92 REVIEWS

cartobibliographic lines, both in academic papers and in compendia of examples and sources which act as basic reference works. Vollmar’s is one such compendium; it usefully identifies existing material, secondary sources, and literature. The book is im- portant because it is broadly synthetic and provides a large number of excellent illustra- tions, each with short comments and acknowledged sources. The author claims that it is the first comprehensive treatment of this form of mapping. In some ways it is, since it concentrates on the Indians of North America, and it examines not just the maps but a wide variety of other relevant data.

The underlying theme is to place the Indian maps of North America into what he calls a “cognitive” frame of reference. This is encapsulated in a diagram, adapted from earlier work on consumer space preference, and more suited to environmental decision-making than to map-making: its application here is of arguable validity. It views the Indian maps as being largely cognitive expressions of information abstracted from their cultural and physical environment. What differentiates these maps from the “coordinated” topo- graphic maps characteristic of our society is that they are of different cultural levels. Hence the type of map presumably indicates the level of development. An argument is presented that more general topographic maps were the result not so much of indigenous cultural development, but because European contacts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries urgently required topographical information for their colonization. That is a dubious inference since the mere fact that the Indians produced such maps indicates their familiarity with them. It may also be because the European colonists retained the maps in archives whereas the Indians did not. Could it also be that the highly retentive aboriginal mind had little need for classic topographic mapping detail? What is clear is the universality of mapping, since the map proved to be a major instrument of communi- cating spatial information between cultures.

However, it is easy to dwell on points of personal preference, and these doubts apart the book is an extremely useful source of a wide range of study material. By the nature of its production it is not cheap, but a glance at the exceedingly crisp reproductions easily justify its purchase. It is a text that should stimulate yet more historians of cartogra- phy to consider in greater depth the important cultural processes that manifest themselves so well in aboriginal mapping.

University of Durham MICHAEL BLAKEMORE

GRAEME WYNN, Timber Colony. A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1981. Pp. xiv+224. $2500 and $10.00 softback)

In Timber Colony Graeme Wynn explains how the commercial exploitation of timber transformed the physical and social landscape of New Brunswick between the years 1800 and 1850. On another level, it is a case study of how the economy and society of an early nineteenth-century British colony responded to the imperatives of industrial capitalism.

Early in the nineteenth century, the inflation of British timber prices, caused by Napo- leon’s blackade of the Baltic ports, initiated a period of unprecedented economic growth in Britain’s languishing Loyalist province of New Brunswick, hitherto a backwater of empire. With its large stands of spruce, fir and pine, its extensive network of rivers and streams, and its Atlantic frontage, New Brunswick was ideally situated to exploit a seem- ingly insatiable, protected, imperial market. Measured by the increase of its population (from 25,000 to 200,000) and the number of acres of cleared land (from 60,000 to 640,000) the province enjoyed a period of spectacular growth during the first half of the nineteenth century. New Brunswick was transformed from an American dependency to a lucrative British colony, more British in population, government and social structure than before, and with an economy dependent upon and, in many ways complementary to, that of the mother country.

REVIEWS

Wynn gives the reader a full account of how timber fashioned this transformation. He describes the distribution of the provincial timber resources, noting its regional variations, and portrays the cutting of the timber, the techniques employed, and the seasonal cycle of the work from the preparation of the timber roads in the autumn to the spring drive. He explains the price and commercial structure of the trade, down to the local shop- keeper, as well as the rise and the growth of sawmills. All of this is richly illustrated with photographs, prints, maps, charts and diagrams. Through a skilful exploitation of the available archival evidence and an informed use of the secondary literature, Wynn paints a broad Atlantic view of the operation of the timber trade, supported by statistical sched- ules and tables. Literary evidence, private letters, diaries, government documents, news- papers and travellers’ accounts are equally well used to demonstrate the impact of the timber trade on the lives and land of individuals, families and communities.

But Wynn also makes clear that New Brunswick, for all its peculiar reliance upon the timber staple, was only “an intriguing variant on a common pattern” (p. 8). Settled rapid- ly, predominantly rural, and dependent for its growth upon international trade, New Brunswick shared many characteristics with other colonies of British Settlement, includ- ing Cape Colony, Tasmania, New South Wales, as well as neighbouring British North American colonies. Technology, rapid population growth, capital concentration and industrial strategies and ideologies transformed the work patterns and social structures of colonial life in all these territories.

Although the technology of logging changed little over the 50 years considered in this book, market instability, the growing institutionalization of trade, increasing costs of land and transportation, as well as government regulation, strengthened the hands of those men who could command capital and influence. The increasing replacement of wind, water and man power by steam in the province’s sawmills and wood processing indus- tries, toward the middle of the century, was a harbinger. In these larger, more specialized operations labour relations began to resemble the work discipline of British industrial life. Elsewhere, too, the attitudes and ideologies of industrial Britain, with its people and capital, crossed the Atlantic and found a welcome home in colonial New Brunswick. Consequently, New Brunswick was a far different place in 1850 than it had been in 1800. It was not just a larger population and expanded economy; it possessed a society which was more differentiated, a commercial class whose wealth was more concentrated, and a people more exposed to the industrial notions of efficiency, time thrift and labour manage- ment. In this emerging modern, industrial world the opportunities for an ordinary man in the timber trade were as “severely restricted” as those of David Gagan’s HopefuZ Travel- lers who came to Peel County, Canada West, in search of land, or those of Michael Katz’s The People of Hamilton. The creation of a “Powerful entrepreneurial class and a growing proletariat” severely compromised the ideal of “yeomanly independence” (p. 137). In short, the exploitation of the timber trade in New Brunswick followed a familiar pattern of development.

This compact, well-written, informative, and skilfully crafted study makes an impor- tant contribution to our understanding of colonial New Brunswick. Wynn delivers what he promised: more than a “walled garden”-“a perspective on an horizon far wider than the province itself” (p. IO).

McGill University CARMAN MILLER

Other studies

KARL LENZ (Ed.), Carl Ritter: Geltung und Deutung. Beitriige des Symposiums anliisslich der Wiederkehr des 200. Geburtstages von Carl Ritter November 1979 in Berlin (West) (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1981. Pp. 233. DM 78)

It is truly unfortunate that the historian of geography has so often been assigned the role