Customer Reviews

The Course of Empire

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Occasionally, I discover a book that is so great that I just want to grab my friends by the lapel and shout, "You just have to read this!" DeVoto in THE COURSE OF EMPIRES is not only highly informative, he has helped alter the way I view the course of American history and the way I view the geography of the United States. The book is not only informative and vision-altering: it is superbly well written. As a writer, Bernard DeVoto reminds me a great deal of Shelby Foote's historical work on the Civil War. Both DeVoto and Foote are novelists who brought their formidable literary skills to historical subject matter, and who framed their histories as narratives. Also like Foote, DeVoto never allows his narrative to overwhelm the history. At this point, this is my favorite book of all that I have read in 2002.

On one level, the content of this book is displayed by the maps that begin each chapter of the book: a topographical map of North America is shown, with the areas as yet unexplored by Europeans in a gray shade. With each successive chapter, less and less of the map is shrouded in gray. But in a way, this is deceptive, because, in fact, the book is less about the history of the exploration of the US than in illustrating the geographical logic of the landmass currently making up the core of the United States. Or, as DeVoto writes in the Preface, he wants to provide an extended gloss on some paragraphs of Lincoln's Second Address to the Nation (i.e., what today would be called his second State of the Union address). In that Address, Lincoln argues that the geography of the United States makes it impossible for there to exist more than one nation in the region. The notion of secession and the formation of a second nation is repudiated by the land itself, not merely the lack of natural barriers of one area from another, but the way in which the entire region was unbreakably linked together by the extensive river system in the American interior. Lincoln saw that the geography, the river system, made it inevitable that there would be but a single nation. In this way, Lincoln, like no American president since Polk and Jefferson, understood the logic of the land. DeVoto's primary task in his book, far more than recounting the history of the exploration of North America, is the elucidation of the fact that the United States was destined to be a single country, and why this was inevitable.

THE COURSE OF EMPIRE has the best maps I have ever seen in a history book. No matter what part of the book I was reading, it was possible to turn only a few pages away to find a map of the area under discussion. The only exception is near the very end of the book, where a key but cramped map of the Lewis and Clark expedition appears. It was, however, the only time that I had any trouble following one of the maps. Unfortunately, it was during the highpoint of the book: the recounting of Lewis and Clark's discovery of a route from the Missouri to the Columbia River, and the exploration of the region.

Although this is the third book in the trilogy of history books DeVoto wrote on the American West, this is the one that should be read first. Both ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI and YEAR OF DECISION: 1846 will be enriched by having read this one first. I heartily recommend that anyone with any interest in American history read this. For those especially interested in the American West, it is nothing short of essential.

"We ever held it certain that going towards the sunset we would find what we desired." Thus the Spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca crossing New Mexico in 1535, and as Bernard DeVoto observes "in four centuries no one ever said it more fully." This book is more than a history of the American West. It's a history of the West as a driving idea, from the time when the Pacific seemed very, very close to the East Coast - perhaps no more than a mile according to one early mariner, who may in fact have been looking at Delaware Bay or Chesapeake Bay. From this early obscurity DeVoto chronicles how the people who would become Americans came to be aware that the land which they had settled was in fact a continent, and realised that the nation which they were forging must necessarily span it all. The book's dominant emotions are an intense love of the American landscape, and a profound admiration for the American people in all their diversity and energy. Especially the wilderness explorers, and it ends with a superb account of the expedition by the greatest of this heroic line, Lewis and Clark.

This is a book about the exploration, not the settlement, of North America. As such, it traces the 278 year history of European and American efforts to penetrate and understand the North American continent.

The Course of Empire then is a compendium of various and sometimes quite different national interests. Utilizing a chronological, fill in the blank approach, DeVoto literally fills in the map of North America as viewed, rightly or wrongly, by each succeeding explorer. Chapter by chapter this story unfolds across the entire history of North American exploration. Thus, the reader meets everyone in chronological sequence, starting with Balboa and ending with Lewis and Clark.

