The Slow Rush of Colonization

In The Slow Rush of Colonization, historian Thomas Peace traces the 100-year context that underpins the widespread Euro-American/Euro-Canadian settlement of the Maritime Peninsula. Broad in chronological and geographic scope, The Slow Rush of Colonization uses the concept of spaces of power to provide a history of settler colonialism in eastern North America that demonstrates the continuity of Indigenous sovereignties while also calling attention to the diverse – and often unaligned – strategies both the French and English Empires used in their attempt to dispossess First Peoples. By analyzing deeds, censuses, treaties, and imperial correspondence, Peace demonstrates how Mi’kmaw, Wabanaki, Peskotomuhkati, Wolastoqiyik, and Wendat nations persistently resisted these incursions. At the same time, with each renewed conflict and treaty that followed, a British culture of settler conquest developed, allowing them to ignore this history of resistance once imperial warfare came to an end. The Slow Rush of Colonization is essential reading for those who want to understand the roots of settler colonialism in Canada and the US and the tools France and England used to occupy and settle Indigenous Homelands during the eighteenth century.