The field of Newfoundland history is in a healthy state of
vigorous activity. What makes the field so exciting is the degree to which the substantial
body of recent scholarly activity has generated as many questions as it has perhaps
resolved. The era of the sixteenth century international fishery is a case in point. The
basic details have been reasonably well understood aspects still require research. For
instance, insufficient research has been done on the Portuguese participation in the
fishery of that era. Nor do we yet fully understand why the English were so slow to
participate in the fishery that they ostensibly discovered -- was it a lack of markets, a
lack of capital, a lack of skills or experience? What enabled France to move so quickly to
a position of dominance in the fishery? The study of the history of Newfoundland
and Labrador offers all sorts of opportunities for those specializing in the
relatively new field of environmental history. Time and again (as a search
through this essay for the words “environment” and “environmental” will attest),
the history of Newfoundland and Labrador has been conditioned by environmental
realities – the provocative idea of aboriginal extinctions caused by the
environmental limitations of the island of Newfoundland, posited by James Tuck
and Ralph Pastore in their essay, “A Nice Place to Visit, but .... Prehistoric
Human Extinctions on the Island of Newfoundland,” Canadian Journal of
Archaeology IX: 1 (1985): 69-80. Or the controversy surrounding the belief
that the Norse colony in Greenland died out because of the effects of
environmental degradation. Or the possibility that environmental conditions
caused the inshore cod fishery to fail after 1713, thereby triggering the
development of a British bank fishery for the first time. Or the intriguing
notion that the introduction of the potato early in the eighteenth century
contributed to the ability of permanent inhabitancy to expand beyond its
seventeenth-century limit of roughly 2,000 people. Newfoundland history is
clearly fertile ground for environmental historians.
In short, though our understanding of Newfoundland society can
no longer be said to be in its infant stage, there is nevertheless good reason to conclude
that it has not yet matured. Far more local studies are needed, if only to overcome the
tendency to divide island society into two homogeneous halves, one of West Country English
extraction, the other of Irish extraction; thus, no study has been published on Harbour
Grace, one of the most significant communities in eighteenth and early nineteenth century
Newfoundland, though there are a number of publications that take advantage of
the rich archival material relating to Harbour Grace and adjacent communities in
Conception Bay. See, for instance, Terry McDonald, “The One in Newfoundland, the
Other in England: Ledgard, Gosse and Chancey, or Gosse, Chancey and Ledgard?,”
Newfoundland and Labrador Studies XX: 2 (Fall 2005): 209-231, which examines a
merchant partnership that traded between Poole and Carbonear early in the 1800s,
or Sean Cadigan’s Hope and Deception in Conception Bay: Merchant-Settler
Relations in Newfoundland, 1785-1855 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995). Detailed community studies which have been undertaken on Trinity, Placentia, Trepassey, and St. John's suggest that Newfoundland was fragmented into a large number of
particularistic communities by the nature of external economic linkages, by the precise
source region for the local population, by the nature and availability or scarcity of
local resources and opportunities. These mitigated against the emergence of a
"Newfoundland identity" before the nineteenth century, and it remains to be
determined when such an identity did emerge. The degree to which such fragmentation
contributed to the ability of St. John's to develop its role as the political, economic,
and cultural capital of Newfoundland also needs to be explored. So does the history of
women in Newfoundland during this early period, notwithstanding the importance of their
role in transforming eighteenth-century Newfoundland from a seasonal fishery of transient
labourers to a society of permanent inhabitants (an importance revealed in the title to
Gordon Handcock's monograph on migration). And though the presence of the military and
naval establishments in Newfoundland has not been completely ignored because of their
significance to the administrative history of the colony, little work exists on their
social and economic impact. And while significant steps have been taken to
improve our understanding of the history of women in early modern Newfoundland,
we know far less than we should. How, for instance, was the profound gender
imbalance noticed by Gordon Handcock in early eighteenth-century Newfoundland
modified to a much more equitable ratio by the end of that century? What were
the social and legal ramifications as the population of women began to expand?
Finally, the field of early Newfoundland history requires more effort at synthesis of existing and recent research. A comprehensive survey study that incorporates the recent outpouring of scholarly publications has yet to be written. This is especially true of the substantial literature on the French fishery, published almost entirely in French. The Anglocentrism of Newfoundland history is understandable, even expected. Yet the imperial, social, economic, and cultural themes of Newfoundland history cannot always be fully understood without reference to British perceptions of, and responses to, the French presence within the fishery. Moreover, there are striking differences and equally striking similarities between the French and English experiences which invite comparison. In short, there have been important methodological developments within the French scholarly community that merit attention by its English counterpart.