Reviews of the following books:  A History of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, 1885-1978 by David C. Smith;  Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England by Stephen A. Marini;  English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government by Jack M. Sosin

Howell, Roger, Jr.

Taylor, William L.

Wescott, Richard R.

English

University of Maine

Maine History Volume 23 Number 2 Article 6 9-1-1983 Book Reviews William L. Taylor Plymouth State College Richard R. Wescott Roger Howell Jr. Bowdoin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal  Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Taylor, William L., Richard R. Wescott, and Roger Howell. "Book Reviews." Maine History 23, 2 (1983): 93-99. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol23/iss2/6 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact um.library.technical.services@maine.edu. BOOK REVIEWSA History o f the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, 1885-1978. By David C. Smith. (Orono, Me.: Life Sciences and Agriculture Experim ent Station, University o f Maine, 1980. Pp. xvi, 292. Cloth. $10.00.)T he interaction between science and farm ing did not originate in the nineteenth century, but, in the United States, it certainly gained formal recognition and structure through state and federal program s designed to improve farm ing methods, plants, machinery, buildings, and the like. David C. Smith has given us a fascinating account o f the Maine ex­perim ent station from  its origins in the late nineteenth cen­tury through the late 1970s. An ironic them e runs through much of the work: as the Maine Agricultural Experim ent Station grew in size, recognition, and scientific capabilities, Maine agriculture underw ent a more or less steady decline.In 1885 the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill establishing the Maine Fertilizer Control and Agricul­tural Experim ent Station. The impetus for this station had been building for some time in the Maine farm ing com m un­ity. O ther states (four by 1882) had already shown the way. At the time, a prim e concern of Maine farm ers was the doc­toring o f fertilizer by unscrupulous dealers and the large am ounts o f grass and weed seed in grain and vegetable seed packages. This am ounted to outright fraud. T he experim ent station could analyze such products and determ ine their p u ­rity, thereby aiding farm ers considerably. From the outset the Maine State College (later University o f Maine) in O rono housed the station. Disseminating the results o f experim ents and research through bulletins published in newspapers be­came the prim ary m ethod of getting inform ation to the pub­lic. T he first station, supported solely by state funds, ceased to exist in early 1888.T he demise of the first station occurred because of legisla­tion coming out o f the United States Congress. T he Hatch93BOOK REVIEWSAct m ade available funds to states for experim ent stations. T he first grant totaled $15,000 in 1888. From this quite m odest beginning the station has seen its budget increase to $3,341,740 (1975), including $1.4 million appropriated by the state and $604,000 from  the Hatch Act.T he work undertaken at the station over the years reflects the changes in Maine agriculture. In  the twentieth century concerns like poultry, apples, potatoes, blueberries, and dairying have occupied much of the time and resources o f its highly com petent staff. In addition, the station expanded its physical plant at Orono and purchased H ighm oor Farm in M onmouth, Aroostook Farm in Presque Isle, and Blueberry Hill in Jonesboro. Each of the farms carries on extensive work oriented toward specific needs and problems o f Maine agriculture.The experim ent station did not escape controversy or difficulty. Smith describes these incidents and problems clearly and in a balanced m anner. Perhaps the greatest blow to the station was resignation of Director Charles Woods, a resignation dem anded by the board of trustees in 1920. The impact on the station was long lasting, for Woods had made the institution highly respected and had recruited an excel­lent staff. Not until the 1930s did it regain the kind of m om entum  and respect it had achieved under Woods.What makes Smith’s history especially attractive is the large num ber of illustrations in the text. They enhance the narrative very nicely and enable the reader to grasp better the role of the station and changes in Maine agriculture. T he same is true of the extensive notes and appendixes.This volume makes a significant contribution to the history o f Maine agriculture and docum ents well the institution’s vital and lasting contributions that have improved the lives of Maine citizens.William L. Taylor Plymouth State College Plymouth, N.H.94BOOK REVIEWSRadical Sects of Revolutionary New England. By Stephen A.Marini. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Pp. 213. Cloth. $16.50.)Stephen A. Marini, associate professor of religion and di­rector o f American studies at Wellesley College, has written an excellent study of radical sectarianism that should interest all serious students of Maine history. In his introduction to Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, Marini points out that commonly religious sects are started by individuals who have undergone an intense religious experience that turned  them onto new doctrinal paths. He is less interested in the psychological and em otional m akeup of the founders o f the sects than in the “sectarian process” by which sects are born, shaped, and given a perm anent existence. Marini is con­cerned with such issues as how a sect wins over potential converts and how it develops its own “distinctive social o r­ganizations, ideologies, and liturgical symbols” to form a “substantively innovative religious culture” (p. 2).As Marini rem inds the reader, hundreds of religious sects have been spawned in the United States since it became an independent nation, particularly during periods of religious revivalism and social unrest in frontier settlements. He a r­gues that “an exam ination of religious sects in rural New England during  the era of the American Revolution” sheds light on the “sectarian process” of each and provides a basis for com parative analysis of them  (p. 1). With those goals in mind, M arini has studied Believers o f Christ’s Second A p­pearing (Shakers), Independent Christians (Universalists), and the C hurch of Christ at New Durham , New H am pshire (Freewill Baptists).Established in the 1780s, each o f these sects m ounted a radical, unique assault on the belief structure and practices o f orthodox New England Calvinism. They won substantial support in the subsistence farm ing countryside and villages o f Maine, Verm ont, and western Massachusetts. By 1820 the three sects had established over three hundred  