands beyond the usual political and economic forces to analyze public and private levels of discourse, as well as poetry and ballads, to reveal the emergence of a new sense of class pride that emerged with the success of the Escheat movement. Each side sought to inform the Colonial Office about the "actual" situation in the colony and viewed the state as the central agency for realizing their plans. Since the tenants considered their lack of success a result of the authorities receiving bad advice, they continued to push for change through generally appropriate actions and spoke in terms of British ideas of justice and loyalty. |
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The author concludes that although the Escheat movement failed, it left a lasting legacy of language and ideas that helped shape how the Colonial Office viewed the issues and, in time, helped bring landlordism to a close. Unfortunately, Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island stops in 1842, leaving this assertion unproven. Still, Bittermann has done a masterful job of explaining this contentious period in island history. |
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Dr. Douglas Baldwin, Acadia University, has written extensively on Prince Edward Island history and is currently researching the environmental impact of silver mining on Cobalt, Ontario. |
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