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Terfex.com - Champlain's Dream
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Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 971.0113092
EAN: 9781416593324
ISBN: 1416593322
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 848
Publication Date: 2008-10-14
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Reviews:
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In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain -- soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France. Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France's religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France's greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Champlain was also a brilliant navigator. He went to sea as a boy and over time acquired the skills that allowed him to make twenty-seven Atlantic crossings without losing a ship. But we remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than thirty years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America. Sailing frequently between France and Canada, he maneuvered through court intrigue in Paris and negotiated among more than a dozen Indian nations in North America to establish New France. Champlain had early support from Henri IV and later Louis XIII, but the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu opposed his efforts. Despite much resistance and many defeats, Champlain, by his astonishing dedication and stamina, finally established France's New World colony. He tried constantly to maintain peace among Indian nations that were sometimes at war with one another, but when he had to, he took up arms and forcefully imposed a new balance of power, proving himself a formidable strategist and warrior. Throughout his three decades in North America, Champlain remained committed to a remarkable vision, a Grand Design for France's colony. He encouraged intermarriage among the French colonists and the natives, and he insisted on tolerance for Protestants. He was a visionary leader, especially when compared to his English and Spanish contemporaries -- a man who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world of cruelty and violence. This superb biography, the first in decades, is as dramatic and exciting as the life it portrays. Deeply researched, it is illustrated throughout with many contemporary images and maps, including several drawn by Champlain himself.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent biography on the Father of French Canada
Comment: David Hackett Fischer lays in relief one of the worlds great explorer colonizers in his new book 'Champlain's Dream'. Born around 1570 and dying on Dec. 25 1635, Champlain would set his sights on adventure in the New World and he never looked back. Fischer reveals that Champlain had a grand vision of the French and Indians living close to one another, adapting the best of each culture, and being guided by principles of universal faith and law. Unlike the conquistadors of New Spain who made slaves out of the Indians or the English who kept the Indians on the outside at a distance, he urged the Indians to live close even side by side in peace and harmony. Champlain believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and this recognition of common humanity lay at the heart of Champlain's dream. Working with three monarchy Henri IV, Marie de Medici and Louis XIII, Champlain was able to keep his focus on the dream he had and not merely on the rewards themselves. Fischer brings this fascinating man to life and shows that "he was a soldier and a man of the world who acted like a holy man. It was so unusual that Indians and Europeans talked about him with amazement and admiration in his lifetime and afterward". This principled leadership in the cause of humanity as well as his career as explorer and founder of colonies would leave a large successful legacy for us all. Filled with pictures and footnotes, this is an excellent read. Well worth the addition to the history shelf.
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Summary: Well Worth reading
Comment: Included in this volume is a 531 page biography of Samuel Champlain, 109 pages of notes and 101 pages of interesting appendixes. If you already know about Champlain and are interested in obtaining an up to date exhaustive biography, look no further. If you want a good picture of what life was like in Canada 400 years ago, or, for that matter in France during the time of Henry IV - Louis XII, it's here. And these were fascinating times and places. Take Canada. There is the city of Quebec with a population of 70 surrounded by various huge Indian tribes some continually at war with each other. There is danger of attack from other European powers and the need to keep the community from falling apart from its own internal struggles as well as the need to keep it supplied from France so its people will not starve. This is just one of the places and set of problems Champlain faced as founder and governor 9in all but name) of New France. Then take Champlain himself - soldier, explorer, sailor, spy, artist, governor, visionary, enlightened humanitarian. He lived a life larger than Hollywood could fit in a single film! And he lived it well. His dream? Simply to create a nation where all people - Indians and Europeans - could live in harmony. It is a pleasure to spend time with him in this well written, well illustrated book.
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Summary: A prince among imperialists
Comment: Ah, would that more of the explorers and conquerors who sallied forth from Western Europe after the fourteenth century had been men of the caliber of Samuel de Champlain. The history of imperialistic violence and exploitation might have been much different. David Hackett Fischer makes a reasoned case for this. Fischer's book strikes me as a work analogous to what has been said of Cezanne's paintings. They are painters' paintings. And so this seems to me to be a historians' history. Well footnoted and supplied with appendices not only on the historical source material but also the historiography, this is the kind of book one might give to a graduate student not only to show that revisiting a biography in detail can illuminate larger historical themes, but also how to use primary and secondary sources to do that.