congrega­95BOOK REVIEWStions and claimed to have over fifteen thousand followers; altogether they had more than one-fourth of all the con­gregations and church members in northern  and western New England.M arini’s work, based on a wide array o f prim ary and sec­ondary sources, provides a valuable regional perspective on the developm ent of three sects in Maine. T he book is well organized, well written, and well worth the price.Richard R. Wescott South Harpswell, MaineEnglish America and the Revolution o f1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government. By Jack M. Sosin. (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Pp. ix, 321. Cloth. $25.00.)T he Glorious Revolution, in its colonial aspects, has re­ceived far less attention that it merits. For colonial scholars, it has been overshadowed inevitably by the W ar for Indepen­dence; for scholars focusing primarily on the home govern­ment, events in the colonies have seemed at best a relatively insignificant footnote to stirring circumstances and im por­tant constitutional change in England. From the colonial side, there has been a handful of articles and dissertations (applied overwhelmingly to events in a single colony and thus not affording the general view that seems necessary) and one stimulating but controversial study of the entire American scene, David Lovejoy’s The Glorious Revolution in America (New York, 1972). From the British side, the silence is even more complete; in such well-known accounts of the revolution as those o f J. R. Jones and Maurice Ashley, the colonies, for all practical purposes, are simply not a part of the story. It is one of the major values o f the extended study being undertaken by J. M. Sosin that it aims to analyze events in the colonies in a m anner that pays appropriate attention to96BOOK REVIEWSboth colonial and home governm ent perspectives. T he vol­ume under consideration is the second of a projected three volumes treating the history o f the colonies in N orth America from the Restoration to the death of Q ueen Anne. In the previous volume (English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II, 1980), Sosin indicated clearly the methodological approach he intended to follow; he seeks to find a middle ground  between those writings which are es­sentially “im perial” in perspective, such as the works o f An­drews and Gipson, which he sees as placing too much stress on events in London, and the able but limited accounts which have treated events in the colonial settlements in a sort of isolation. This is admirable, and to the extent that he can illuminate the nature of transatlantic links and the problems in establishing them, he perform s a valuable service. It must be adm itted at the outset that his detailed narrative of local events at times obscures this im portant and central concern, but the concern is there and it is instructive.As Sosin reviews the events from  1685 to 1696, and in particular as he analyzes the nature o f the insurrections in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland, he builds a con­vincing case for their intrinsic im portance both in terms of colonial history and in terms of imperial history. W hen he states that “revolution in 1688 had great political and con­stitutional consequences on both sides of the Atlantic” (p. 5), he has a valid point. O n the one hand, the events confirmed a measure of representative governm ent in the American col­onies. In 1702 when Joseph Dudley returned  to Mas­sachusetts as governor of the Bay colony he did so under the terms o f a charter o f William III granted eleven years earlier and also under specific instruction to call an elected assembly to enact laws for the colony; it was a far cry from  the situation in 1686 when he had received a commission from Jam es II to preside over a council nam ed by the king without the benefit of a locally elected assembly. On the other hand, if the home governm ent recognized the privileges of locally elected legis­lative assemblies in the afterm ath o f 1688, it was no less97BOOK REVIEWSinclined than Jam es II to the view that the colonies must rem ain subservient to England. But given the events of 1688 and afterwards in England, it held that view with a differ­ence; no longer was this aim to be pursued by the exercise of the prerogative of the monarchy but ra ther by the authority o f parliam ent. This, as Sosin amply illustrates, had im portant implications in turn. T he preoccupation with a long war with France, coupled with the nature of parliam entary politics, where colonial matters were viewed as o f secondary im por­tance and were clearly not a "party’' issue, m eant that any systematic or centralizing approach to governing the over­seas colonies was compromised. It was not just that colonial matters were entrusted to politicians of m inor standing as a rule; it was more im portantly that imperial policy was sel­dom, if ever, accompanied by the provision of sufficient means for its effective functioning. Colonial adm inistrators were faced with a thankless task; as Sosin rightly observes, “By leaving the representatives of royal authority in America financially dependent on the provincial assemblies, English authorities provided the mechanism for the rise to power of local politicians” (p. 262).Sosin’s analysis o f the risings leads to a further, more con­troversial but im portant thesis: the risings themselves were far from  unified, were not essentially ideological, and were by no means the expressions of republican fervor. It was not ideology nor religious sentiment nor abstract principles that divided the colonists in the late seventeenth century. Rather it was the instability that resulted primarily from  the incon­gruity between the political station and the social status of men denied authority at the upper levels o f governm ent but allowed other forms of upward mobility in colonial condi­tions. “The basic question was, not preservation of Protestant­ism or self-government, but who would hold office under the mantle of the crown of England” (p.3).This is a useful study of a period that has received less attention than it should. It is not, however, without its faults. T here  are some annoying minor slips; for example, the98BOOK REVIEWSwell-known Cromwellian general Lam bert is transform ed from John  to William (p. 45). More of a problem  is an irritat­ingly repetitious style of presentation; while no doubt in­tended to make the point crystal clear, it is hardly necessary, in fact ra ther tiresome, for example, to make repeatedly the observation that Penn was suspected by some o f being a se­cret Jesuit. On balance, though, as an investigation o f basic incompatibilities between m etropolitan and local interests, it has much that is challenging and im portant to offer.Roger Howell, Jr .Bowdoin College99

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