The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century
Francis Parkman, Jr.
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Parkman has been hailed as one of America's first great historians and as a master of narrative history. Numerous translations have spread the books around the world. The American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) in his book "O Canada" (1965), described Parkman’s France and England in North America in these terms: "The clarity, the momentum and the color of the first volumes of Parkman’s narrative are among the most brilliant achievements of the writing of history as an art."
Parkman's biases, particularly his attitudes about nationality, race, and especially Native Americans, has generated criticism. The Canadian historian W. J. Eccles harshly criticized what he perceived as Parkman's bias against France and Roman Catholic policies, as well as what he considered Parkman's misuse of French language sources. However, Parkman's most severe detractor was the American historian Francis Jennings, an outspoken and controversial critic of the European colonization of North America, who went so far as to characterize Parkman's work as "fiction" and Parkman himself as a "liar".
Unlike Jennings and Eccles, many modern historians have found much to praise in Parkman's work even while recognizing his limitations. Calling Jennings' critique "vitriolic and unfair," the historian Robert S. Allen has said that Parkman's history of France and England in North America "remains a rich mixture of history and literature which few contemporary scholars can hope to emulate". The historian Michael N. McConnell, while acknowledging the historical errors and racial prejudice in Parkman's book The Conspiracy of Pontiac, has said: "...it would be easy to dismiss Pontiac as a curious perhaps embarrassing artifact of another time and place. Yet Parkman's work represents a pioneering effort; in several ways he anticipated the kind of frontier history now taken for granted.... Parkman's masterful and evocative use of language remains his most enduring and instructive legacy."
(Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline)
Part 1: Pioneers of France in the New World
Part 2: The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century
Part 4: The Old Régime in Canada
Part 5: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV
Part 6: Montcalm and Wolfe
Part 7: A Half Century of Conflict (12 hr 0 min)
Chapters
Reviews
EXCELLENT OVERVIEW OF THE PERIOD
AVID READER
Parkman's detractors are shown to be empty vessels, not given to truth. He disarms one of them by his lavish praise of the efforts, bravery, and dedication of the Jesuits to their task. As a Protestant, he can never favor their ultimate success, but this idea never enters into the record. As to his alleged prejudice against native Americans, this work fails to support it. He repeatedly expresses regret at the total demise of the Huron nation (and of others), while the recording of the unbelievably cruel and inhumane acts of the Iroquois (and others) are reported almost entirely from eyewitness accounts which are not sensationalized, merely reported. It is excellent history by a fine historian!
A LibriVox Listener
This is an excellent book. Although it is about the Jesuits' efforts to convert the Indians of the Northeast and Midwest, it is more a history of the demise of those tribes. It was not so much the appearance of the Europeans on the continent which lead to their destruction, although it was aided by the Dutch in providing the Iroquois with firearms, it was more due the the incredible savagery of the competing tribes. The description left me aghast.
A LibriVox Listener
The history not taught in school, and the price some were willing to pay to bring the gospel to the new world.
Excellent
Thriveon35k
Great text and history of the early Jesuit history. The readers did an excellent job.
good story
JohnnyBob
good story, would have been better but for the inconsistency in narration.