2008 is the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec by Samuel de Champlain. But there are many other reasons to celebrate an American explorer who does not receive nearly enough credit south of the border. In fact, the border as it now exists would have confused Champlain, who routinely defined New France as extending far into what is now New England and New York, and mapped the coastline extensively, well before the Pilgrims came to Plymouth.
That is only one of the reasons for Americans to rediscover this essential explorer. For Champlain, the New World was a lifelong obsession, and his travels brought him across the hemisphere, from the Caribbean to the northern reaches of North America. More than just an explorer, he was a brilliant actor and self-promoters, qualities that were prized in the Age of Discovery, and his genius for map-making and publishing vastly deepened the contours of the New France he did so much to will into existence. Describing the ideal mariner, he left an attractive picture of his own virtues: "an upright, God-fearing man, not dainty about food or drink, robust and alert, with good sea legs."
Perhaps Champlain's greatest monument is the survival of a resilient Francophone people in North America, four centuries after the founding of Quebec. Champlain's vision of New France came to the end on the Plains of Abraham, outside Quebec, when the British scored a decisive victory in 1759. But his dream of an expansive network of American peoples of different backgrounds, trading with one another in peace, has not disappeared. Facing a harsh climate and limitless adversity in a forbidding new world, Americans and Canadians have always had a great deal to learn from each other. Reconsidering Champlain as an essential American ancestor -- of both Canada and the United States -- is one way to honour that dream, and in so doing, to celebrate the world's most successful bilateral relationship.
Inventing New France:
As early as the first decade of the sixteenth century, Norman and Breton fishermen were conducting annual voyages to the teeming fishing banks off Newfoundland, occasionally bringing back sauvages (sic) (Native Americans) to pique the curiosity of their countrymen at home. Although France did not succeed in establishing a permanent colony in the Americas during the 1500s, the early years of the seventeenth century saw conditions ripening in both France and England for New World colonizing projects. The end of the civil wars left Henry IV triumphant in France, and increasing mercantile interest in the fur trade led him to grant monopoly concessions to companies in return for underwriting colonial development. While the English were establishing themselves solidly and securely in the Chesapeake region, the French were making repeated efforts in the far north to settle the St. Lawrence River, even sending tentacles southward to assess the potential and possibilities of the New England coast.
Samuel de Champlain, Father of New France:
Samuel de Champlain was the single most important factor in the initial success of French attempts to gain a foothold in America. He spent the greater part of his life in New France and devoted considerable energy to its success. Champlain crossed the Atlantic more than twenty times, going back and forth to encourage and maintain support for the venture. During his first voyage to the region in 1603, he traveled up the Saguenay River as far west as Montreal, and by the summer of 1605 was following the Atlantic coast as far south as Nauset on Cape Cod in search of likely settlement sites. In 1608, Champlain established himself in Quebec, his base camp for further exploration, while the next year found him at Lake Champlain fighting alongside his Indian allies against the Mohawk. After 1610, Champlain played a less active role, focusing his attentions primarily on writing about his experiences and working to raise funds and support for the Canadian venture.
Delenda est Canada!
There were four world-wide European wars between 1689 and 1763, each of which was primarily a contest between England and France, and each of which was fought in part on the American continent. British colonial interest in the overthrow of French power in North America had its beginnings with King William's War (1689-1697), when New Englanders, fed up with French attacks on their North Atlantic shipping and fishing interests, set about the task of destroying privateer haunts in Acadia. In the spring of 1690, Port Royal (Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) fell to a motley force of some seven hundred New England troops. Although it was regained by the French the following year, this initial success emboldened the government of Massachusetts to entertain hopes of neutralizing the French threat decisively, once and for all. Quebec, on a promontory overlooking the St. Lawrence River, founded by Champlain as the center of French power in Canada, became the symbol of the French threat to the British colonies. Delenda est Canada! (Canada must be destroyed), became the rallying cry of New England.
