Canada and the United States
that former FBI Director Hoover invariably testified
before a House Appropriations Subcommittee about
annual FBI appropriations, at which hearings subcommittee and members and staff never critically examined FBI operations. He seems similarly unaware that
Congress, under the 1949 CIA Act, exempted the
agency from normal budgetary and accounting requirements and then, until the 1970s, rebuffed resolutions introduced is the 1950s and 1960s to establish
joint congressional oversight committees to monitor
CIA operations.
ATHAN THEOHARIS
Marquette University
GLORIA L. MAIN. Peoples of a Spacious ["and: Families
and Cultures in Colonial New England. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press. 2001. Pp. xi, 316 $49.95.
Gloria L. Main's new book is a fine synthesis of several
decades' worth of rcscarch on carly New England.
Although many of us can remember a time when
"peoples" meant Congregationalists and Anglicans-or Bostonians and Newporters-Main devotes
nearly as much space to the Native population of New
England, or what she refers to collectively as Ninnimissinouk. Divided into chapters that roughly correspond to the human lifecycle, the book explores sexuality, courtship and marriage, childbearing and
childrearing, youth, and old age in both cultures.
Prefacing thcsc chaptcrs is a very interesting introduction about the geology and formation of New England,
and Main completes her study with two chapters that
show how the lives of Native Americans and English
colonists were transformed in the eighteenth century.
Faced with an enormous amount of material, Main
can only be applauded for the way in which she has
interwoven an endless array of facts into a seamless
narrative that shows the transition from birth to old
age in early New England. The book is filled with
perceptive discussions, bringing fresh insights to subjects that of late have become somewhat shopworn.
Main's description of the way labor was organized and
the way work was distributed in the preindustrial world
is an unusually sophisticated approach to the development of gender relations.
Her concentration on everyday life makes the book
an appealing read, and the seemingly simple decisions
that confronted people become more profound when
Main points out their lasting implications. For example, how did an English schoolmaster decide which
students were "capable of learning"? And how hotly
debated was the question of whether parents should be
"compelled to put their children to learning" (p.
140-41)? Time and time again, Main employs a graceful turn of phrase to make a point. She discusses how
the aggressive pursuit of propcrty "turned hitherto
ethnocentric English into confirmed racists" (p. 23),
and how "gossip alone remained the guardian of
propriety" (p. 70). And in a paragraph on domestic
abuse, Main notes the reluctance of communities that
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1221
hesitated "to threaten the rights of all husbands by
taking action against one" (p. 88).
But if there is much to praise in this book, there are
also a few questionable statements of fact and contradictions. Despite Main's assertions to the contrary,
recent research suggests that New Englanders indulged in and enjoyed sex for its own sake and not only
for reproductive purposes (p. 64). Main argues that
one reason a widow might remarry was because she
could not sell a farm since "it belonged to her children
and she had only a life interest in it" (p. 84). In fact,
seventeenth-century husbands often left entire estates
to their prospective widows in fee simple, which meant
that they could indeed sell the property. At one point,
Main declares that in neither culturc did men "customarily participate in the care and feeding of infants
and toddlers, nor would they even handle them except
for ritual purposes such as naming ceremonies" (p.
118). Yet further on she maintains that as babysitters,
boys in New England gained "empathy and responsibility in their interactions with babies and toddlers,
which carry over into their adult lives" and allowed
them to be "attentive and responsive to their own
children" (p. 144).
Despite such slips, however, the book successfully
integrates a vast amount of information about early
New England. In a wonderful concluding section, Main
analyzes how increasing material prosperity for the
English settlers only exaggerated the deteriorating
situation of the Ninnimissinouk. As English land acquisition and production increased, Native American
landholding decreased proportionately. Large English
families provided enough labor to produce the food
needed for their own survival and growth, and the
resulting population increase stirred a desire for new
land and new towns. Competition for natural resources
worked to the disadvantage of the Native American
population, who did not reproduce as quickly as the
Europeans, who succumbed to the virulent diseases
brought by the settlers, and whose food sources dwindled with the relentless European expansion.
Main uses her store of demographic and probate
material ably for the English population, and she is
able to make valid comparisons with the Ninnimissinouk from other sources. Her ability to put the puzzle
pieces together make this a valuable book [or those
interested in family life in early New England.
ELAINE FORMAN CRANE
Fordham University
NINA REID-MARONEY. Philadelphia's Enlightenment,
1740-1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason.
(Contrihutions to the Study of World History, number
81.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2001. Pp. xv, 199.
$62.50.
Could Christianity and Enlightenment science mix
without one falling prey to the other? Studies of
eighteenth-century Anglo-American thought have
been inclined to think not. A hearty embrace of
OCTOBER 2002