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Title: Francis Parkman : France and England in North America : Vol. 2: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, A Half-Century of Conflict, Montcalm and Wolfe (Library of America) by Francis Parkman, David Levin ISBN: 0-940450-11-9 Publisher: Library of America Pub. Date: July, 1983 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Massive work on France in North America
Comment: 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.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Titanic Achievement
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Old-Fashioned, Narrative History at its Best
Comment: Francis Parkman's account of two centuries of French colonization in North America is a true classic -- undoubtedly superceded in many of the details of its scholarship, but unsurpassed as a Romantic narrative history of two eventful centuries. The publisher is to be commended for making the complete epic available in two affordable volumes. The reader will find the pacing leisurely, and high interest inevitably cannot be uniformly sustained, but patience and perserverance will be richly rewarded.

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