The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany by Martin Kitchen (review)

130 LETTERS IN CANADA became an escape into mE~talpn'VSlcal obscurities.' 'fatal mistake' of the nation on than "'shared beliefs and common law' re]:)er~CU~;Sl(mS down to the n"'£~l:n"'t- .........................,,~ national n ...',.....,..·,..-..,:lIc But can these be combined with HUMANITIES 131 exercise of immense power? Nothing less than the future of Europe is at stake. Produced by Calmann and King in the United Kingdom and printed in Italy, the book is handsomely presented and richly illustrated (in both colour and black. and white). A short reference guide points to further readings; a brief chronology serves to place events in context. Above all, Kitchen's fluid prose and tart comments make it a good read. He is to be conunended for having compressed a thousand years of a national history into a three-hundred-page volume. And for having struck a judicious balance among diplomatic, economic, military, political, and social history - without ever forgetting the milestones of German art, architecture, and literature. This is the work of a senior scholarin full stride. My only quibble is the dearth of detailed maps. (HOLGER H. HERWIG) Arthur]. Ray. I Have Lived Here Since the World Began: An Illustrated History ofCanada's Native People Lester Publishing and Key Porter Books. xvii, 398. $45.00 Arthur Ray decided to write this book while being cross-examined by Crown cotmsel in the landmark case Delgamuukw v. Her Majesty the Queen. Like many expert witnesses, he found that academic interpretations sat uneasily in the legal context. Lawyers picked up on the differences between the arguments he was putting forward on behalf of the Gitsan and Wet'suwet'en of central British Columbia and his publications, some of them two decades old by this time, which dealt with early post-contact history in the central subarctic and the prairie west. Ray battled to situate the points at issue within the radically different physical and social environment of British Columbia. Cross-examiners attempted to hang him on the gallows of inconsistency. In keeping with its origins, this book pays close attention to regional variation. In keeping with. Ray's standing as one of the leading economic historians of Canada, it is a resolutely materialist history which examines the labouring lives of Native people in the modem era as comprehensively as their pre-coloniallifeways. Women's work is dealt with evenhandedly, thoughmasculinityis treated as relatively unproblematic, and the text does not deal with gender as an interactive relationship between changing male and female roles. Ray ably shows the dynamism of pre- and post-contact Native economies but he is less successful in showing how culture shaped the specifics of individual colonial encounters. Christian missionaries, for example, important figures in other general histories, are not prominent figures in this narrative. illustrated histories always face the challenge of finding images to illustrate the period prior to the advent of photography. I Have Lived Here ...