Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

History Pre-confederation (to 1867)

Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island

From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement

by (author) Rusty Bittermann

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2006
Category
Pre-Confederation (to 1867), Rural, Social History
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802004390
    Publish Date
    Sep 2006
    List Price
    $102.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802072290
    Publish Date
    Sep 2006
    List Price
    $53.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442633742
    Publish Date
    Dec 2006
    List Price
    $40.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Who has the more legitimate claim to land, settlers who occupy and improve it with their labour, or landlords who claim ownership on the basis of imperial grants? This question of property rights, and their construction, was at the heart of rural protest on Prince Edward Island for a century. Tenants resisted landlord claims by squatting and refusing to pay rent. They fought for their vision of a just rural order through petitions, meetings, rallies, electoral campaigns, and direct action. Landlords responded with their own collective action to protect their interests. In Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island Rusty Bittermann examines this conflict and the dynamic of rural protest on the Island from its establishment as a British colony in the 1760s to the early 1840s.

The focus of Bittermann's study is the remarkable mass movement known as the Escheat movement, which emerged in the 1830s in the context of growing popular challenges elsewhere in the Atlantic World. The Escheat movement aimed at resolving the land question in favour of tenants by having the state resume (escheat) the large grants of land that created landlordism on the Island. Although it ultimately gained control of the assembly in the late 1830s, the Escheat movement did not produce the land policies that tenants and their allies advocated. The movement did, however, synthesize years of rural protest and produce a persistent legacy of language and ideas concerning land, justice, and the rights of small producers that helped to make landlordism on the Island unsustainable in the long term. Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island is a comprehensive and fascinating examination of an important, but often overlooked, period in the history of Canada's smallest province.

About the author

Rusty Bittermann is a professor in the Department of History at St Thomas University and author of Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat Movement, and co-author (with Margaret McCallum) of Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island: Imperial Dreams and the Defence of Property.

Rusty Bittermann's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, Heritage Award, Prince Edward Island awarded by Museum & Heritage
  • Winner, Clio Award, Atlantic awarded by the Canadian Historical Association