Macnutt - The atlantic provinces 1712-1857: The Emergence of Colonial Society

The Canadian Centenary Series

Nearly half a century has elapsed since Canada and Its Provinces, the first large-scale co-operative history of Canada, was published. During that time, new historical materials have been made available in archives and libraries; new research has been carried out, and its result published; new interpretations have been advanced and tested. In these same years Canada itself has greatly grown and changed. These facts, together with the approach of the centenary of Confederation, justify the publication of a new, co-operative history of Canada.

The form chosen for this enterprise is that of a series of volumes. The series has been planned by the editors, but each volume will be designed and executed by a single author. The general theme of the work is the development of those regional communities which have for the past century made up the Canadian nation; and the series will be composed of a number of volumes sufficiently large to permit an adequate treatment of all the phases of the theme in the light of modern knowledge.

The Centenary History, then, is planned as a series to have a certain common character and method, but to be the work of individual authors, specialists in their fields. As a whole it will be a work of specialized knowledge, the great advantage of scholarly co-operation, but, at the same time, each volume will have the unity and distinctive character of individual authorship. The result, it is hoped, will be scholarly and readable, at once useful to the student and of interest to the general reader.

The difficulties of organizing and executing such a series are apparent; the overlapping of separate narratives, the risk of omissions, the imposition of divisions which are relevant to some themes, but not to others. Not so apparent, but quite as troublesome are problems of scale, perspective, and scope, problems which perplex the writer of a one-volume history, and are magnified in a series. It is by deliberate choice that certain parts of the history are told twice, in different volumes from different points of view, in the belief that the benefits gained outweigh the unavoidable disadvantages.

The Centenary History is a series to be written by individual authors; but it is also planned to have a certain common character and to follow a common method. It has been agreed that a general narrative treatment was necessary and that each author should deal in a balanced way with economic, political, and social history. This varied and comprehensive account will, it is hoped, be presented in a scholarly, interpretative, and readable fashion, so that the student may be informed and the general reader interested.

Mr MacNutt in the present book has had a different task from that of his colleagues who have already published other volumes in the Series. Whereas they have studied relatively homogeneous areas, or relatively short periods of time, he has had to bring together the histories of four disparate colonies over a century and a half. This difficult assignment he has discharged with skill and a fine sense of the process of historical growth. What was common in development is emphasized, what was significant in detail is used to confirm; what was vivid in action or in personality is caught by the historians creative eye. There takes form in the pages to follow a panorama of the emergence of a colonial society, uncertain always of its attachments, drawn to the sea, drawn to the continent, yet achieving a character at once strong and distinct.