Halifax is widely regarded as a city built for war. Its function is thought to be essentially that of a military outpost with a history of perpetual fluctuation between wartime bustle and peacetime stagnation. This image obscures the true character of Halifax. Throughout its existence the city has striven to become more than a base for war. Haligonians have long sought to make their community the dominant crossroads or focal point of all economic, political and cultural activity within the Maritime provinces. The truly central theme of Halifax history from 1749 to 1849 is the struggle to acquire the status of a regional, commercial metropolis.
Geography has decisively shaped the course of Halifax history. The city's immense natural asset is its location on a secure, spacious, ice-free, deepwater port adjacent to the principal shipping lanes between Europe and North America. At the same time, however, the site is burdened with severe natural liabilities. Low granite hills, strewn with boulders and wearing only a thin acidic topsoil, surround the immediate harbour area. A relatively rich resource base, containing arable soil, timber and mineral deposits, lies inland along the Bay of Fundy and Northumberland Straits. In addition, the coastal waters surrounding the Maritimes contain abundant stocks of fish. Unfortunately it has proven difficult for Halifax to command development of these hinterland resources. No navigable river leads from the city into the interior. Cheap and efficient overland transportation was not attained until the coming of the railway in the 1850s. Until then, trade between Halifax and most outlying settlements largely had to be conducted by sea. Such an arrangement perpetuated isolation and fragmentation. In winter, sea ice severely curtailed navigation. In summer, the abundance of exposed coastline within the Maritimes meant that Halifax entrepreneurs found persistent challenges, both from abroad and from within, for control of regional resources and markets. The tendency for geographic liabilities to overwhelm geographic assets has made the pursuit of metropolitan status a challenging exercise for the citizens of Halifax.
Geographic factors contributed to the neglect Halifax suffered during the period of early European penetration into the Maritimes. Both the British and French concentrated their operations along the Bay of Fundy and around Cape Breton Island, the areas which offered the greatest potential for the fur trade, farming and fishing. Halifax, then known by its Indian name "Chebucto", was overlooked as it offered few locally exploitable resources and did not command the approaches to the interior. The outbreak of war for total imperial conquest in North America reshaped Chebucto's destiny. The port dramatically emerged from neglect in 1746 when France's Duc d'Anville set out with a force of seventy-one ships and 9,940 men to set up military operations. His goal was to recapture Louisbourg, drive the British out of Nova Scotia and then destroy Boston. Adverse weather, supply shortages and disease destroyed d'Anville's expedition but his initiative had lasting consequences. He had demonstrated that any naval force in occupation of Chebucto was well placed to disrupt sea communications between Europe and North America, harass New England's northern fishery and launch raids against any port in the thirteen colonies. British strategists were impressed. Thus in 1749, during a lull in the hostilities with France and after Louisbourg had been returned to the French, the British dispatched an expedition to secure Chebucto. Renamed Halifax, this hitherto overlooked port immediately began to be fortified, both to make it a forward defence of Boston and to provide a base for future raids against the French bastion at Louisbourg.
Using Louisbourg as a developmental model, the British attempted to give Halifax more than a military role. It was designated successor to Annapolis Royal as the Nova Scotian capital and London officials wrote expectantly about Halifax's potential to become a new base for the provincial fisheries. Several factors combined, however, to prevent the rapid development of Halifax into a regional metropolis. Through the 1750s the town remained in a state of siege cut off from the interior by a hostile alliance of Frenchmen and Micmacs. As well, the imperial government damaged Halifax's prospects in 1755 by expelling the Acadians, and thereby depopulating the interior. Resettlement by New Englanders and returning Acadians followed in the early 1760s but as outports sprang up, the bulk of their trade was siphoned away by Boston. A further blow came in 1763 after France's defeat and expulsion from North America. Great Britain had no further need of Halifax. The garrison was reduced and the imperial authorities curtailed peacetime spending in Nova Scotia. Private entrepreneurs followed the lead of government and exported their wartime earning back to Britain rather than assume the risks of resource development. These reverses, combined with underlying geographical obstacles to growth, prevented early Halifax from becoming anything more than an isolated military garrison capable of exerting only minimal control over the adjacent hinterland.
