The Environmental Historiography of the Maritime Peninsula

Abstract

IN HIS 2014 PUBLICATION Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England, Richard Judd referred to the region stretching from Long Island Sound to the Gaspé Peninsula as a “landform known as the Maritime Peninsula.”1 Archaeologists use the term “maritime peninsula” to illustrate connections between pre-European-contact Native people in what is today New England and Atlantic Canada, and this is the context in which Judd used the term in his book. Earlier, in the introduction, Judd described New England as a “giant peninsula,” although without reference to Atlantic Canada (2). In the introduction to their collection of essays, Land and Sea: Environmental History in Atlantic Canada, Claire Campbell and Robert Summerby-Murray write: “For some time, environmental historians have argued against writing history within the confines of national boundaries . . . . Some scholars have suggested that we look not to nation-states but to bioregions.” Pointing to their own region, the authors note that “Atlantic Canada itself is a wonderful example of the artificial nature of political boundaries. Originally an invention of bureaucratic convenience, the region has rarely been anything approaching an organic alliance.”2 Such statements build upon a large collection of scholarly work from across disciplines that have identified New England and Atlantic Canada as a borderland – a region of shared cultural and social history and economic connections that are somewhat artificially divided by the political border separating the United States and Canada. Although this analytical framework has faded somewhat in recent years, with the most recent edited collection of essays utilizing it appearing in 2005 – Stephen Hornsby and John G. Reid’s New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons3 – it still retains important methodological guidance for environmental historians. Among all sub-disciplines of history, environmental history might be the least dependent upon contemporary political borders. Yet even here most of our work still struggles to jump that border. Campbell and SummerbyMurray note the importance of balancing this approach with an appreciation for the uniqueness of locality: “Environmental historians must be true to these particular places, the distinctive features of the local” (4). By comparing local stories across a bio-region, or a borderland, the editors argue that “these common sensibilities create a regional sense of place” (4). But their regionalism is confined to Atlantic Canada. Within the essays themselves there is no breaking of international borders – only