North American Exploration. II. A Continent Defined (review)

This collection of six essays surveys the European exploration of North America from the mid-sixteenth century to the close of the eighteenth century. The editor explains that this spread covers “the second critical period of the exploration of the continent, the time when the various regions of North America were brought to the light of European science and the time when that science began to understand the continent in ways very different from those of the sixteenth century” (1). To understand the goals of the three-volume project, however, one needs to examine the first volume in which Allen explains that “a collaborative, comprehensive study and overview devoted exclusively to the topic of North American exploration” has not been published since the late nineteenth century.¹ More specifically, the project aims to put discovery in context as a “process of exploration” and move beyond the current scholarly “conquest model,” as well as the “cynical . . . politically correct Columbus-bashing” that emerged during the Columbian Quincentennial.² Rather than glorify or damn key explorers as solitary individuals, the book presents Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, Samuel de Champlain, Alexander Mackenzie, and James Cook among a multitudinous cast.

All six authors (equally divided between historians and geographers) in this book are experts in their areas and offer sweeping syntheses grounded in original research. They conform to no particular methodology, other than historical geography broadly understood. All comment, consistently, on the motives behind exploration: to claim territory versus other European powers, to find a transcontinental passage, to exploit natural resources (especially the fur trade), and, for the Spanish and French, to missionize the Indians. The major unifying element is an exhaustive discussion of numerous expeditions. This rigorous contextualization lends these essays an authoritative and encyclopedic quality; unfortunately, it also saps them of argumentative purpose.

Oakah L. Jones, Jr.’s sweeping opening essay covers Spanish penetrations north of New Spain throughout two and a half centuries in six regions from Florida to California. Two distinctive qualities emerge. First, due to an official policy of secrecy that prohibited publication, Spanish exploration was a “continued rediscovery”; previous findings were “buried in the archives” (9, 40). Second, the Spanish missionary impulse was more important and longer-lasting than for other European powers.

Exploration from New France is treated in two chapters. Conrad Heidenreich bases his examination of the vast scope of seventeenth-century exploration of the continental interior on extraordinary French records wherein “some information, perhaps most of it, has survived, permitting one to piece together a fairly complete account of at least primary exploration” (68). Heidenreich’s three basic periods hinge on the changing balance of power, especially with the powerful Iroquois. The adaptability of the French to native conditions leads him to comment that, “[f]or those French who knew the natives well, there were no major physical or mental differences between the two groups” (148). This remarkable cooperation is also noted by W. J. Eccles concerning eighteenth-century French exploration, in which “[t]he legendary voyageurs . . . were barely distinguishable from the Indians.” To this point he adds the crucial factor that Indian dominance “called the tune to which the French had to dance” (152). Eccles’ well-crafted essay distinguishes itself by offering a welcome degree of interpretive engagement.

British exploration also is discussed in two chapters: Alan V. Briceland covers the exploration of the United States interior, and Richard I. Ruggles discusses Rupert’s Land, the immense sweep of territory from Hudson Bay to the Pacific. Briceland acknowledges that Anglo-Americans are often dismissed as mediocre explorers, but still uncovers many “remarkable journeys of discovery” from 1607 to 1804 (269). Before tracing English exploration from a regional perspective, Briceland notes that its leaders were often non-English ethnics whose journeys moved “from one native village to another” rather than blazing new trails (271). Ruggles’ assessment of northernmost British exploration, starting in 1668, places commerce and the fur trade at the center. In this essay, as in all...