Thomas Peace, *The Slow Rush of Colonization: Spaces of Power in the Maritime Peninsula, 1680-1790.* Vancouver: UBC (University of British Columbia) Press, 2023.

In 1760, after Montcalm's defeat at the Plains of Abraham, the French Empire was permanently ousted from the Saint Lawrence Valley. This historical event is well-known. However, it is less recognized that this pivotal victory traces back nearly a century earlier, when settler colonial systems began to take root on the edges of the Maritime Peninsula, which includes modern-day Quebec, Maritime Canada, and New England. Historian Thomas Peace employs the idea of spaces of power to demonstrate that, despite changes in imperial control and settler colonial advances into their lands, the local Mi’kmaw, Wabanaki, Peskotomuhkati, Wolastoqiyik, and Wendat nations viewed the contested Peninsula as a cohesive whole, rather than a territory divided by later colonial lines. This intriguing history illustrates how the intertwined concepts of space and power—deeply shaped by Indigenous agency and diplomacy—affected interactions in the eighteenth-century Maritime Peninsula. Additionally, it underscores how, following the end of the Seven Years’ War, this narrative was largely neglected as settlers flooded the Peninsula, laying the groundwork for the formation of Canada and the United States.