Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, eds - Revisiting 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective
Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, eds
Revisiting 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective
Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012
viii + 280 pp. Paper. ISBN 978-1-4426-1242-6.
Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid, eds
Remembering 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Memory
Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012
viii + 317 pp. Paper. ISBN 978-1-4426-1251-8.
It is unusual for an academic conference to produce even one coherent collection of challenging papers. A 2009 conference on the Conquest of 1759 has triumphantly generated two. The event was held in London, sponsored by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Institute for the Study of the Americas, jointly with the Gorsebrook Research Institute at St Mary's University, Halifax. Sensibly, the editors qualify the landmark date with the reservation that Wolfe's capture of Quebec City was neither inevitable nor conclusive, but rather formed part of a British-French struggle for northern North America from the 1755 Acadian deportation to the 1763 peace treaty. However, Revisiting 1759 begins with Stephen Brunwell's re-evaluation of Wolfe's military tactics: risky, no doubt, but failure to attack Quebec would have represented a setback. Matthew C. Ward recognises the brutality of Wolfe's tactics, but explains them as a response to French and Aboriginal warfare. Francois-Joseph Riggiu attributes French indifference to Canada through the two decades after 1763 to a lack of interest in territorial empire as distinct from overseas economic footholds. Jack P. Greene sees an inverse process taking place in the British empire, with the loss of the Thirteen Colonies and the imposition of direct rule in India creating a very different post-1783 empire from the assumptions that underlay the Seven Years War. For the Huron-Wendat, Thomas Peace argues, 1759 was merely part of a longer process of subjugation to European control. Stephen Conway finds new themes in the much-debated origins of the Quebec Act of 1774. British politicians hoped to run Quebec like Ireland, but the required settler garrison did not materialise and they turned to the model of Minorca instead. Emphasising economic motives behind the Quebec Act, Heather Welland argues that prosperity and not Protestantism was the driving force. Memorably rejecting both 'simplistic miserabilist and jovialist interpretations' (209) of the impact of Conquest, Donald Fyson interprets 1759-1775 as a period of mutual adaptation between habitants and newcomers. Barry M. Moody challenges the hindsight assumption that Nova Scotia was bound to become British, although he sees the fall of Quebec, rather than the capture of Louisbourg, as the key event. Paradoxically, the elimination of the French threat reduced the colony's importance, with Halifax only re-emerging as an imperial cornerstone after 1783. A final paper by Matthew P. Dzennik shifts the focus to Scotland, to argue that the Conquest formed less a romantic change in loyalties in the Highlands, but rather a reaffirmation of elements of self-interest in Gaelic thought and culture.
Remembering 1759 covers a broader range of time and topics although, paradoxically, there is much overlap in material. Indeed, an impressive opening essay by the editors identifies many of the themes. Joan Coutu and John McAleer argue that, while Wolfe is entombed in marble statues, the changing intentions behind their creation demonstrate the 'malleable' (51) nature of interpretation. Alan Gordon perceives meaning in tourist perceptions of Quebec City, while J.I. Little traces the failure of nineteenth-century Anglo-Canadian attempts to romanticise the conflict in national unity terms. The Plains of Abraham became a national park in 1910, but the battlefield remains undefined as a symbolic space. Jean-Francois Lozier provides a reminder of the importance of Aboriginal memory. Michel Ducharme interweaves the rehabilitation of the reputation of Montcalm with attempts by nineteenth-century French Canadian intellectuals to seek meaning in the Conquest that would compensate for the failures of 1837-8, a discussion extended by Michel Bock to a specific analysis of the work of Lionel Groulx. David Meren re-examines the Gaullist campaign of the 1960s in the light of the Quebec viewpoint, politely articulated by Mayor Drapeau, that French support for their identity was welcome, but two hundred years late. Alexis Lachaine sees the Conquest as a 'nightmare' (221) for separatist intellectuals, which they can only escape by creating their own future-history. Maybe this argument needs the context of the discrediting of the FLQ, with its crude invocations of the imagery of 1837. Brian Young explores how the nationalist interpretation of Denis Vaugeois has shaped popular perceptions of the Conquest, despite reservations by battalions of scholars. Nicole Neatby ponders whether commemoration of 1759 is 'Mission Impossible' (251: could Canadians emulate the Americans, who unite to honour symbols of a Civil War that killed half a million soldiers? Finally, in a major contribution, Jocelyn Létourneau sketches strategies that might permit a more nuanced observation of the 275th anniversary, in 2034. I doubt that attitudinal change will come so rapidly, but suspect that his essay will be a basic text for 2059. It is noteworthy that Ducharme praises nineteenth-century intellectuals for achieving 'one thing that contemporary Quebecers seem unable to do: use the Conquest to foster hope for the future' (152-3). Neatby believes that a re-evaluation of the Conquest will come 'only when Quebec's political status fosters a collective optimistic view of the future' (270), whereas Létourneau inverts the argument, seeing intellectual revision as vital to enable the people of Quebec 'to move forward into the future' (296). From the perspective of Ireland, many of these themes run parallel to politicised communal memories of the 1845-9 Famine, and comparative studies may offer ways forward here.
Congratulations are due to editors, publisher and contributors on two handsomely produced and thought-provoking volumes. Quotations in the text have been translated into English, with the French originals supplied in the Endnotes.