History honours essays 2025

Each year students in History do original research on topics they have chosen and present the results of their investigations in their honours essays. This year is no exception. Once completed, the honours essays are made publicly available in the QEII Library and in the History Department Library.

Here are abstracts of some of the essays that were completed in 2025.

Kendra Burridge

“Newfoundland's Stories: Preservation of the Past and Its Importance in Newfoundland Institutions”

This essay examines the perspectives of four individuals in public history institutions in Newfoundland and Labrador to discover how Newfoundlanders connect to the past and how these institutions promote engagement with history and advertise aspects of culture that visitors see as important. The secondary research touches on how Canadians interact with history, how they view historical institutions, and what areas of history they value. It addresses the broad question of how museum collections form identity and are used to connect with others. The paper then considers donor and curator perspectives in the collection and display process of material culture. The essay then briefly examines popular culture narratives that do not align with historical knowledge. Overall, the paper underlines the dedication of individuals supporting public history sites, their importance to society and what they offer to visitors and donors.

Michael Goobie

“Status and the State: the Gentleman Pirate’s Motives for Plunder”

This essay reconsiders the eighteenth century “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet in light of modern assessments of the causes behind piracy during its Golden Age, from 1650 to 1730. While Bonnet has traditionally been portrayed as insane since the publication of A General History of the Pyrates in 1724, his turn to piracy in 1717 can be explained through the political and economic circumstances that he found himself in. Assessing his motives through the work of modern scholars, Bonnet can be argued to have been a staunch Jacobite, driven to piracy through

financial hardship with the intent of serving the House of Stuart as a privateer in a future rebellion. This narrative presents Bonnet not as insane, but as a rational, if desperate actor reacting to the circumstances of an eighteenth-century world that was only now shunning piracy as an economic activity, who while unfamiliar with maritime affairs, had a plan to allow him to profit from piracy without facing execution as so many other pirates did.

Noah Hamlyn

“From Commission to Confederation: The Historiography of the Second World War and Newfoundland's Confederation Debate”

The Second World War and Confederation are two of the most broadly studied topics in Newfoundland and Labrador history. Historians have interpreted Confederation as primarily an expression of Newfoundlanders’ desires for increased economic and social benefits and improvement, and suggested the war promoted these ideas. This essay traces the study of Confederation from the early economic and political works through the shift in the 1980s, which saw scholars turn to social and cultural factors. A third group of histories combined aspects of both economic and social history to pursue a heavily nationalist and conspiracy-laden version of Confederation. Through a discussion of the historiography of the war and Confederation, my work aims to understand the key movements in the field while highlighting paths of interest for future scholars to explore. While there is a vast catalogue of writings on Confederation, it is one of Newfoundland’s defining moments, one that merits being revisited.