Since subsequent explorers often had access to the records of those that preceded them, DeVoto is not only able to fill in the North American map with the contribution of each exploration, he is also able to link each exploration to its fundamental drivers: national intent and economic interest. As a result, he is able to underscore the ebb and flow of New World power as each country's global interests and economic situation changed over time.

For example, Spain's 16th century interest was mostly focused on conquest and plunder. As a result, Spain's more northern explorations, led by De Soto and Coronado, were limited by the lack exploitable civilizations. In contrast, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Spain's decline as a world power, England's subsequent 17th and 18th century efforts were more driven by land acquisition, sugar and the fur trade. It is easy to see why then that the French and Indian War was fought and why Britain's explorations are so much more consistent and focused on such dramatically different sections of North America.

Of critical interest is how the author weaves the unbelievable scope of this effort into a consistent whole, telling the story of how the geography of North America limited and encouraged continental expansion and ultimately defined the national borders of the United States. This is an excellent work and well worth your time.

Like many readers I was led to DeVoto by Stephen Ambrose, and I was not disappointed. This book combines meticulous historical scholarship with a real skill in storytelling, and it gave me a new understanding of how Europeans perceived and penetrated the continent. I began with the intention of reading the three volumes in historical order, and I'm eagerly continuing to "Across the Wide Missouri," which is all the review you should need.

My only complaint -- and the only reason to deny it a fifth star -- has nothing to do with DeVoto's work itself. The edition I read (purchased here, and as far as I can tell identical to the one for sale above) had black-on-white, pen-and-ink maps that appear to date from the original printing. They can be hard to read, which is a significant drawback in a narrative that relies so heavily on geographical references.

I would be very happy to see either a companion volume filled with modern maps (as has been done so admirably with the Aubrey-Maturin novels), or a new edition of the book that incorporates them directly.

I have no illusions about the sales volume of this title, or its power to induce such a new printing. Nor do I ignore the charm in presenting these maps with the same "period" style that DeVoto's first readers saw. But I found this book so instructive that I hope for others to derive the same benefit -- and that means using modern techniques to make it the most effective educational instrument it can be.

It's important to disclaim that I'm only talking about the illustrative maps. The ones used as chapter headers, that show the continent gradually "filling in" over the centuries, are priceless and should be left as-is in any future printing.

His theme is that Lewis & Clark accomplished what all the other explorers could not -- determining whether there was an easy water-based passage across North America. Like Stephen Ambrose, De Voto was a huge fan of L&C. The whole Course of Empire leads up to the L&C expedition. It really helps to put the expedition in historical perspective. More than that, it puts the early history of North America in persective, no small task. Because De Voto cares about the explorers he describes, it's full of great stories. (Writing in the early 1950s, he did not have to worry about being politically correct. But the facts speak for themselves.) A big book and worth the effort. No problem for readers of Undaunted Courage. I was sorry to reach the last page.

Bernard DeVoto traces the movement of Europeans across North America. You learn the foibles and tortures of De Soto and his band of mauraders. You learn how the American colonists broke treaties that King George had contracted with the Native Americans. You learn the value of beaver pelts. Have an atlas in hand. You will re-learn the origins, glories and horrors, of your native land. The imperial spirit that founded America is found today in our myths and identity.

This is a magisterial history of the exploration of the west by an icon of western histiography. DeVoto takes in the whole sweep of New World history, from the conquistadors up to Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark are the clear apogee of the narrative, and the hundred or so pages on their expedition function as a hundred page mini book within a book.

I learned alot about the exploration of the west in this book, especially in the sections devoted to spanish (inept) and french (daring but lacking ambition) exploration. All forces eventually will yield to the english and later the americans.

Jefferson emerges as a far sighted hero of manifest destiny. This book gives great little known detail on the interaction between westerners and native americans without being biased or unduly sentimental to the existing native cultures.

