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62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Humanist Founding Father of French Canada, December 8, 2008
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This is a biography of epic cultural and geographic sweep. It entwines itself into the histories of France, England and North America, illuminating by countless fascinating details while never losing the thread of its larger narrative.
The subject is Samuel de Champlain (~1570 to 1635), soldier, explorer, colonizer, diplomat and leader of men. In recounting the facts and deeds of Champlain's life, Fischer finds a theme in Champlain's humanism, in his strong Christian piety with very little ecclesiology and in his dream of la Nouvelle France as the place where men would grow beyond the wars of religion that devastated the France of Champlain's youth. The facts alone are gripping (Champlain made dozens of voyages to North America, was an intimate of two French kings, fought corporate board battles as well as hostile Mohawks, made a fortune, gave it away, founded the city of Montreal, explored and mapped much of what is now eastern Canada and New England, etc., etc.) and Fischer's thematic thread gives it a very inspirational cast without ever flinching from Champlain's errors and weaknesses.
Part of the book's charm is in its incidental illumination of other historical personages (Henri IV of France, for instance, and Cardinal Richelieu). Also delightful is the detail of its minor, surprising episodes; for instance, the account of Champlain's 1609 battle with Montagnais, Huron and Algonquin allies against Mohawk foes, clad in wooden armor and marching in close formation, or Champlain's use of siege engines against an Onandaga fortress in 1615.
Fischer's prose is lucid and never distracting. The book is profusely illustrated with maps, sketches, paintings and photographs that together give the reader a very strong sense of having been a witness.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Massive, Rollicking Portrait Painted on a Vast Canvas, November 29, 2008
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David Hackett Fischer's new full-length biography of Samuel de Champlain is pure nectar to the serious reader of history. Full of life, vivid, entertaining, fascinating and full of insight, this is biography at its best. Painted on the vast canvas of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe and North America, we see a fully developed portrait of a fascinating and complex individual who played such a key role in the unfolding of North American culture and civilization.
This biography is worthy to stand beside the best of our generation: John Adams, The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1), The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932. Oddly, it also calls to mind the fictional work of Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1), The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) and The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3) by Neal Stephenson with its fascinating scope and historical detail.
Among the plethora of insights gleaned from Fischer is his description of the French quality of "prevoyance," which has no exact corrollary in English. Prevoyance is not so much the ability to foresee the future as the ability to prepare for the unexpected in a world of danger, complexity and uncertainty. Champlain is the prime example of the quality of "prevoyance," Fischer shows. We follow this prevoyant man from boyhood in the harbor towns of the Gulf of Saintonge in the Bay of Biscay, with its teeming, crowded ports full of people of all nations, where he is exposed to many different economies, cultures and languages. We accompany him later in his years of soldiering and participation in the bloody religious wars of the sixteenth century, then on the quasi-military exploring expeditions to the New World with Frobisher, where Champlain is deeply offended by the atrocities committed upon the native peoples (chronicled, by the way, in a series of remarkable paintings produced by Champlain and included in full color in this beautifully produced volume). Later, we follow Champlain in his adventures in Paris court of Henri IV, where Champlain held the title of "royal geographer" as he worked in the basement of the Louvre. And finally, we return over the Atlantic with Champlain where he takes up his lifework of building New France and founding the great French capitols of the New World.
This book amply testifies of the arrival of Fischer in the topmost rung of working biographers not only of our day but perhaps of the last century. He not only has the archivist's mastery of the vast corpus of source documents, but the rare talent to create a man out of the sources. Reading this book is as transporting and joyful an enterprise as reading a great novel. Worthy of five stars, and more!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Information-Packed, Laudatory History of Champlain's Founding of New France., February 19, 2009
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On the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain's founding of the first successful French colonies in North America, historian David Hackett Fischer takes on the sensitive subject of a European's dream for the New World. To create a New French nation that would be a tolerant, productive and improved version of Old France was not just Champlain's dream; it was his obsession. His persistence in the face of near-constant political and environmental obstacles and the degree to which he achieved harmony and integration with the Indian populations are extraordinary. "Champlain's Dream" attempts to reconstruct the life and values of this man who was a soldier, mariner, explorer, cartographer, writer, painter, ethnographer, naturalist, courtier, and, above all the Father of French Canada.
Remarkably, Champlain excelled at most of those things, yet we don't know what he looked like or have more than an inkling of his personal life. He wrote volumes about his voyages and observations of North America, enthusiastically promoting his vision for New France, so we are left to understand the man from what he said about the people and places around him. Fischer's diligence in describing the physical environment of his locations begins with Champlain's home town of Brouage in Saintonge, where he was born around 1570 to a haute bourgeois sea captain. This descriptive prose is a recurring feature, perhaps inspired by Champlain's tendency to do the same.
Champlain first visited the New World as an agent of King Henri IV, for whom he gathered information about New Spain. In 1600, he traveled the rivers of what is now Quebec to establish contact with the Indians and document the land, with a mind to establishing a settlement, the first attempt at which would be in Acadia in 1604. A great deal of detail is devoted to the rigors the colonists faced, the carefully-maintained relations with Indian tribes, and Champlain's exploratory voyages. Focus shifts back and forth from those activities in New France and Champlain and his sponsors' tireless efforts to secure trading monopolies and support from three successive monarchs in France: King Henri IV, Queen Regent Marie de Medici, and King Louis XIII.
Some readers will find the detail about European politics, Indian politics, and every person or place that Champlain met excessive. I appreciated the information, and I found Champlain's ability to avoid an endless cycle of retaliatory violence with the Indians particularly fascinating. I am more familiar with British-Indian relations, and my tendency has been to consider the European and Indian concepts of justice mutually exclusive, leaving all options either unconscionable or unfeasible when an incident occurs. But Champlain was able to find solutions that were acceptable to both cultures, even as the Europeans held to the concept of trial and punishment and the Indians to law of retribution. To me, this indicates that Champlain understood the Indians and was respected by them. It takes no small amount of intelligence and confidence to mediate such delicate situations, where emotions run high, and consequences can be dire.
David Hackett Fischer set out to find a middle path between hagiographers and debunkers with his study of Champlain. I don't think he quite succeeds, because he idolizes Champlain and expresses that too often. But Champlain accomplished a great deal, and "Champlain's Dream" is an information-packed account of his deeds. The man, himself, remains distant, but I suppose that's inevitable. The supplementary material is a treasure trove of information as well. The biography is followed by "Memories of Champlain", which discusses how his many biographers and critics have viewed Champlain through the centuries. There are 16 Appendixes, including an a chronology of voyages, views of Champlain's writing, viceroys and generals of New France, trading companies, Indian nations, ships and boats, and more. There are 16 pages of color plates and black-and-white illustrations throughout the book.
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