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Champlain's Dream | 
 enlarge | Author: David Hackett Fischer
Creator: Edward Herrmann
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $24.10
You Save: $15.89 (40%)
New (26) Used (8) from $23.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 183184
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6 x 4.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 0743579534
Dewey Decimal Number: 971.0113092
EAN: 9780743579537
ASIN: 0743579534
Publication Date: October 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Washington's Crossing offers a sweeping, enthralling biography as dramatic and exciting as the life it portrays. Soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France, the remarkable Samuel de Champlain comes to life in acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer's Champlain's Dream. Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain fought in France's religious wars for the great Henri IV, with whom he shared religious tolerance in an age of murderous sectarianism. He was also a brilliant navigator, never losing a ship in 27 Atlantic crossings. 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, where he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America. Despite much resistance and many defeats, Champlain's astonishing dedication and stamina finally established France's New World colony. He tried constantly to maintain peace among Indian nations, but when he had to take up arms he 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 Grand Design for France's colony. A leader who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world of cruelty and violence, he was a true visionary, especially when compared to his English and Spanish contemporaries.
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The Father of New France November 18, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This year - 2008 - marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec or New France, as it was called then. There is an exhibition in Quebec commemorating the founding called Champlain's Dream, appropriately named after this book, an excellent biography of the founding father. David Hackett Fischer is an historian who, though not exactly popular, is widely read outside academia. His most famous work is Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History), a very interesting study of the American appropriation of certain Britsh subcultures during the 17th century (Puritan, Scots-Irish, etc.) In the present work he tells the story of Samuel de Champlain and his attempts to create an enlightened New France. Champlain was a polymath: a soldier, a sailor, cartographer, ethnographer, naturalist, artist, writer, and political leader. It could be said that he was a Renaissance Man who was well on his to becoming a man of the Enlightenment.
Champlain was born in the "cosmopolitan town" of Brouage on the west coast of France. He was born into a wealthy Protestant merchant family and lived at peace with Catholics, even during the religious wars. He had learned tolerance growing up in this milieu. French king Henri IV, with whom the family had ties, was also a Prostestant and favored religious tolerance. It was not until the invasion of France by Spanish Catholic extremists that both Champlain and Henri IV were forced to convert to Catholicism. Their new faith was not dogmatic but rather a Christian humanism that was receptive to new ideas and the pursuit of knowledge in order to better serve God.
The second most influential event in Champlain's early life was the opportunity to accompany a Spanish fleet to New Spain. There he witnessed firsthand the cruelty with which the Spanish treated the Indian population. He was determined that New France would treat its subjects with more dignity and respect.
It was in 1608 - 400 hundred years ago - that he was recruited by Henri IV - due to his considerable polymathic talents - to explore the waterways of the St. Lawrence and establish the colony of New France. He quickly established ties with the local tribes: the Montagnais, the Algonquin, and the Huron. This, however, incurred the wrath of the enemies of those tribes: the Iroquois League. There were numerous battles between the French and the Indians in which Champlain participated. Fischer's account of Champlain's arquebus (primitive shotgun) is very good. It was a muzzle-loaded hand-cannon that scared the daylights out of the Iroquois. Champlain was more interested in scaring them off than conquering them.
Although Champlain was tolerant and humane for a person of his place and time, he was still a colonialist who demanded that the Indians become Christians and that they submit to the French political system. Champlain's dream of bringing Enlightenment values to the New World failed because Enlightenment never completely took hold in France, nor had he himself completely accepted them.
History Like It Ought to Be October 31, 2008
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
I appreciate his narrative style, without an agenda or ax to grind. This history is not for the ideological nor the squeamish. It's one of those books that you don't want to end. It made me wish I could have seen North America as Champlain did--wild, fertile, a truly New World. Highly recommended. Also recommended by the author: Washington's Crossing.
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