Pierre-Esprit Radisson: The Collected Writings, Volume 2. The Port Nelson Relations, Miscellaneous Writings, and Related Documents ed. by Germaine Warkentin (review)

This second volume of Radisson’s collected writings completes the publication of all known Radisson texts. The main content of volume 2, the Port Nelson relations of 1682–3 and 1684, comes from a newly discovered manuscript at Windsor Castle – the Windsor manuscript – which Radisson offered to King James II in 1685. The Windsor manuscript was written in French, unlike Radisson’s earlier manuscript Voyages, which are only known in their English version and most probably written in English in 1668. Editor Germaine Warkentin offers a new and meticulous English translation of the Windsor manuscript, reflecting faithfully how Radisson wrote it in French. This high-quality translation is useful not just to those who read only English but also to anyone interested in tracking how Radisson progressively mastered writing, from the Voyages, written in a somewhat laborious English, to the Relations, written sixteen years later in a fairly good French. Four shorter Radisson texts and six others related to Radisson or the Hudson’s Bay Company, all edited from original manuscripts, complete the volume.

The Collected Writings, volumes 1 and 2, have been published according to high editorial standards, and they demonstrate Warkentin’s excellent knowledge of Radisson’s texts. For historians, students in history, other specialists (of travel writing, for example), and, to a lesser degree, general readers, these are definitely the Radisson texts to read. However, Warkentin’s historical work is not as satisfying. The short, four-page introduction to volume 2, which quickly summarizes elements of Radisson’s biography and a bit about the Hudson’s Bay Company, is insufficient. Of course, if you read the much longer introduction to volume 1, you will get more detail, but it remains focused so heavily on Radisson’s biography that no general sense of the broader historical context emerges from the dense sum of details. For example, Warkentin’s knowledge of and sensitivity toward Indigenous peoples is so poor that a separate article by historian Heidi Bohaker was added to volume 1 to meet contemporary expectations on this topic.

To take a different example, Warkentin’s misunderstanding of New France is striking, apparently based on the false assumption that New France equals France when Radisson lived in the French colony during the 1650s. This error leads to Warkentin’s inclination to analyze and understand Radisson as a European first, one who was not fundamentally influenced by what happened to him in America. It also tends to lessen the undeniable relevance of Radisson’s writings to the study of early Canadian history. According to Warkentin, Radisson became an expert in dealing with Aboriginal peoples because he had learned French court habits when he was young. However, an abundant literature makes it crystal clear that this expertise was developed in New France, where Radisson learned Native diplomacy and manners from experienced inhabitants, missionaries, and Aboriginal people themselves. Warkentin also imagines a key feature of Radisson’s youth in France from the script of a letter from 1678 (when he was forty). She says it suggests that Radisson was probably educated for a low-level court office. But suggestion turns into fact, notably in volume 2, even if there is not a single document that supports this fragile hypothesis and many well-documented indications tend to deny it.

Warkentin selects documents that support her view and tends to discard the others without mentioning or discussing them. This kind of loose historical method leads her to tell a nice story about Radisson but to step back from the best practices of historical science. She balances this failing with an obvious literary talent and a thorough knowledge of her subject. The conclusion she comes to after her long study of this complex man, involved in complex historical events, is a simplified and subjective version of Radisson’s life...