Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement (review)

Reviewed by: Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement Catharine Anne Wilson Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement. Rusty Bittermann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Pp. 382, $29.95 Landlordism dominates the popular narrative of Island history, and this book provides a scholarly new perspective on that past. [End Page 646] Bittermann examines the Escheat Movement, the attempt from the 1760s to the 1840s to revoke landlords' original land grants and redistribute them to settlers. He presents a version of events that moves beyond J.M. Bumsted's view that the movement was driven by elites. Instead, drawing on scholarship about popular disturbances and class formation, Bittermann argues that Escheat was a grassroots movement that grew with the awareness of shared experiences and grievances, spanned local, ethnic, and religious loyalties, and replaced paternalism with class politics. The movement developed a sophisticated organizational apparatus, a set of techniques inside and outside the assembly, and a language of protest. By the time of its electoral victory of 1838, it had become a modern political party, a tenant union for collective bargaining with members embracing an amalgam of positions ranging from constitutional tactics to physical force. Once in power, however, the movement's goals were thwarted by the limits of democracy in an era before responsible government. Though the Escheat Movement failed to eliminate landlordism, it synthesized years of agrarian protest and provided a legacy that influenced the eventual Land Purchase Act of 1875. This is primarily a political history of an agrarian movement. The reader is moved chronologically through various mass meetings, petitions, elections, and trips to the Colonial Office in London, and feels the movement growing in momentum, form, appeal, and power. The collective action and political maneuvering of the Escheaters is ably detailed. So too is the anti-escheat activity of Island landlords and their allies in London, and an Island mercantile elite promoting its own agenda of fostered economic growth. In fact, Bittermann excels in explaining the competing, and sometimes converging, interests of these different groups. Some fascinating personalities emerge along the way, such as William Cooper, former-land-agent turned-leading Escheat-advocate. Throughout, Bittermann situates Island developments within the larger contexts of escheat in the Maritimes, rebellions in the Canadas, and radical agrarian movements in Ireland and the United States. One of the most important themes of the book is the movement's attempt to convince the state to set aside its liberal, laissez-faire position regarding private contracts between landlords and tenants, and to regulate property relations to reflect the rural view of a just order. In this regard, the study adds to a growing body of literature on competing concepts of property during this particular era of political upheaval. Landlords conceptualized property in terms of state-derived title. Escheators conceptualized it as a product of their labour, and [End Page 647] believed that the state had a duty to respond not only to government officers but also to rural pressure to bring about ameliorative change and protect the fruits of tenants' labour. In this way, Island tenants joined others in the North Atlantic utilizing similar rhetoric about democracy and the natural rights of the poor. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the movement constructed a narrative of the Island's history that continues to this day. This was a war of words. Through newspapers and speeches, a narrative was created wherein tenants were depicted as the victims of injustice, whose hard wrought labour was justified in property reform. It was a language of class pride, a struggle between the 'productive' and the 'parasitical,' and a call for justice and freedom from oppression. One senses that, alongside this political drama, another parallel and interrelated story is waiting to be told beyond the scope of this book. Dramatic events such as landlords forcefully evicting tenants or armed throngs of tenants threatening land agents during distraint proceedings fueled the movement, but tell us little about the working reality of the land system. Knowing more about the land market, the regional nature of rental contracts, rents, arrears, a tenants' right...

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