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Bezig met laden... Champlain's Dream (2008)door David Hackett Fischer
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I haven't read any other biographies of Champlain, perhaps the author is retreading well trod ground, but he does an admirable job of showing Champlain's outstanding, even heroic character: his long separation from wife and family, his devotion to king and country despite his religious differences, his compassion over the condition of the native people he encountered that could easily have turned into prejudice and intolerance. The author also puts Champlain into context with the other Frenchmen who have entered the historical record of North American exploration.
David Hackett Fischer has produced a dense, learned, and readable tour de force. Through the life and activities of Samuel de Champlain narrated in Champlain’s Dreams, Fischer has painted a detailed portrait of an important i gure in the story of French colonization of North America and who, Fischer believes, has important lessons to impart in the complex times of the early twenty-i rst century. Dans cet imposant ouvrage, David Hackett Fischer propose une biographie de Samuel de Champlain (vers 1570–1635), certainement la plus complète à ce jour. Le Rêve de Champlain porte évidemment sur ce grand navigateur et explorateur, le fondateur de la ville de Québec, qui a fêté son 400e anniversaire en 2008. Il faut mettre d'autres bémols. Le Champlain présenté comme un «humaniste» avant-gardiste en sol nord-américain, comme un fondateur «tolérant» envers les Français protestants et les cultures et croyances des Amérindiens, ne concorde pas bien avec le discours offert dans ses écrits. (....) En un mot, disons que le travail de recherche et de documentation accompli par David Hackett Fischer est colossal. Champlain's Dream is history in the grand style, a blend of the old-style narrative about great men and amazing deeds, and the newer contextual narratives of race, social currents, and localities - or what Prof. Fischer in conversation in Ottawa yesterday called the "third way" in history. Fischer responds to this challenge the way any careful researcher would. He scours the record, archaeological as well as historical, to find out what we can reliably conclude, and then fills in the holes with some informed speculation. Because he is a rigorous historian, not a historical novelist, he is always scrupulous about drawing a firm line between facts and inferences, and he presents a wide variety of views. He even includes appendixes to examine competing theories about Champlain’s birth date, the scene of some of his most famous victories, the accuracy of his published writings and other matters of dispute. PrijzenOnderscheidingen
Traces the story of Quebec's founder while explaining his influential perspectives about peaceful colonialism, in a profile that also evaluates his contributions as a soldier, mariner, and cultural diplomat. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)971.0113092History and Geography North America Canada Canada French regime 1497-1763 Discovery and early settlement (1497-1632)LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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The “dream” at the core of this book is Champlain’s humanistic vision of a world of tolerance and cooperation in the North American forest, as different as possible from the world of cruelty and religious intolerance into which he was born in France. An early assignment as an intelligence agent (= “spy”) in New Spain showed him one possible way of dealing with the native populations of the western hemisphere, and it appalled him. From his first voyage along the St. Lawrence River, his approach was unusual. He was vitally interested in the native population. While there were aspects of their lives that met with his disapproval, there was much more that he found to admire. In return, the natives experienced in Champlain a man unlike many of those they would encounter: a man who listened, who sought to understand, and one who kept his word. He was not the only one, but there were too few like him.
There is a sense of tragedy in the account, not only in the tale of a man whose devotion to his goal and his manifold skills in pursuing it enabled him to overcome many obstacles and reversals, both in the New World and back home in the Old. More than that, there is the sense of a missed opportunity, a sense that Champlain’s dream died with him. Yet this reader was left wondering what chance the dream had of fulfilment. Champlain avoided violence against the native inhabitants, certainly laudable, yet the diseases carried by the settlers he imported proved as deadly as any weapons he could have wielded. He had the fortune of dying of a stroke before epidemics ravaged the Huron nation. What were the real prospects for the achievement of his dream, even had his masters back home, Louis XIII and Richelieu, subscribed to it? Of course we cannot know. Nevertheless it remains incontestable that Champlain accomplished much; more important than the amount of his achievement or its permanence, however, was the way he achieved what he did. The age in which he lived would have made it easier for him to act very differently than he did – less honorably, less peaceably, less tolerantly. What I felt ennobling in reading this book was that, by doing things in the way he did, Champlain met with more success than those who employed more conventional methods.
Symptomatic of the thoroughness of Fischer’s approach is a section he wedges between the final chapter of his text and the sixteen appendices that follow, entitled Memories of Champlain. In it, he surveys the historiography of Champlain over four centuries. He shows a virtuostic mastery of the material; more than that, a magnanimous spirit that values the achievement of various schools and tendencies, even those with which he disagrees. In this way, Fischer is not unlike Champlain.
Highly recommended. ( )