For many years Fischer and I taught at Brandeis University. (He outlasted me). Besides occasionally getting his mail, we shared interests and undergraduate students, some of whom became quite accomplished. To my regret I don't think I ever met Fischer. I learned of his interests from students. We both liked to take our students into the nearby woods and teach them to figure out how the landscape had changed under the influence of humans. Unfortunately, I didn't read any of his books until after my retirement. Now I have read all that are in my local library. His books on Paul Revere and Washington were justifiably popular. "Albion's Seed," opened my eyes to ethnic currents which deeply influenced American history. "Champlain's Dream," draws a bit from each of these genres. Champlain moves through a setting of French religious wars, maritime commercial competition, Spanish cruelty in the New World, palace politics, and the realities of trying to found communities in the Indian lands of North America. His great accomplishment was to forge alliances with the Indians of what is now eastern Canada and its southern reaches. In some ways Champlain was too good to be quiet believable. It would be too extreme to say that Fischer's biography touches on hagiography, but the critic in me would like his hero too have a fatal flaw or two. Arising from his horror of the religious wars and his 16th/17th century humanism, Champlain treated the Indians as equals and thereby won their admiration. An important factor in this was that he genuinely admired them too, particularly their physical strength and intelligence. Fischer points out that only a few others were able to overcome the cultural gap between Europeans and indigenes to achieve a similar rapport. Some who would have liked peaceable relations with the Indians didn't have the skills to bring it off. Others, the majority in fact, could have cared less and came to conquer or exploit. de Soto despoiled Nicaragua and Peru, then left a trail of terror from Florida to the Mississippi. A governor of New Amsterdam collectively punished Indians setting off a cycle of revenge which fell upon isolated farmers.
Without the drama of Revere or Washington, Champlain represents the rather calmer history of Canada. Being very interested in the consequences of contact I not only learned a great deal from Fischer's book but was left with a number of questions. There is much more to be said about fur traders and fishermen and their interactions with the Indians. The Basques, Norman traders, and English seemed to have had lots of contact with Champlain's Indians, particularly when Champlain wasn't around. They sold them guns and booze. Fischer mentioned that this created some kinds of troubles, but none of it seemed to impinge upon Champlain's eventually successful establishment of a colony. I would like to know more. I would have thought traders would have created chronic problems. Similarly, Champlain sent young Frenchmen to live among the natives. Many of them went almost native. What were their experiences like? We know that Etienne Brule' had an independent existence among the Indians. Champlain upbraided him for his alliance with the British when they temporarily drove out the French. Though the natives eventually ejected Brule' and he vanished, Fischer's judgment is that the Indians came to hold him flawed and immoral as Champlain did. There must be more to the story, although the historical sources may not suffice to let us know. The prince among the "translators," as Champlain called the sojourners, was Nicollet. Only remnants of his journal exist among the Jesuits' papers. What was his experience like, or for that matter we learn little of Champlain's experience during the one winter he spent among the Indians. Here was a profound interchange. I would like to have learned a bit more about it because it seems to have been a crucial aspect of the French living peacefully with Indians and, of course, leading to the Métis role in Canadian history. By the time of La Salle some thirty years after Champlain there was tension between the agricultural settlements sponsored by the French government and the trappers and explorers. I suspect this had its roots during Champlain's rule but little is said about it.
Fischer's book will not be as popular reading as his earlier volumes. It is harder going and much more historically subtle. Nonetheless I really learned a great deal from it. Fischer is a historian of the highest caliber and I, for one, look forward to what he produces.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World
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Summary: Makes Good Use Of Available Research Material To Compose A Superlative Work.