I thought on the whole he was even handed about alot of controversial issues and his awesome prose and thorough research make this an enduring classic of american history and the "course of empire"

De Voto's narrative of the first three centuries of European exploration in North America is a classic -- inevitably superceded in some details since its publication (1952) but unmatched in conveying a sense of the continent's geography as perceived by the early adventurers. Although it's not as tightly integrated as the more chronologically limited "Year of Decision", this is probably De Voto's finest work.

A glittering tome replete with fire and fancy. Historian DeVoto details the inundation of North America by Europeans and the tearing of the veil of ignorance that lay over the continent of mystery coming gradually to realize that it is not an extension of Asia, that its lands are not dotted with cities of gold, and that no water passage to the Pacific exists anywhere in its geography. Each chapter begins with a map with unexplored territory marked in grey; in each chapter the grey grows less as explorers, bloody fanatics, and imperialists push the boundaries of knowledge further back with each generation.

He follows a constant theme: the naked ship-wrecked fugitive Cabeza de Vaca's extravagant tale of jewels and cities was the "first whorl" that in time became a whirlwind, leading in the 1760's to a climactic global war among the "four empires" of France, Britain, Spain, and the United States, which began and ended around the strategic Mississippi, and which culminated in Lewis and Clark's headlong rush to the mouth of the Columbia in 1804, barely beating out British explorers still intent on fencing in an expanding "imperial" United States.

Entirely unlike contemporary academic works in style, with their courier newspaper-headline prose and careful nodding to the modern Tammany Hall corruption of multiculturalism, DeVoto has not a trace of political correctness. In its pages, Lewis and Clark's men brag at how many Indian girls they got pregnant on their journey. Indian tribes drive French fur traders "crazy" begging for communal "drunks" where liquor removed all their inhibitions resulting in savage beatings, vengeful murders between spouses, and accidental shootings of their own children. Tribes gloat at their prowess in annihilating entire villages of enemy tribes, including the meticulous slaughtering of their children. Still other tribes guard their privileged monopoly in European trade-goods with fierce jealousy, both blocking Europeans from penetrating west, and using their newly-acquired European guns to punish any tribe who might attempt to evade their monopoly and trade directly with the Europeans.

Indian tortures of luckless European settlers and of other Indians is remorselessly described, including the connivance of French priests who at times encouraged boiling captives alive lest the fur trade be interrupted--after all, infidels are destined for the flames; what's the harm in allowing "our loyal Indians" to bring it to them a few years sooner? Likewise, European traders were not loath to force Indian girls into slavery, and many tribes were eager to trade their girls for a few trinkets and knives, while in other tribes the women, married and unmarried, would persistently offer themselves to any European who happened along out of mere curiosity or "for a kind word." Different climes, different values.

Neither are modern orthodoxies spared. Far from painting North America as a fairy-tale land of pristine wilderness and timeless beauty, DeVoto describes how each spring witnessed the drowning of tens of thousands of buffalo as the branches of the Missouri broke their ice, plunging the animals into the depths, such that it was possible to walk along river-banks for great distances upon their carcasses--those not being eagerly scavenged by Indians--and driving people far from every river-bank for several weeks each spring due to the stench of their decaying bodies. And after the annual spring drowning came the grass-fires, with herds of buffalo burned and blinded by flames staggering into boulders and tumbling down hills and bank, both horrifying and pathetic. A phenomenon far from the salons of Paris where fans of Rousseau discussed the virtues of nature and its noble savages over tea-cups with up-ended pinkies. Far from the fate of luckless settlers and the smallpox epidemics that turned populous Indian nations into ghost-towns long before most settlers arrived, the kings and emperors of Europe, apprised of the fate of their distant subjects, shrugged and resumed moving pawns and queens across maps of the world.

I purchased this book last winter and just finished reading it this summer. I was quite disapointed that the book fell apart when half finished. Probably five different sections fell out of the binding. Other than that, it was the best history book I have ever read and I am ordering another copy for my library.