Chateaubriand and the Mourning of (New) France

Published in 1827, Voyage en Amérique by François-René de Chateaubriand is a complex textual patchwork where the original manuscript written in exile between 1793 and 1800 cohabits with the modifications and additions the author included in the late 1820’s final version. Focusing on Voyage en Amérique, this article studies Chateaubriand’s discussion of the loss of New France after the Treaty of Paris (1763) and Napoleon’s decision to bury all hopes of recreating France’s colonial empire in North America when he sold Louisiana in 1803. It shows that Chateaubriand’s evocation of New France goes far beyond a mere elegy, whose only role would be to mourn lost territories and political opportunities and to blame the impact this loss had on France’s power and prestige around the globe. Chateaubriand’s discourse on New France indeed entails the creation of “uchronic” scenarios dedicated to imagine what could have been the result of a recreation of France’s colonial empire in North America and how the intertwined relationship between France’s political power and the dissemination of its national idiom would have resulted in greater glory for his homeland. This article goes on to demonstrate that Chateaubriand established an homologous relationship between New France and France itself, to such extent the fate of the French colonies in North America is described as a sign of the fragility of France’s political power and a warning about the decay of the Restauration, sent only three years before its actual demise.