«Excellent biography on the Father of French Canada»

David Hackett Fischer lays in relief one of the worlds great explorer colonizers in his new book 'Champlain's Dream'. Born around 1570 and dying on Dec. 25 1635, Champlain would set his sights on adventure in the New World and he never looked back. Fischer reveals that Champlain had a grand vision of the French and Indians living close to one another, adapting the best of each culture, and being guided by principles of universal faith and law. Unlike the conquistadors of New Spain who made slaves out of the Indians or the English who kept the Indians on the outside at a distance, he urged the Indians to live close even side by side in peace and harmony. Champlain believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and this recognition of common humanity lay at the heart of Champlain's dream. Working with three monarchy Henri IV, Marie de Medici and Louis XIII, Champlain was able to keep his focus on the dream he had and not merely on the rewards themselves. Fischer brings this fascinating man to life and shows that "he was a soldier and a man of the world who acted like a holy man. It was so unusual that Indians and Europeans talked about him with amazement and admiration in his lifetime and afterward". This principled leadership in the cause of humanity as well as his career as explorer and founder of colonies would leave a large successful legacy for us all. Filled with pictures and footnotes, this is an excellent read. Well worth the addition to the history shelf.

[Friday, January 02, 2009]

«Well Worth reading»

Included in this volume is a 531 page biography of Samuel Champlain, 109 pages of notes and 101 pages of interesting appendixes. If you already know about Champlain and are interested in obtaining an up to date exhaustive biography, look no further. If you want a good picture of what life was like in Canada 400 years ago, or, for that matter in France during the time of Henry IV - Louis XII, it's here. And these were fascinating times and places. Take Canada. There is the city of Quebec with a population of 70 surrounded by various huge Indian tribes some continually at war with each other. There is danger of attack from other European powers and the need to keep the community from falling apart from its own internal struggles as well as the need to keep it supplied from France so its people will not starve. This is just one of the places and set of problems Champlain faced as founder and governor 9in all but name) of New France. Then take Champlain himself - soldier, explorer, sailor, spy, artist, governor, visionary, enlightened humanitarian. He lived a life larger than Hollywood could fit in a single film! And he lived it well. His dream? Simply to create a nation where all people - Indians and Europeans - could live in harmony. It is a pleasure to spend time with him in this well written, well illustrated book.

[Thursday, January 01, 2009]

«A prince among imperialists »

Ah, would that more of the explorers and conquerors who sallied forth from Western Europe after the fourteenth century had been men of the caliber of Samuel de Champlain. The history of imperialistic violence and exploitation might have been much different. David Hackett Fischer makes a reasoned case for this. Fischer's book strikes me as a work analogous to what has been said of Cezanne's paintings. They are painters' paintings. And so this seems to me to be a historians' history. Well footnoted and supplied with appendices not only on the historical source material but also the historiography, this is the kind of book one might give to a graduate student not only to show that revisiting a biography in detail can illuminate larger historical themes, but also how to use primary and secondary sources to do that.

For many years Fischer and I taught at Brandeis University. (He outlasted me). Besides occasionally getting his mail, we shared interests and undergraduate students, some of whom became quite accomplished. To my regret I don't think I ever met Fischer. I learned of his interests from students. We both liked to take our students into the nearby woods and teach them to figure out how the landscape had changed under the influence of humans. Unfortunately, I didn't read any of his books until after my retirement. Now I have read all that are in my local library. His books on Paul Revere and Washington were justifiably popular. "Albion's Seed," opened my eyes to ethnic currents which deeply influenced American history. "Champlain's Dream," draws a bit from each of these genres. Champlain moves through a setting of French religious wars, maritime commercial competition, Spanish cruelty in the New World, palace politics, and the realities of trying to found communities in the Indian lands of North America. His great accomplishment was to forge alliances with the Indians of what is now eastern Canada and its southern reaches. In some ways Champlain was too good to be quiet believable. It would be too extreme to say that Fischer's biography touches on hagiography, but the critic in me would like his hero too have a fatal flaw or two. Arising from his horror of the religious wars and his 16th/17th century humanism, Champlain treated the Indians as equals and thereby won their admiration. An important factor in this was that he genuinely admired them too, particularly their physical strength and intelligence. Fischer points out that only a few others were able to overcome the cultural gap between Europeans and indigenes to achieve a similar rapport. Some who would have liked peaceable relations with the Indians didn't have the skills to bring it off. Others, the majority in fact, could have cared less and came to conquer or exploit. de Soto despoiled Nicaragua and Peru, then left a trail of terror from Florida to the Mississippi. A governor of New Amsterdam collectively punished Indians setting off a cycle of revenge which fell upon isolated farmers.

Without the drama of Revere or Washington, Champlain represents the rather calmer history of Canada. Being very interested in the consequences of contact I not only learned a great deal from Fischer's book but was left with a number of questions. There is much more to be said about fur traders and fishermen and their interactions with the Indians. The Basques, Norman traders, and English seemed to have had lots of contact with Champlain's Indians, particularly when Champlain wasn't around. They sold them guns and booze. Fischer mentioned that this created some kinds of troubles, but none of it seemed to impinge upon Champlain's eventually successful establishment of a colony. I would like to know more. I would have thought traders would have created chronic problems. Similarly, Champlain sent young Frenchmen to live among the natives. Many of them went almost native. What were their experiences like? We know that Etienne Brule' had an independent existence among the Indians. Champlain upbraided him for his alliance with the British when they temporarily drove out the French. Though the natives eventually ejected Brule' and he vanished, Fischer's judgment is that the Indians came to hold him flawed and immoral as Champlain did. There must be more to the story, although the historical sources may not suffice to let us know. The prince among the "translators," as Champlain called the sojourners, was Nicollet. Only remnants of his journal exist among the Jesuits' papers. What was his experience like, or for that matter we learn little of Champlain's experience during the one winter he spent among the Indians. Here was a profound interchange. I would like to have learned a bit more about it because it seems to have been a crucial aspect of the French living peacefully with Indians and, of course, leading to the Métis role in Canadian history. By the time of La Salle some thirty years after Champlain there was tension between the agricultural settlements sponsored by the French government and the trappers and explorers. I suspect this had its roots during Champlain's rule but little is said about it.

Fischer's book will not be as popular reading as his earlier volumes. It is harder going and much more historically subtle. Nonetheless I really learned a great deal from it. Fischer is a historian of the highest caliber and I, for one, look forward to what he produces.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

[Wednesday, December 31, 2008]

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