Comment: The author, a Pulitzer Prize winning Professor of History at Brandeis University, has here constructed the definitive biography of Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebec (1608) and one of the most fascinating figures within the chronicle of North America. As with his prior books, Fischer relies for source material upon original documents, rather than by paraphrasing writings from other historians, and his contempt for those who are "apostles of political correctness" is well known and, in this instance, is largely responsible for his depiction of Champlain as a truly heroic and praiseworthy man. This is, therefore, somewhat of a revisionist piece, with Fischer forced to create from whole cloth many elements from Champlain's life that have remained unknown, due to his personal papers having been lost after his death in 1635, such as the date of his birth (Fischer posits c. 1570) and his formative years, while his speculations have, as a result, remained generally unrecorded. A void of these dimensions is particularly vexing due to Champlain's inordinately productive life as a diplomat, writer, cartographer, soldier, mariner, artist, ethnographer, et alia. He captained 27 North Atlantic crossings over a 37 year period with no craft being lost other than a supply ship, fought as a youth in French religious wars under King Henri IV, beneath whom his intrinsic tolerance for differing creeds and peoples was fostered, served as a successful cultural diplomatic representative following his voyages to the European continent, and established in Acadia the first gastronomic society in the American continent, "Ordre de Bon Temps". Yet, having all of these accomplishments to his credit, and many more, Champlain's likeness is not available for pictorial reference other than a single tiny self-portrait with no facial detail that is ensconced within a battle scene engraving completed by him. His legacy to most North Americans is extensive and varied, including such as the 12 million Métis (French/Indian mix), a racial combination encouraged by Champlain; and the numerous positive results of his emphasis upon achieving tolerance within his New France, guiding it forward as a land wherein peoples of all ethnic backgrounds might live peacefully. His urging for toleration towards Indians is recorded, and enforced by his behaviour when in their company during his travels by foot, boat, and birch bark canoe (although he never learned to swim) through wilderness regions of what later became parts of six Canadian provinces and of five of the United States. Published during the 400th anniversary period for the founding of New France, the book is an academic masterwork, featuring 16 appendices, 110 pages of detailed notes, a valuable 42 page bibliography, a comprehensive index, and a large contingent of illustrations, in both colour and black/white. This founder and administrator of the first North American French settlement, Champlain, was an advocate of peaceful colonialism, in sharp contrast with the mode envisioned and employed by the Spanish and English (he explored Plymouth Harbour 15 years before the landing there of the Pilgrims) and is a prototypical Renaissance Man of heroic stature, ably depicted by a redoubtable historian.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Exploring The Explorer Of New France
Comment: A Vine Review (Thanks for the book, Amazon!)
Brave, tough, ever-curious, Samuel de Champlain stood out from other daring Europeans voyaging to the Americas for his qualities of decency and sensitivity. That is the take David Hackett Fischer offers in this lengthy, engrossing 2008 biography of the 17th century French captain.
Canada at the time was desired less for habitation than for quick-hauled treasures of fur and fish. Farther south, in warmer climes, the Spanish hunted gold and the British elbow room. Enthusiasm among the French for the hard business of colonization was tempered by the frosty hinterlands they had to colonize.
Not so for Champlain: "If they knew in France that we were eating bear, they would turn their faces away from our breath," he noted at one feast in the slow-growing frontier town of Quebec, which he made his headquarters. "Yet you see how delicate and good the meat is!"
Champlain's enduring optimism was a necessity in getting New France off the ground. Winters were brutal; transoceanic journeys often death-defying. On the plus side were relations with Indian nations like the Montagnais and the Sac and Fox, many of whose chiefs were fond of Champlain for his hearty manner and the doughty way he thrashed their feared southern adversaries, the Mohawk and Iroquois.
Champlain also had to negotiate tricky waters of another kind, those of French politics. One king, Henri, was a mysterious champion, but his death left Champlain swimming upriver. "In Champlain's two worlds, some of the most dangerous people wore diamonds and brocade," Fischer writes.
Those who read Fischer's other narrative histories, like "Washington's Crossing" and "Paul Revere's Ride", will know what to expect here: a deep-dish exploration of the many facets of the title character and his age. Fischer is writing more of a straightforward biography here, hampered a good deal by a lack of first-person material, but his gift for finding seemingly loose facts and putting them in vivid context remains on fine display.
So's his talent for touting the positives and for unabashed-if-factual hero worship. I enjoy Fischer for his de-revisionist perspective, his willingness to challenge the prevailing politically correct view of evil Europeans descending upon guileless "Native Americans", but he does push the point more than needed, and seems to repeat himself a lot when talking up Champlain's many virtues. He may be reacting to two generations of dogmatic debunkers, but since I haven't read as much of them his case-making feels a bit strident.
Yes, Champlain enjoyed good relations with the Indians, no doubt helped by his nuanced approach to Christianity and respect for local ways. But New France in his day was barely settled, and Indians there did not find themselves as hemmed in as other nations further south. Would Champlain's approach been as practical if tried in Jamestown?
One would like to think so, anyway. Fischer's book reminds us goodness and decency need not be millstones to success. More important, it's a vibrant take on a sometimes overlooked yet integral chapter of North American history, one that will have you smelling the bear meat on Champlain's breath.
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