Francis Parkman : France and England in North America : Vol. 1: Pioneers of France in the New World, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great We

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Summary: The Homeric Tale of North America's Founding
Review: Francis Parkman is one of those titans of history writing, with a stature equal to that of Gibbon, Carlyle, Prescott, Herodotus, Thucydides and Churchill. His tales of the first colonial wars thus assume a mythological status, and the main protagonists of this, the second part of the Library of America volume - Frontenac, Montcalm and Wolfe - are all larger than life.

The story of Count Frontenac is set against the era of Louis XIV and his drawn-out continental wars against William of Orange and the English. Frontenac proves an adroit military commander, dealing sharply with the Iroquois, and even more decisively with the English colonists of North America. One cannot help but have goosebumps reading Parkman's matchless prose as Count Frontenac departs Canada after his first spell as governor: "When [Frontenac] sailed for France, it was a day of rejoicing to more than half the merchants of Canada . . . but he left behind him an impression, very general among the people, that, if danger threatened the colony, Count Frontenac was the man for the hour."

The story of Wolfe and Montcalm, and the final collapse of New France in 1759, has assumed the same proportions as Hector and Achilles. This is largely, if not solely, due to Parkman's magisterial account of the fall of Quebec; indeed, so stark is his influence today that a modern biographer of Bouganville (Montcalm's deputy) simply - and, I think, very appropriately - related the Plains of Abraham saga by block-quoting Parkman.

Whether read as history or historiography, Parkman remains a giant.

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Summary: Massive work on France in North America
Review: Francis Parkman was apparently a real workhorse, and something of a fixture in Boston society also. The first book of this series is dedicated to (among others) the guy played by Matthew Broderick in the movie Glory of some years ago. The four books reprinted here represent a century or so of the history of New France. The work as a whole is somewhat deceptively titled "France and England in North America" when the focus of the work is pretty much exclusively on New France.

There are really four separate books here. "Pioneers of France in the New World" is divided into two portions. One tells the story of the short-lived French settlement in Florida, the other part recounts the work of Samuel de Champlain in what became known as Canada, and recounts the fateful decision of Champlain to take the side of the local Huron Indians against their perrenial enemies, the Iroqouis. "The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century" recounts the activities of that sect in their missions which tried without much success to convert the various tribes to Catholicism. "LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West" tells the story of that individual, and his exploration of the Mississippi valley, the Great Lakes, and Texas, where he was killed, and also includes an account of the travels of Marquette and Joliet, discoverers of the Mississippi river. "The Old Regime in Canada" is more of a description of the colony than an account of events in it, though in the early pages of the work, there is an account of various incidents in the era just after the previous volume. Most of the book contains a description of society, culture, government, church, and economy in the late 17th century, though, and that's the focus of the work.

This is a justly famous work, though Parkman doesn't age as well as you might imagine. He uses strange usages of various words, with somewhat interesting grammar at times, also. The view of the Indians is particularly awkward, and very politically incorrect. He repeatedly refers to them as "savages" for instance, and has little use for their religious beliefs or culture. His view of Catholicism is also characteristically negative, which isn't a surprise in that he wrote in 19th century New England.

Given the clumsy language and the interesting viewpoints, I believe this book is anyway very valuable, and I enjoyed it. There is the issue of it being 1500+ pages, so I wouldn't recommend this book to the faint of heart. Given that this is only the first of two volumes, and that the second one is 100 pages longer, this is a considerable investment of time, even for the prodigious reader.

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Summary: Old-Fashioned, Narrative History at its Best
Review: This book and its companion, Count Frontenac & New France Under Louis XIV represents one of the US's first great histories. Detailed, but lively written with only a few give-away phrases to let the reader know that this history was written over 100 years ago, these 2 volumes are a must read for any serious US/North American history buff.

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Summary: A Titanic Achievement
Review: This multi-volume edition of Parkman's magnum opus might appear initially daunting, as it covers more than 1,200 pages of material. Suffice it say, however, that the rewards are entirely worth the effort of fording your way through this majestic work.

Parkman triumphed over numerous personal disabilities (extremely poor eyesight and recurring pain in his limbs), to produce some of the most important and transcendent histories of the 19th century, works that secured him a place in the American Pantheon, beside Prescott and Bancroft. He has been interpreted both as an example of literary Romanticism by some, and as a supreme pessimist by others. His objective as an historian was to "while scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh." This notion is reflected repeatedly throughout these volumes. His style is highly descriptive, borrowing as it does from his numerous treks to the sites he writes of. The Jesuits, trappers, governors, nuns and explorers he depicts come across as flesh-and blood, breathing, human beings, engaged in real activities. He has little place for abstraction, and never dwells overlong on minutiae. The ramifications of particular pacts or treaties, for instance, are subordinate to actual events and places. When he takes the reader into an Indian log-house, he/she can practically taste the smoke as it permeates the air.

