Robynne Rogers Healey, ed.: Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021; pp. viii +277.

The ten essays in this edited collection provide a welcome and substantial intervention to the scholarship on Quakerism in the long eighteenth century, demonstrating the centrality of this period to the larger history of the Religious Society of Friends. Quakerism in the Atlantic World presents a broad-ranging examination not only of the theology, practice, and discipline of the Society but also of its interaction with outside defining forces in the Atlantic world. The volume contributes to Penn State University Press's New History of Quakerism series, which aims to offer an up-to-date and accessible analysis of Quaker history (p. 1). The 1689 Act of Toleration and the Hicksite-Orthodox Schism of 1827–1828 emerge as transformative events that serve as rough chronological boundaries for the volume. A significant strength of this book is its thematic organisation, which allows for an interconnected and multi-faceted analysis. Part 1 includes four essays that highlight the effects of heightened organisation and geographic diffusion on Quaker practices, behaviours, and theology. Erica Canela and Robynne Rogers Healey's well-researched first chapter sets the high bar of scholarship found throughout the collection. Canela and Healey show how changes in memorial testimonies reflect the increasing significance of correct practice and a “carefully controlled Quaker narrative” (pp. 26, 39). Elizabeth Cazden follows with an essay that emphasises the hierarchical nature of the Quaker social fabric, centring her study on New England Friends in the context of an expanding British Empire. Cazden challenges teleological narratives of the Quaker “testimony of equality” in her argument that “eighteenth-century Quaker sources and practices … do not depict social or political equality as a core value of Friends” (p. 44). In Chapter 3, Andrew Fincham reveals how a contrasting nature of transatlantic disciplines in the first decades of the Society gave way to a push for more homogenous and tightly controlled central rules by the second half of the eighteenth century. Fincham's treatment of the relationship between local difference and central uniformity sets up a tension that is explored productively in several of the book's chapters. The section's final essay, by Jon Mitchell, gives new attention to eighteenth-century Quaker theology and worship with an examination of silent waiting, quietist prayer, and watchfulness. The three essays in Part 2 turn the focus outward to how Quakerism functioned in the broader communities of the British Atlantic. Erin Bell's and Rosalind Johnson's essays both explore aspects of the relationship between Quakers and the law after the Act of Toleration. Bell examines representations of Quakers and crime in London legal records, showing how official toleration did not end prejudice against Friends. Bell's comparison of Quaker experiences with Jewish ones gives depth to her study of “othering” and religious minorities. Johnson traces how English marriage legislation intersected with Friends' marriage practices. Emma Lapansky-Werner's essay provides an overview of community building and organisational structures amid the transition from early to modern Quakerism. Its attention to categorisation will serve as a useful framework for future scholarship on multiple facets of American Quakerism. The third grouping of essays explores iterations of eighteenth-century Quakerism in Wales and North America. This section begins with Geoffrey Plank's insightful essay, “Quakers, Indigenous Americans, and the Landscape of Peace.” Plank considers how Quaker missionary work among Indigenous Americans was informed by a longstanding emphasis on rural landscapes that emerged in the earliest days of Quakerism. Friends' encounters with Indigenous Americans both complicated their own assumptions about landscape and — in their insistence on Indigenous adoption of European-style agriculture — held harmful ramifications for Indigenous Americans. Sydney Harker and Robynne Rogers Healey compare two Quaker communities in Upper Canada after the American Revolution, highlighting the shift from an insular focus to one marked by conflicts and directed towards increased engagement with the outside world. The volume's final chapter, authored by Richard C. Allen, provides a case study of industrial development and community responsibility in Wales amid the rise of competitive capitalistic practices. The essays in this last section reinforce the importance of place and particularity to eighteenth-century Quakerism. In giving attention to relatively neglected peripheries, such as Upper Canada, they serve as an important contrast to the focus on Quaker centres found in earlier chapters. Collectively, the book makes a convincing argument about the significance of local expressions to the eighteenth-century Religious Society of Friends, even if the geographic range of Atlantic Quakerism considered throughout the volume (mostly England, Wales, and continental North America) is somewhat narrow. While scholars with an interest in Quaker history are the volume's target readership, the contributors' attention to defining terms and concepts should make the book accessible to anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century religion or Atlantic history. The essays in Parts 2 and 3, especially, contribute to scholarship on such varied topics as legal history, religious toleration, marriage, Indigenous history, and industrialisation. In these contributions, some chapters could have gone further in widening the scope of study beyond the Religious Society of Friends to engage with additional historiographies. Above all, though, the collection seeks to open “space for further research and dialogue” on eighteenth-century Quakerism (p. 259) and to “encourage readers to re-evaluate what has often been viewed as the dull Quaker century” (p. 5). It fully achieves its goals. This well-edited and wide-ranging volume identifies the eighteenth-century Quaker world as a dynamic place, marked both by local expressions and by the larger events and processes of the British Atlantic world.

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