LA Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada-A Cultural History

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Summary: Franco-Americans may not identify with Nouvelle France
Review: Non-Traditional View of Francos: An Author Speaks

By Juliana L'Heureux

A recent telephone interview with author Peter N. Moogk, 60, a Canadian professor currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia, brought out a surprisingly non-traditional point of view on Franco-American culture.

So much of Franco-American culture is embellished in nostalgia about the past, but Moogk cuts through the heroic veneer presented by some earlier writers like Francis Parkman.

Moogk's most recent book was published in the United States in 2001, titled "La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada- A Cultural History". It's an ambitious historical effort.

To his credit, Moogk provides extensive research covering the entire 400 year scope of the French experience in North America, not just a little slice of it. In a nutshell, Moogk avoids all prevailing points of view about French-Canadian culture. There's no embellishments or cultural nostalgia.

Instead, Moogk's research drives home the difficult circumstances of French history in North America.

Moogk teaches early French North American history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He's a citizen of both England and Canada. He's not a French-Canadian but he attended McGill University in Montreal for a brief time and he speaks French.

One reason he wrote La Nouvelle France was because he wasn't happy with what his students were learning about French-Canada. Popular Canadian histories assume that New France has no influence upon the present. The French Regime is presented as colorful but not serious. It's a sequential era of heroic missionaries, valiant warriors, explorers and hardy fur traders.

But the French-Canadian culture is more complex and impressive than what's currently portrayed, he says.

Not surprising, La Nouvelle France generated some criticism from French-Canadian history reviewers, he says.

"Reviewers are critical of my analysis of the French separatist movement in the last chapter," he says. In fact, reviewers prefer talking about the last chapter and thereby tend to dismiss the exhaustive historic research throughout the rest of the text, he says.

From a Franco-American point of view, the second chapter is most interesting. Moogk describes the special relationship during the colonial period between the French and Aboriginal people (i.e., Native Americans). In Canada, the Native Americans are now called "First Nations".

In French, the original common word for First Nations was les Sauvages, meaning "Wild People of the Forests".

"The word 'Sauvages' was an old interpretation and wasn't a hostile word during the 17th and 18th centuries," says Moogk.

"I observed a healthy relationship between the French colonists and the Aboriginal peoples," says Moogk. "The nature of the relationship couldn't be ignored," he says. Moreover, the special relationship was learned from European attitudes towards primitive people. Colonial French settlers accepted Aboriginal people, says Moogk, because the European aristocracy readers of Greek, and Roman classics and the Holy Bible believed in a lost world of innocence, like the Biblical Eden.

Colonial era Europeans believed les Sauvages lived a romanticized life in a golden and mythical world free to do as they pleased. They were supposedly relieved from the necessity of labor because they were surrounded by abundant food.

To 17th century Europeans, the Amerindians confirmed the classic beliefs that primitive people lost their innocence when they were corrupted by luxury and artificiality.

"I was struck by the number of stories about French children who were raised by the native people. It's nearly impossible to track, but the sprinkling of French children in the native culture is interesting", he says.

On a positive note, Moogk likes the compassionate nature of the French culture and the strong family ties.

La Nouvelle France is certainly a different perspective on the culture, sure to stir debate, as well it should. [e-mail]