Underdevelopment meant that throughout its early existence Halifax possessed a social structure more European than North American in character. Military officers, imperial bureaucrats and military contractors dominated the decision-making elite. Little local democracy or civic pride existed. Municipal officers were appointed from above, not elected from below. Establishment of churches, schools, a poor house, an orphanage, a hospital and similar facilities was left to imperial initiative. Halifax merchants did lobby successfully to secure formation of an elected Assembly but they then allowed the legislature to deteriorate into being the mouthpiece of London-based power brokers. Meanwhile, the manners and mores of Halifax's general population reflected the crude brutality of life in a military garrison. One observer described the populace as "a set of profligate wretches. so deeply sunk in almost all kinds of immorality that they scarce retain the shadow of religion." Another declared "the business of one-half of the town is to sell rum, and the other half to drink it."
The extent of Halifax's geographic, economic and cultural isolation from the Nova Scotia hinterland was underscored during the American Revolution. The outport population, most of whom were of New England descent, generally sympathized with and occasionally took up arms in support of the rebel cause. In contrast, most Haligonians rallied to the Crown. They were encouraged to do so both by the presence of British arms and by the prospect of wartime profits. Nevertheless, neither intimidation nor material self-interest provided the foundation of Halifax toryism. Those in the provincial capital behaved as they did largely because, as residents of an imperial garrison, they had never been in the mainstream of the American colonial experience. Accordingly, they could not comprehend, let alone identify with, rebel motivation. Loyalty in Halifax was simply the instinctive expression of the prevailing garrison mentality.
The Revolutionary War proved unquestionably lucrative for Halifax. It replaced economic stagnation with full employment, high wages and soaring business profits. War also perpetuated the contradictory extremes found in garrison society. Life for the military rank and file remained arduous and unrewarding. Reflecting on his tour of duty in Halifax, a German conscript declared that the "food was poor, and the cold kept us howling and our teeth chattering." The labouring poor saw their high wages eaten up by rising living costs. Rather than engage in a futile struggle to save, they drank. Their behaviour prompted a preacher from the outports to complain that in Halifax "the people in general are as dark and as vile as in Sodom." Meanwhile, the elite indulged in comfort and security. A visitor, admitted to the ranks of the urban gentry, reported that "feasting, card playing and dancing is the greatest business of life in Halifax."
Hostilities ended in 1783 and Halifax was immediately plunged back into hard times. Adversity did not breed despair, however, and local residents clung to the belief that they would ultimately profit from post-revolutionary reorganization of the empire. Their optimism focussed on the British decision to invoke mercantilist trade regulations against the new United States. While granted qualified access to the inshore fisheries of British America, the Americans would be excluded from the British West Indies carrying trade. In theory, this would allow Nova Scotia and the neighbouring northern colonies to replace New England as supplier to and market for the British Caribbean islands. The vision of building a "new" New England with Halifax as successor to Boston captured the public imagination in the Nova Scotian capital. It was confidently stated that the port had finally obtained the means of breaking the barriers of underdevelopment.
Realization of these post-revolutionary expectations proved difficult. For years much of the Maritimes remained mired in frontier backwardness and isolation, dependent on imported foodstuffs for survival. American interests dominated the fisheries and carried on regular trade with the outports in defiance of British mercantilism. Nevertheless, Halifax did gradually establish itself as more than an isolated military garrison. By the end of the eighteenth century the city was operating as an important transhipment point for trade between the West Indies and the United States. As well, Halifax had become the leading commercial entrepot within the Maritimes. From May to November, the period of peak shipping activity, dozens of small sailing vessels shuttled between Halifax and the regional outports exchanging imports from Britain, the Caribbean and the United States for fish, timber, minerals and agricultural produce. This trade pattern was enlarged and consolidated during the Napoleonic period, 1802 to 1815. Military conflict curtailed foreign commercial activity within the Maritimes while, at the same time, war carried Halifax to new heights of prosperity. It began to appear that Halifax would achieve its ambition of acquiring metropolitan domination over the surrounding hinterland.