The "Great Design":
In 1709, the British government finally agreed, in cooperation with the New England colonies and New York, to mount an expedition on Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. But this expedition, the "Great Design," had to be cancelled, disappointing New Englanders who had made heavy outlays in preparation, and also the Five Nations, especially the Mohawks, whose allegiance to the British cause now seemed in jeopardy. When Sir Francis Nicholson, career soldier and former governor of Virginia and Maryland, went to England in February 1710 to plead the New England case for invasion, he was accompanied by four "Indian Kings," whose rousing welcome by London society served to encourage Queen Anne and her ministers to revive the proposed plan. A year later, a joint British land and sea campaign was launched, with attacks planned on Montreal and Quebec. Although experienced pilots with knowledge of the St. Lawrence River were lacking, it was decided to risk the venture anyway. In August 1711, the invading force entered the St. Lawrence, but as the fleet made their way toward Quebec they were enveloped by fog. Unable to sight land and buffeted by confusing currents, eight transports were wrecked and 884 men died. The "Great Design" was abandoned.
Imagining Quebec and Boston:
There are few views that portray Quebec between its founding by Champlain in 1608 and General Wolfe's siege of 1759, and those that exist were not necessarily up-to-date when they were published. For that matter, more than a few supposedly "accurate views" of American cities are complete fabrication, base on or copied from images of real European cities then in circulation. Many of those images were designed to be viewed by an uncritical European audience happy to be entertained by a picture that pleased, rather than challenged, the eye. visually transporting a familiar architecture to the Americas allowed the viewer to equate European cities with those great and growing towns that challenged the wilderness across the ocean in North America.
The Capture of Louisbourg:
The War of Austrian Succession as it played out in North America was essentially fought with local resources as had been the case in the previous two Anglo-French wars, and New England recruits were once again on the front lines. In May, 1744, the governor of the French fortress-city of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, initiated a new round of hostilities by capturing the New England fishing station at Canso, Nova Scotia. As usual, the French raid provoked a New England invasion in retaliation. This time, however, New Englanders had inside information. Colonial soldiers who had on earlier occasions been held prisoner at the supposedly impregnable Louisbourg fortress learned its weaknesses and helped Government William Shirley of Massachusetts plan the successful attack in 1745 by a 4,000-man New England force supported by a Royal Navy squadron. The British hoped to extend their victory the following year with an attack on the ever-tantalizing Quebec, while on their part, the French planned to retain Louisbourg with a massive naval operation. But the British fleet didn't sail and the French fleet was destroyed by storms and epidemics. Much to the chagrin of the New Englanders, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) returned the fortress of Louisbourg to the French.
The French and Indian War:
By the eighteenth century, the French presence extended deep into the North American continent, following the network of rivers that led to the Mississippi and opened the way to the Gulf of Mexico. English traders pushed westward as well through the Appalachians and into the soon-to-be-contested Ohio Valley. The Iroquois had granted the English rights to this land and had pledged their protection against the French; the French countered by expediting plans to push the English back over the mountains by building forts and staging raids of English traders and settlements. Loudly and urgently, English colonists voiced their concerns about French intentions to choke them by encircling their colonies and halting westward movement. In response, the British government made plans to drive the French out of New France once and for all with major offenses -- the capture of Louisbourg (once again), an attack on Quebec, and expeditions against French positions in the Ohio country. The battles of the French and Indian war took place where the French and English confronted one another across contested boundaries. The focus in this exhibition is on Quebec and Louisbourg, the northern borderlands traditionally at issue between New England and New France. When the war was over, France had lost North America except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland.
The American Invasion:
In 1775, the Americans invaded Canada in a two-pronged attack against Montreal and Quebec that has been described as having "the improvised character of a raid." In defense, the British called out the primarily French Canadian militia but most of the men refused to serve, despite being threatened with excommunication, because they regarded the war as British family quarrel of no interest to them. While the Canadians initially resisted the efforts of the British to involve them in the conflict, they were even more resistant to helping the other side, support that the Americans had considered a sure thing. But the Americans had gravely misjudged the situation, for most French Canadians perceived taking up arms against the British government as equivalent to fighting for the former colonies, and the "Bastonnais" were older, more hated enemies than the British, who had treated them with respect since their defeat. When the green, ill-disciplined American troops entered Canada, abusing the citizenry and mocking their religion, it could no longer be pretended that the old hostilities were dead. Discord between Catholic and Protestant that had been encouraged by both sides for over a century was too deeply ingrained.
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