Cat No.: CA0173:
An excellent and comprehensive history of Nova Scotia with a rather misleading title. In his preface the author explains that when preparing the manuscript for this book he was anticipating the publication of the results of the 1871 census. By the time he had the draft manuscript completed, however, only one of the five anticipated volumes of the census had been released so his final book lacked much of the numeric and statistical data he had anticipated gleaning from the census. In some ways this may be regarded as fortunate since this book as published and copied here, contains a far fuller account of Nova Scotia's history that it would if Duncan Campbell had had to edit it to make room for a lot of data which, after all, is still available to us in the said census report.
While Duncan's writing is a little unusual in comparison with today's idiom it is still clear enough, and his attention to detail is admirable. His facts are well supported by footnotes and references and he has even included a series of appendices to carry quoted documents and reports. Duncan states that his intention was to make the book readable and one of the ways he has achieved this is by including many varied slices of Nova Scotia's rich history in close juxtaposition. In the space of a few pages we noticed the discussion moved from the account of a naval battle off the US shore to the report of a speech given to the Legislature and then on to a series of published letters on the subject of scientific agriculture. Each topic was given its due but the account didn't labor its point so that what could be heavy and dull is made easy to read and informative.
Of course this could not be a representative history of Nova Scotia if it didn't pay attention to the many and varied ethnic groups who have crossed the shores and have interacted with greater and lesser degrees of friction. These groups include at least the native peoples, the French, the British, the Acadians, the Celts, the Maroons and the Loyalists. In dealing with the Celts Cape Breton, of course, comes under scrutiny giving some interesting insight's into the area's development.
Approximately 10 % of the book is actually given over to the discussion of the Mercantile and Industrial Relations and anyone seeking detailed information on the trading and particularly mining activities will find this a valuable source of information. The author considered that an index would be a necessity for a book such as this and so he has included a very comprehensive 18 page one. Our CD copy is also text searchable using the Find and Search features of the free PDF file readers such as Adobe Reader™ so that the information in this book is now more accessible than even the excellent index had made the original.
This book has been loaned to us by a friend of the Archive CD Books Project and we are sure you would like to join with us in thanking them for their generosity in allowing us to make this CD copy available to assist in your researches.
For a further review of the contents of this excellent book we have made a Sampler available on our Nova Scotia Downloads web page. You can also reach this Sampler by clicking on the following link Sampler. You can return to this page by closing the Sampler Page when you are ready to purchase.
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No. of CDs is: 1 ; Format is: PDF ; Searchable?: YES;
FastFind: No; ISBN No.: 1-897338-56-2;