Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century - Paperback

by Peter E. Pope (Author)

Combining innovative archaeological analysis with historical research, Peter E. Pope examines the way of life that developed in seventeenth-century Newfoundland, where settlement was sustained by seasonal migration to North America's oldest industry, the cod fishery.

The unregulated English settlements that grew up around the exchange of fish for wine served the fishery by catering to nascent consumer demand. The English Shore became a hub of transatlantic trade, linking Newfoundland with the Chesapeake, New and old England, southern Europe, and the Atlantic islands. Pope gives special attention to Ferryland, the proprietary colony founded by Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, in 1621, but later taken over by the London merchant Sir David Kirke and his remarkable family. The saga of the Kirkes provides a narrative line connecting social and economic developments on the English Shore with metropolitan merchants, proprietary rivalries, and international competition.

Employing a rich variety of evidence to place the fisheries in the context of transatlantic commerce, Pope makes Newfoundland a fresh point of view for understanding the demographic, economic, and cultural history of the expanding North Atlantic world.

Front Jacket

In Newfoundland, colonists in fishing plantations exchanged fish for the luxury goods of wine and tobacco creating a commercial web between the New England coast, the North Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. Pope, an historical archaeologist, excavates the life of this colony where migratory European crews had fished for cod since the 1500s. It is also the story of the remarkable Kirke family who took over and continued to operate the largest fishing establishments in Newfoundland until 1696.