Francis Parkman: France and England in North America Vol. 1 (Loa #11): Pioneers of France in the New World / The Jesuits in North America / La Salle a

by Francis Parkman

Book Overview

This Library of America volume, along with its companion, presents, for the first time in compact form, all seven titles of Francis Parkman's monumental account of France and England's imperial struggle for dominance on the North American continent. Deservedly compared as a literary achievement to Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Parkman's accomplishment is hardly less awesome than the explorations and adventures he so vividly...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940450100
• ISBN13: 9780940450103
• Release Date: July 1983
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 1504 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Superb Storytelling on a Story Rarely Told

Parkman's magisterial work on the role of France in the New World must surely rank as one of the high points of 19th century American literature. Certainly the editors of the highly-esteemed Library of America made that determination when they selected the complete set of Parkman's works to be included in the ongoing Library of America series. Only a partial read is required to understand why this multi-volume work, written over a thirty year time frame, is regularly compared to Gibbon's "Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire," for Parkman's mastery of narrative historical storytelling pours forth from the earliest pages in prose that is rarely seen in today's written works. This is truly a monumental work, and should likely be considered a critical component for anyone trying to truly understand the development of the New World from the European perspective. Parkman begins his saga with the founding and settlement of the area we now call "St Augustine" in Florida, arguably the oldest continuous settlement in the United States, and routinely billed as the "Oldest City in The United States." To visit St Augustine today is to make Parkman's narrative come to life, for there we visit and see Ribault's monument, the Castillo de San Marcos, Fort Mose, and the so-called "Fountain of Youth." To those who are more familiar with US colonial history in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and in greater New England, this is a story that greatly predates the Revolution, and unfolds the stormy rivalry between Spain and France's claims in the New World. It is often a brutal epic, but also contains the awe and wonder of Europeans who for the first time explored the unknowns found therein after the long trip across the Atlantic. After this difficult early series of episodes, the story turns to LaSalle and the many other French explorers who explored and settled in the area of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the issues and battles that ensued as these early explorers met the indigenous peoples of the region. Any map of the United States will yield an abundance of French names through Illinois, Michigan, and all around the Great Lakes (the word "Illinois" itself is a great example, and "Detroit," actually "d'étroit," or "of the straights"), bearing witness to the history of French exploration and settlement in these early years. Parkman's narrative is superb, a example of historical writing at its best. His source documentation is so thorough that the work can serve as a primary resource for a seemingly endless series of derivative studies. But whether you are a historian or not, Parkman brings the story alive, and lets you be a virtual guest through the centuries. Make sure you get both volumes.

Dated history, still highly readable.

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 Rober

A Titanic Achievement

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

Old-Fashioned, Narrative History at its Best

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.