Letters to the Editors

Notes and Comments LETTERS TO THE EDITORS A Letterfrom Peter Moogk Thomas Wien's review of La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada-A Cultural History {CHR 83, I [2002]: 93-6) is a satire. The book deployed a huge body of new evidence, from archaeological finds to folklore. Wien implies that there is a greater body of contrary evidence, without actually identifying it. It is embarrassing to have someone in distant British Columbia point out that deductive reasoning from general principles is inherent to French civil law and differs from the common law practice ofappealing to previous judgments - a major ideological difference missed by others. It is obvious that the legal training received by colonial administrators and by so many later Canadian politicians would have influenced their pattern of reasoning, and I cite evidence of this influence. In Wien's parody, 'on account ofthe "dogmatic idealism" fostered by the Coutume de Paris (!), they [French colonists] were particularly prone to reason deductively and hence reluctant to compromise.' This is a ragout of fragments of ideas from different parts of the book; there is no such collective characterization of French colonists in La Nouvelle France. My words are replaced by a caricature that conceals the nuances and qualifications ofthe original. It is said that I wrote that 'collective values formed before 1760 by authoritarian and paternalistic institutions brought purified from overseas - are with us still.' That misrepresents my suggestion that traces of French Regime values lasted well into the twentieth century. Jean-Claude Dupont's study ofBeauceron folklore in the 1960s disclosed an amazing survival of magic rituals from New France. Looking for elements of continuity, despite French Canada's break with parts of its past in the mid-19oos, is unconventional or, to use Wien's characterization, 'resolutely idiosyncratic.' Taking the unfashionable approach and accepting 276 The Canadian Historical Review the legitimacy of Old Regime values allowed me to see that marriage dower provisions held the key to social ranking in New France - an original insight. Other historians, following the herd, vainly struggled to establish a social hierarchy based on property - an anachronistic dead end. To discredit a book, it must be said to have grievous omissions. Although most books about 'New France' are really about the St Lawrence Valley, Wien says that mine has 'a minimalist [geographic] definition ,' although it goes from Newfoundland to the Illinois Country in upper Louisiana. I included the Illinois settlements because they were populated by Canadiens. According to Wien, I ought to have included all of Louisiana, even though my subject was 'the making of French Canada .' Eighteenth-century administrators and mapmakers treated Louisiana as a separate entity, apart from New France. Apparently I also should have said more about the thoughts of the largely illiterate rural population . In my extensive research, I found only a few dozen letters by farmers and no diaries, so I had to rely on court and notarial records. Coverage is proportionate to documentation. La Nouvelle France has several references to the British North American colonies, but Wien complains that I avoided writing a 'systematic comparison between the French colonies and those of other European powers.' If I could be assured ofanother forty years oflife with wits and vitality undiminished, I might undertake this Herculean task. As for treating supernatural beliefs as 'so arcane and so uniquely French,' look at page 246, which notes the shared belief in demonic possession in contemporary New England. My reputed 'failure to rank the explanations for feeble immigration' ignores what was written on page 103 ('It was the shipowners' reluctance to transport contract workers that prevented a substantial migration to North America in the 1700s') and chapter 4's emphasis on the bad reputation of overseas colonies in seventeenthcentury France. In addition to misrepresentation, there is invention: 'the British Americans who float in the background of Moogk's analysis are incomparably more phlegmatic, rational, collectively oriented and innovative beings.' Where, exactly, is this stereotype ofBritish colonists? Not in my book. Wien describes me as a purveyor ofethnic 'stereotypes.' In my introduction I wrote that 'to the chaste mind cultural history may seem like ethnic stereotyping, which it is not. Shared values and...