Moogk, Peter

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

567political strength. Other aspects and circumstances, such as the Iroquois defeat by the French (1696-1701), the decline of the fur trade, the population decline of the Iroquois simultaneous to the swell of the colonists’ numbers, and finally, the fissioning of the Confederacy after 1777, all lended to the decline of sovereignty and loss of diplomatic leverage. It was after all the seventeenth-century sovereignty of the Iroquois that initially bred the respect in this relationship, not vice-versa. Perhaps not unlike Thucydides then, Morito has overemphasized individual actions at the expense of greater historical forces. Even so, his middle two chapters have earned him a place in the forum of these discussions.Timothy D. WilligIndiana University South Bendmotsch, Andreas, and Grégoire holtz — Éditer la Nouvelle-France. Quebec City: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011. Pp. 256.Historians of pre-1760 Canada quote excerpts from such writers as Samuel de Champlain, Gabriel Sagard, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, or Joseph-François Lafitau as evidence to support a particular interpretation of the past. These writers were witnesses to some of the events they describe and that fact gives them authority. Historians are aware that partisanship, such as that created by the Franciscan-Jesuit rivalry, or the self-promotion of Jean-Louis Hennepin and Louis-Armand de Lahontan led to distortions and invented discoveries. Plagiarism, hearsay information, and invented dialogues with Amerindians – such as those in Chrestien Le Clercq’s book Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie – are common features of these early accounts. Human History and Natural History had not yet been separated from one another and so all that was curious and strange in North America’s plants and animals was reported along with observations on the customs and costumes of the native peoples. Even the father of critical, scholarly history in Canada, Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, did not fully escape these currents. Awareness of these shared traits and of individual peculiarities is the extent of the caution exercised by historians. There is one more area about which we historians know little.  That subject is the effect of contemporary literary fashions. Éditer la Nouvelle-France is a collection of essays about the problems of understanding, evaluating, editing, and presenting early narratives about New France. The collection grew out of a 2008 conference on the problems of editing. This book advances our appreciation of the contextual influences, especially the literary fashions of seventeenth-century France, which shaped published and unpublished accounts of the North American colony. Stylistic conventions determined the form of travel narratives which, sometimes, were presented as a series of private letters (the epistolary format). In the first essay, Normand Doiron explores Sieur de Dièreville’s Relation du Voyage du Port Royal (1708), which alternates between poetry and prose. The poetic form allowed Dièreville to exaggerate and to dramatize his observations. Doiron also considers the claim that there was an entirely-poetic and lost version of the Relation. Robert Melançon asks if first-hand accounts of Canada’s aboriginal peoples, like those of Father Paul Le Jeune and Joseph-François Lafitau, can be treated as a branch of literature. The answer is “yes” because the presentation of details in Lafitau’s Moeurs des Sauvages (1724) was determined by literary conventions and even Le Jeune’s 1634 account, which was not as extensively revised, employs rhetoric and drama to enliven the report. © Histoire sociale / Social History, vol. XLVI, no 92 (Novembre / November 2013)568 Histoire sociale / Social History Georges Tissot develops the analysis of Lafitau’s book by focusing on its account of aboriginal religious beliefs. The French Enlightenment’s impact is most evident in Lafitau’s search for traces of a universal faith and recognition of a divinity – beliefs once held to be inherent to all mankind. Lafitau, like others of his generation, believed that this natural religion had once existed among Canada’s native peoples, but had been corrupted. Jean-Claude Laborie’s historical essay, “Du Tupi au Huron,” argues that the published accounts of the Jesuit missions in Brazil allowed this order to develop a model for the evangelization of “primitive barbarians.” Missionaries in Canada and Brazil concluded that Christian Indians should be isolated from European settlements. This segregation policy conflicted with the desire of the colonies’ royal governments to merge European colonists and aboriginal peoples. The Society of Jesus was able to create distinct mission communities because it was financially independent of the Crown, unlike other religious orders.  Vincent Masse deals with varying accounts of seven “hommes sauvages” from the Americas who were brought to Rouen in 1509. These reports are compared with the perception of Amerindians who arrived in Lisbon in 1501. He then traces the modifications in the story of the natives who came to Rouen as subsequent authors repeated the tale and modern scholars interpreted the details. The result is a brilliant illustration of the hazards of relying on later, second-hand accounts.  