Halifax's rise as a commercial centre fostered both quantitative and qualitative change within local urban society. Between the 1780s and 1815 the population rose from approximately 8,000 to over 11,000, largely as a result of British immigration. Most prominent among the newcomers were a small band of Scottish Presbyterian entrepreneurs, who established themselves as leaders of the local business community. The typical immigrant, however, tended to be an Irish Roman Catholic with little capital and few skills. Drawn into the urban work force as common labourers, the Irish rapidly grew in number. From less than ten percent, they expanded to account for over thirty percent of the total population. Their presence challenged and antagonized Halifax's Anglo-Saxon majority, which retaliated with systematic discrimination designed to perpetuate Irish subordination. Even more disadvantaged than the Irish, however, was Halifax's black population. During the war of 1812, several hundred ex-slaves had been brought from the United States to Halifax by the Royal Navy. After a period of employment on the harbour fortifications they were settled on small plots of land around the outskirts of the capital. There they eked out a subsistence existence which included casual participation in the Halifax work force.
While the mass of Halifax's population was growing ethnically and racially diverse, the urban social elite tended to become ever more integrated. Leadership continued to be exercised by government officials, army officers and military contractors, reinforced now by a contingent of wholesale merchants who dealt more in staples than in military supplies. By the early years of the nineteenth century, a majority of this gentry was North American born. Furthermore, intermarriage was transforming the Halifax elite literally into a "family compact". Both developments fostered the emergence of a sense of collective solidarity and exclusiveness. Simultaneously, the elite began to display a heightened sense of stewardship toward the local community as if they recognized that they were Haligonians and not just expatriate Britons. Civilian members of the gentry increasingly devoted time and money to the establishment and operation of local churches, schools, clubs and charities. This expansion of philanthropic endeavour reflected Halifax's increased social maturity.
Napoleonic Halifax displayed continuity as well as change. The port had not been transformed by commerce into a staid and disciplined bourgeois community. It remained very much a military garrison, characterized by flamboyant decadence, violent disorder and acute social inequality. H.R.H. Prince William, future king of Great Britain, was simply following the prevailing custom as he passed through Halifax in the 1780s, feasting, drinking and whoring until he collapsed in drunken exhaustion. A decade later his brother Edward behaved with more decorum, restricting his passion to a single mistress. Nevertheless, chastity remained at a discount among the Halifax gentry. They were still "prepared to condone and accept sexual promiscuity and adultery as one of the normal conditions of social conduct." Predictably, the gentry were not equally permissive in their attitude toward the "lower orders". Brutal floggings and public hanging continued to be dealt out to the military rank and file for relatively petty offences. The harbour mouth was decorated with a gibbet used to display the tarred bodies of those who defied their betters. Civilians remained vulnerable to military justice since press gangs regularly came ashore to seize "volunteers" for the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, the Halifax poor appeared generally unable to exploit wartime opportunity to improve their standard of living. Conditions were at their worst in slums adjacent to the military barracks. Amidst numerous grog shops and brothels would be found "the disgusting sight of adandoned families of the lowest class in a state of drunkenness, bare-headed, without shoes, and in the most abominable condition."
The atmosphere of Barrack Street contrasted sharply with that of the offices, counting houses and homes of the Halifax gentry. For them the war years, especially the period from 1807 to 1815, were a time of unprecedented prosperity. The income they derived from fees and profits was large enough to minimize the problem of inflation. A local paper summed up the mood of "respectable" society when it commented in 1814: "Happy state of Nova Scotia! among all the tumult we have lived in peace and security; invaded only by a numerous host of American doubloons and dollars, which have swept away the contents of our stores and shops like a torrent." Unfortunately, there was good cause to doubt whether this prosperity could be sustained into peacetime.
The Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and immediately precipitated an economic crisis in Halifax that lasted for almost a decade. Deprived of a bustling garrison market, confronted by resurgent American competition in the fisheries and the West Indies and challenged by Saint John for control of outport trade, the Nova Scotian capital appeared near collapse as a commercial centre. Business slowed to a virtual standstill and the town erupted in social unrest. Newspaper editors and anonymous pamphleteers began assailing the privileges of wealth. Skilled workers resorted to strike action in an effort to preserve their jobs and wartime levels of pay. The unskilled, who lacked organization, resorted to the cruder tactics of assault, theft and arson. Halifax's beleaguered gentry struck back with a variety of repressive measures. Anonymous critics were sought out, charged with seditious libel and imprisoned. Labour unions were declared criminal conspiracies. Legislation was passed setting up a workhouse or "Bridewell" and the authorities received sweeping discretionary power to incarcerate everyone from "common drunkards" to "stubborn servants". Such measures successfully intimidated critics of the Halifax gentry but they contributed nothing to economic regeneration.
Postwar Halifax remained a scene of commercial stagnation until the mid-1820s when the port finally began to be drawn into the general economic expansion taking place in Britain and America. Trade with the British Caribbean revived and that in turn led to a general upsurge in commercial activity at Halifax. The port entered a period of growth which persisted into the early 1840s. Even then, Halifax fell short of achieving the development goals laid down in the 1780s. It proved impossible for the Maritime hinterland to dispense with the United States as both a supply source and as a market. Furthermore, Halifax failed to acquire anything approaching monopoly control over the regional economy. American smugglers, Saint John merchants and outport traders offered persistent competition to merchants operating out of the Nova Scotian capital. Finally, Halifax trade displayed an acute instability, alternately expanding and contracting, with the worst contraction coming in the mid-1830s. Nevertheless, contemporaries thought these flaws insignificant when measured against the reality of net economic expansion. Optimism reigned supreme as the volume of trade equaled and then surpassed the levels attained during wartime.
Halifax's postwar commercial achievements gradually transformed local values and institutions and ultimately gave rise to a new community identity. A key area of change involved the field of business enterprise. Halifax merchants had long been accustomed to invest most of their surplus wealth in Britain and America. This export of capital contributed to regional underdevelopment. From the mid-1820s on, however, as confidence in the local economy increased, investment patterns altered. Halifax merchants acquired an expanded direct involvement in the production of such staples as fish and timber. They also acquired a growing tonnage of merchant vessels. Furthermore, this period saw Halifax entrepreneurs set up a multiplicity of joint stock companies to engage in marine and life insurance, banking, canal construction, iron mining, fishing, shipping, municipal utility service and steam navigation. These corporate enterprises became the chief instruments by which Halifax businessmen sought to integrate and acquire control over the Maritime economy. In essence, they became expressions of an urge for metropolitan ascendancy.
Another manifestation of postwar reorientation in Halifax occurred in the field of religion. Until the early 1780s, the Churches of England and Scotland had enjoyed a relatively unchallenged ascendancy in the Nova Scotian capital. Many of the Loyalists who arrived in Halifax were Roman Catholics and anti-Catholic statutes dating from 1758 were repealed. In succeeding years various Protestant sects, notably the Methodists and Baptists, became active in Halifax. Their collective influence in community affairs remained marginal until the 1820s when all urban denominations erupted in a display of sustained vigour. Additional congregations appeared, new churches were built and enforcement of requirements for chastity, self-denial and hard work became unprecedently rigorous. This organizational dynamism and the success of the clergy in establishing themselves as arbiters of public morality reflected the basic changes taking place within Halifax society. An expanding and increasingly affluent urban middle class, allied to some extent with members of the skilled work force, wanted greater social cohesion and discipline. In their mind, the key to material success was moral virtue.
This attitude also expressed itself outside the sphere of organized religion. It accounted for the surge of philanthropic activity during the 1820s and succeeding years. A partial list of new charitable and self-help organizations would include ethnic fraternities, masonic chapters, the Poor Man's Friend Society, the Nova Scotia Philanthropic Society, the Carpenters' Charitable Society, the African Friendly Society, the African Abolition Society and the African Union Society. The shift in public attitudes found its most forceful expression in the numerous total abstinence societies which sprang up in Halifax during the 1830s and 1840s. While the quest for moral virtue often expressed itself in the mere repression of old habits, it could also lead to innovative reform. An example of the latter would be the decision to replace the "Bridewell" with a penitentiary, scientifically designed to operate as a reformatory. Progress was also made toward removing children, the diseased and the insane from the Poor House into separate quarters, where their special needs could be met.
