To Go upon Discovery: James Cook and Canada, from 1758 to 1779 by Victor Suthren (review)

402 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 reflected his conviction, similar to that of other >enlightened= Christians, that truth was one and that therefore reason and revelation could never contradict one another. This Thomistic heritage, along with an emphasis on critical inquiry, on method rather than doctrine, on the ethical dimension of religion and the practical realization of Christian values, in Suderman=s view, situates Campbell historically, tying him and other >enlightened= Christians generally to the latitudinarians of the seventeenth century on the one hand, and differentiating him and his contemporaries from nineteenthcentury apologists on the other. The moderate Christian Enlightenment represented by Campbell came to a dead end, Suderman argues, with the development of higher criticism, which undermined the effectiveness of the historical proofs that Campbell and his eighteenth-century colleagues relied on to establish the truth of revelation. Two minor cavils: Suderman=s critique of Peter Gay=s representation of the Enlightenment as an aggressively secular and even anti-Christian phenomenon seems a bit passé. Current scholarship on what have now become known as >Enlightenments= is lively and contentious, and very few scholars continue to think of intellectual trends in the eighteenth century as dominated by Diderot and Hume. The question of the relation between religion and enlightenment is actively being rethought and naïvely linear modes of historical analysis are being repudiated. Suderman appears unfamiliar with this new scholarship, and his work would have benefited from its insights. Finally, it seems to this reader a bit extreme to speak, as Suderman does in his introduction, of the >pogroms= of Voltaire, Diderot, and Hume against religion. Besides trivializing pogroms, the choice of this word gives the impression that the author is on a soapbox, and undermines confidence in what is otherwise a solid and informative study. (SUSAN OSA) R Victor Suthren. To Go upon Discovery: James Cook and Canada, from 1758 to 1779 Dundurn Press 2000. 218. $35.99 Captain James Cook is very well known for his voyages to the Pacific Ocean, but he also has an important place in Canadian history as the cartographer of the St Lawrence River, Halifax Harbour, and, most particularly, the north, west, and south coasts of Newfoundland and the French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon. His survey work, and the copper plate engravings made from them, have only recently been replaced by new charts. Victor Suthren has set out to write about Cook=s Canadian experience in a manner which places him firmly in the context of the great events which surrounded him, the conclusion of the French imperial rule in Canada by British military and naval forces during the Seven Years= War. Structurally, this is a difficult task, because the record of Cook=s participation in the war is scant. Suthren is reduced to writing an account of humanities 403 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 British operations at Louisbourg and Quebec, with brief notices of Cook=s role, some of which is only a matter of conjecture. In effect, the first half of the book is a very well written campaign summary, and might have merited a different title. The second half of the book has similar problems. It is difficult to write about surveying the Newfoundland coast in a manner which will interest the general reader, and the excerpts from Cook=s sailing directions are most interesting to those with sailing experience. Cook=s discoveries on the west coast of Canada where he established the British claim at Nootka Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island have to be put into the context of his three Pacific voyages, and they into that of the scientific observation of the transit across the sun of Venus in 1769, intended to serve the purpose of measuring the distance from the earth to the sun, and the search for the great Terra Australis Incognito. History, however, can be messy to write about. Suthren has put together a book which will interest and entertain readers with little or no knowledge of eighteenth-century history. His credentials for the job are considerable. He was a historian at fortress...