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Reviewed by:
  • La Francophonie nord-américaine. Atlas historique du Québec by Yves Frenette, Étienne Rivard, and Marc St-Hilaire, eds.
  • Yukari Takai
La Francophonie nord-américaine. Atlas historique du Québec. Yves Frenette, Étienne Rivard, and Marc St-Hilaire, eds. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2013. Pp. 310, $69.95

I would like to applaud the publication of La Francophonie nord-américaine, the ninth volume in the series, Atlas historique du Québec, published since 1987. The production of a historical atlas of Quebec or Canada in the French language has more than a short history, but according to historian Marcel Trudel, it was not until the early 1980s that such efforts began to blossom. La Francophonie nord-américaine, edited by Yves Frenette, Étienne Rivard, and Marc St-Hilaire, fits into this new tradition and extends it further. Numerous maps and illustrations, coupled with some fifty texts, La Francophonie nord-américaine brings [End Page 268] to readers a vivid rendering of the origin, growth, and, at times, decline of francophone communities throughout North America. The atlas highlights the diversity and memory of these communities, and it illustrates the geographically and historically extensive nature of this world on the northern half of the Americas.

The three editors – historian, geographer, and historical geographer – assert that La Francophonie nord-américaine is the first in the Atlas historique du Québec series to place Quebec in a broader geographical and social framework, and they do so superbly. The terms francophone and francophonie are defined in a broad, inclusive sense, meaning, respectively, speakers of the French language and the French linguistic sphere, regardless of the accent and word variations. The time frame of the volume extends over five centuries from the beginning of the French presence in North America in the seventeenth century to the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Thirty-six authors in diverse disciplines (history, geography, sociology, anthropology, and ethnology) contribute texts of variable length, from two to ten pages. The pieces explore various regions and localities with distinct but interconnected histories, guiding readers from Acadia to Louisiana, from the Saint Lawrence waterways to the interior, from the Mississippi Valley to the Prairies, from New England to the American Midwest, and all the way from Santa Fe to California. The result is a sweeping, yet well-organized collection of in-depth analyses and syntheses on the history of French-speaking settlers, missionaries and travellers, immigrants from Europe, Quebec, the Caribbean, and Africa, as well as Métis and Créoles. Clearly, “French-speaking North America is not merely Canadian French” (110), but it is made up of diverse cultures and origins from around the world.

Migration, settlement, and territorial occupation are the three privileged themes of La Francophonie nord-américaine. This focus highlights the interactions among the diverse protagonists mentioned above and the relations between France and North America. It also sheds light on numerous connections that regions on the continent created and sustained among themselves. Comparisons and contrasts abound. For example, the Louisiana colony is frequently compared to the Saint Lawrence Valley and the Antilles, particularly St Dominguez. Sections on the Midwest link French-Canadian immigrants in the region to a larger out-migration of their compatriots to New England.

La Francophonie nord-américaine is divided into five chapters in chronological order. Chapter 1 begins with the first settlement of North America under the French empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Chapter 2 examines development of the francophone world [End Page 269] on the continent from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The so-called great migrations from the mid-nineteenth century to the early years of entre-deux-guerres set the focus of chapter 3, the longest chapter of the volume. It is from these migrations that the majority of francophone communities outside Acadia, Quebec, and Louisiana originated. Chapter 4 tackles the period of transition from 1920 to 1960. The final chapter traces the transformations that occurred in North America’s French-speaking populations in the last half century. Each chapter begins with an introduction, which helps to place the period under study in...

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