There were also important cultural dimensions to the expression of middle-class aspirations. The citizens of postwar Halifax founded a Mechanics Institute, two public libraries, along with several literary, scientific, horticultural and musical societies. Besides turning out assorted general, religious and temperance newspapers, Halifax publishers undertook more ambitious tasks, such as monthly literary journals, provincial histories, poetry and music. In addition, Halifax residents played a leading role in educational reform. Several charity schools were set up to render children of the urban poor literate as well as more deferential to their social superiors. At another level, Haligonians pioneered in the establishment of various denominational academies and colleges where children of the aspiring middle class could receive inexpensive instruction that would fit them for careers in law, medicine and the church. It should be noted that many of these cultural innovations, most notably the newspapers and educational institutions, became instruments for the spread of Halifax attitudes through the adjacent rural hinterland. Indeed, Halifax could claim to be the metropolitan centre that gave direction and purpose to Nova Scotia's early nineteenth-century "intellectual awakening".
By the mid-1830s the processes of economic expansion, social reorganization and cultural innovation had converted Halifax into a focal point of agitation and political conflict. Trouble stemmed in part from relations with Britain. Halifax entrepreneurs disliked imperial objections to policies designed to stimulate local manufacturing and exclude Americans from the inshore fisheries. They also objected to imperial proposals for the abandonment of mercantilist protection in favour of free trade. It proved difficult, however, to build a united front in opposition to Britain, thanks to deepening distrust between Halifax's entrenched gentry and the rising middle class. Resentment among the latter over issues such as Anglican privileges, corrupt municipal government and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few bankers gave rise to demands for comprehensive political reform. Led by Joseph Howe, urban agitators formed an alliance with dissatisfied elements in the outports, captured control of the Assembly and demanded control of the provincial executive.
The struggle for responsible government raged through the 1840s against a background of economic crisis. Halifax trade had been disrupted by a cyclical recession of international dimensions but provincial traditionalists insisted that hard times were the fault of free traders and political reformers. Finally, at the end of this tumultuous decade, the provincial power structure was democratized sufficiently to satisfy the middle-class advocates of reform. Simultaneously, Britain granted her North American colonies expanded autonomy. They would have to live with abandonment of mercantilism but in return they gained the right to decide for themselves the broad outlines of their future development policy. Initially many Haligonians reacted as if their port had no future under free trade and responsible government, other than impoverishment and anarchy. As early as 1849, however, signs of economic recovery and indications of returning social stability allowed doubt to give way to rising optimism.
Halfway into the nineteenth century, Halifax stood at a major transition point in its history. The city was emerging from a period of major upheaval during which traditional institutions, values and development strategies had been demolished. At the same time, however, the shape of the future was becoming clear enough to inspire confidence. Halifax appeared ideally located to participate in the general expansion of world commerce promised by the advocates of free trade. Moreover, local boosters could indulge in the belief that steamships, railways and telegraph lines would integrate and centralize the Maritime economy. Technological innovation, it was thought, would prove decisive in establishing Halifax as a dominant regional metropolis. Although such expectations were naive, they contributed to a growing mood of self-confidence in the Nova Scotian capital.
Those primarily responsible for articulating Halifax's sense of metropolitan destiny were the ascendant bourgeoisie. This new ruling class had largely, if not entirely, emancipated itself from economic and emotional dependence on the imperial garrison. By mid-century military officers occupied a peripheral rather than central position within Halifax's social establishment. A collection of merchants, lawyers and shopkeepers now functioned as the decisive force in shaping everything from architectural design to public manners and mores. By 1849, the efforts of the urban bourgeoisie to impose their own pattern of thought and behaviour on the general community had succeeded to the point of redefining Halifax's character. While not obliterated, the old garrison identity had been subordinated. Halifax had become primarily a North American community ruled by men motivated by the ideals of moral progress and material improvement. The metamorphosis experienced during Halifax's first one hundred years was of decisive importance. It remained to be seen, however, whether the city had the capacity for sustained achievement through the latter half of the nineteenth century.