The second half of this anthology turns to the problems of re-editing early texts, such the extent of interpolations and the length of explanatory footnotes. François-Marc Gagnon connects the natural history drawings of the Codex Canadensis with the text of L’Histoire naturelle des Indes occidentales, which appears to describe the same creatures and Amerindians as illustrated in the Codex. Dr. Gagnon makes his case by comparing the birds shown with those listed in the manuscript. In the course of this comparison, he reveals the history and cultural context of early ornithology. Louis Nicolas, author of the Histoire naturelle, for example, evaluates each species as potential food for humans. A bird’s colouration, so crucial to modern bird-watchers, was of little concern to pre-modern writers. In “Annoter les Relations de Jacques Cartier,” Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud describes the evolving appreciation of the narratives attributed to Cartier: from being sources of geographic and topographical information to being a fund of ethnographic observations about the continent’s native peoples. The scholarly interpretation of Cartier’s actions has shown a deepening appreciation of the political, cultural and religious context of his times. This ever-broadening perspective is reflected in the growing number and the length of explanatory footnotes. This raises a question for future editors of Cartier: could a book become so overburdened with learned comments that they overwhelm the original text? Germaine Warkentin, renowned for her work on Pierre-Esprit Radisson, challenges Grace Lee Nute’s 1943 attribution of two manuscripts to Radisson. It was the discovery of a letter in Radisson’s handwriting in the Bibliothèque nationale de France that permitted her to question his supposed authorship of a c.1677 document and a 1681 draft memorial about colonial affairs. Prof. Warkentin concludes that they were more likely to be compositions by Radisson’s patron, Abbé Claude Bernou, who incorporated information provided by the explorer. Pierre Berthiaume addresses the Relation par Lettres de l’Amérique septentrionale, whose author and date of composition are in doubt. He opts for Intendant Antoine-Denis Raudot as the writer and, despite the 1705-1710 dates on the letters, believes that the letters contain later additions and were subsequently re-edited and censored by Raudot. 569It is suggested that Raudot withheld his account from the printers because, by revealing colonial problems and policy failures, he would jeopardize his own career in government and in the Compagnie des Indes. The final essay by Andréanne Vallée is a prospectus for her critical edition of Claude Le Beau’s Avantures … ou Voyage curieux et nouveau (1738). She describes the conflicting imperatives facing an editor, the difficulties of identifying the writer’s sources, of correcting his errors, and of sorting out a confused chronology. With an e-book version, she says, this editing could go on indefinitely. This anthology is not confined to the impact of literary conventions and to reflections on the editor’s role. Some essays are progress reports that may be superseded by the publication of the critical editions being discussed. Others, like that of Jean-Claude Laborie, will be of lasting value. Ironically, after demonstrating the linkage between these texts and the contemporary literature and culture of Bourbon France, some of the authors, anachronistically, describe these texts as part of “la littérature québécoise.” In reality, the writers were Frenchmen who described North America’s curiosities from an outsiders’ perspective.                             Peter Moogk                                       University of British ColumbiamuelenBeck, Philip (ed.) — Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012. Pp. 324.When Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential race, commentators from the world over speculated whether his victory signified the end of American racism. Others looked to Obama’s campaign promises of a more moderate American foreign policy, and his administration’s initial forays to the Middle East and Africa were met with cautious optimism, if not outright excitement. By the end of the 2012 presidential race, it was clear that racism was not confined to the paranoiac “birther” movement, and publics in the Middle East and Africa expressed disappointment that a black president with African heritage had not brought about the hoped-for positive change in international relations. Race had not diminished from the national or international stage. The collection of essays in Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective makes abundantly clear the extent to which racial attitudes and constructions of identity influenced, and were influenced by events in the Cold War. This collection expands on the works done by United States scholars over the past decade to rigorously examine international history through the racial lens, such as Thomas Borstelmann’s 2001 work, The Cold War and the Color Line. In the American experience of the Cold War, the civil rights struggle was profoundly linked to the process of decolonization in Asia and Africa. United States information agencies and diplomats sought to diminish the impact of negative impression left in many countries by domestic racial inequality, while civil rights and later Black Power advocates looked to newly independent countries for inspiration and broader international support for their cause. For the uninitiated, Michael Krenn’s opening article recapitulates the historic challenge that racism in the United States posed when dealing abroad, and the half-hearted efforts made to improve the American image during the era of decolonization.Compte rendus / Book Reviews© Histoire sociale / Social History, vol. XLVI, no 92 (Novembre / November 2013)

Motsch, Andreas, and Grégoire Holtz – Éditer la Nouvelle-France

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Motsch, Andreas, and Grégoire Holtz – Éditer la Nouvelle-France

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)