When it comes to Native Americans, Parkman is far from sentimental. In fact, he bridled at the notion, common in 19th Century Romanticism (particularly Rousseau and even more conspicuously in Chateaubriand's ), of the Indian as noble savage. Parkman's earlier book on the Oregon Trail stemmed in part from his experiences amongst the Sioux on the Western Plains. The Indians depicted in these pages are, for the most part, more savage than noble. The Iroquois are especially ferocious in their raiding parties and in their methods of reprisal. Those who fell victim to their wrath were in for days and nights of unspeakable torture. Parkman describes these scenes almost too vividly. But as he himself would note,
"Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time." There are some academics that would argue that Parkman is not as objective as he would like us to think. He has a fairly consistent Protestant, Bostonian, Brahmin bias as regarding Catholicism, for instance. His view of Native Americans is hardly what could be termed politically correct. However one may feel about his viewpoint, one can not dismiss his power of depiction, or the scope of his genius and enterprise. When taking into account the fact that he produced volume upon volume of history, under the most debilitating circumstances, there can be no denying that he qualifies, as perhaps no one else, as "The American Gibbon." For the reader who wants to relive history at its most vivid, Parkman provides the goods. He paints in realistic detail the struggles, adventures and misadventures, the faith and foibles, great tribulations and monumental victories of an exceedingly noteworthy cast of characters. There are the infinitely stoical, but often-scheming Jesuits. There is the monomaniacal, driven, but honest-dealing and ultimately tragic figure of LaSalle. Champlain is another noteworthy figure, truly heroic in stature. The most heroic figure, however, may after all be Parkman himself. Shaped as he was by the notions of greatness fostered by such writers as Carlyle, it was a state he strove consciously to achieve. This collection, along with others in the Modern Library series, indicates that he achieved his goal. Thanks to The Modern Library for making authors such as Parkman accessible once more.

Rating:
Summary: Dated history, still highly readable.
Review: Yes, Francis Parkman's use of 19th century venacular and grammar can be a little offputting to a 21st century reader. Also, his prudish Victorian attitudes about what is appropriate to be written can come across as silly. However, Parkman wrote history with the skill of a novelist. His narrative histories are among the best written works in all of American literature.

As others have noted, these books are not "politically correct" in their description of the American Indian. Francis Parkman did write with an agenda. In the late 19th century, Parkman was offended by what he saw as the popular romanticism of the American Indian. (A trend that has continued to this day with the American Indian routinely being presented as a "New Age Eagle scout with a bent for ecology" in both our popular culture and even in our schools.) Thus, Parkman attempted to write what he saw as the "historical" or "correct" portrayal of the American Indian- one that could be ruthless, barbaric, and extremely cruel and he backed up his opinion with numerous historical examples.

Parkman saw himself as a neutral narrator- a "I'm just writing down the facts" type of historian. And he does describe examples of European barbarism and their genocidal strategies against the natives to go along side of his "Injun massacre" portrayal of the American Indian. Yet Parkman wrote with obvious biases and his description of the American Indian tribes is too simplistic. Partly, this is because of Parkman's own racial prejudices, but also it is because of his limitations as a historian. Parkman's history is just a straight narrative with almost no analysis.

For instance, Parkman describes the Iroquois Confederacy's destruction of the Hurons in the late 1640's in terrific detail, but he doesn't really explain why the Iroquois were so determined to crush the Hurons. To Parkman, the answer was simple the Iroquois were primitive savages, who reveled in large scale murder and destruction, so there is no reason to analyze why they attacked and destroyed an ancient enemy. Yet modern research, using the same sources Parkman had access too, has shown that there were very logical reasons why the Hurons were targetted for destruction by the Iroquois- the Hurons because of their location near the entrance of the Ottawa River controlled the beaver trade from the upper Great Lakes and the Iroquois wanted that plum for themselves because in order to survive in the world of the Europeans tribes needed something to bargain with and beaver pelts were that something. Parkman because of his prejudices just could not see Indian tribes being that rational in their decisions to go to war.

Time has definitely exposed Parkman's limitations as a historian. Yet his two volume history of England and France in North America still remains extremely readable and entertaining- his description of entering an Algonquin wigwam is a perfect example of his talent as a master narrator.

[Also, it's pretty sad to see Robert Gould Shaw, a kinsman of Parkman's and to whom the first book of this history was dedicated too, being referred to as "the guy" who Matthew Broderick played in the movie "Glory."]