The Past Speaks

The Canadian Historical Review Volume volume 91, Number 2 / June 2010 is now available

This issue contains  a very interesting article by Keith Mercer, “Northern
Exposure: Resistance to Naval Impressment in British North America,
1775-1815”

1780 Caricature of a Press Gang

Abstract : Focusing on resistance, this article examines naval impressment
in British North America from 1775 to 1815. Although neglected in Canadian
historiography, press gangs sparked urban unrest and political turmoil in
seaports such as Halifax, St John’s, and Quebec City. Impressment reached
into most coastal areas of British North America by the early nineteenth
century and its sailors and inhabitants employed a range of strategies to
resist it. They also confronted it directly, sometimes with violent results.
Press gang riots in St John’s in 1794 and Halifax in 1805 led to a
prohibition on impressment on shore for much of the Napoleonic Wars. Popular
protest served as the catalyst for official resistance to the British Navy
and had a lasting impact on civil-naval relations in the North Atlantic
world. While the study of popular disturbances in Canadian history usually
begins in the mid-nineteenth century, this paper shows that they were
important in earlier generations as well. This was often the result of
tensions caused by imperial warfare and quarrels with military personnel.

The other articles in this issue of the CHR also look interesting: ‘Rising Strongly and Rapidly’: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in Canada, 1919-1940 by Carla Marano; No Longer a ‘Last Resort’: The End of Corporal Punishment in the Schools of Toronto by Paul Axelrod; and Fireworks, Folk-dancing, and Fostering a National Identity: The Politics of Canada Day by Matthew Hayday.