In this remote country : French colonial culture in the Anglo-American imagination, 1780-1860 / Edward Watts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watts, Edward, 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Intellectual life--1783-1865.

United States.

Intellectual life.

New France--Civilization--Foreign public opinion, American--History.

New France.

Public opinion--United States--History.

Public opinion.

History.

United States--Civilization--French influences.

Civilization.

New France--Historiography.

New France--In literature.

National characteristics, American.

Physical Description:

ix, 275 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2006]

Summary:

When Anglo-Americans looked west after the Revolution, they hoped to see a blank slate upon which to build their continental republic. However, French settlers had inhabited the territory stretching from Ohio to Oregon for over a century, blending into Native American networks, economies, and communities. Images of these French settlers saturated nearly every American text concerned with the West. Edward Watts argues that these representations of French colonial culture played a significant role in developing the identity of the new nation.

In regard to land, labor, gender, family, race, and religion, American interpretations of the French frontier became a means of sorting the empire builders from those with a more moderate and contained nation in mind, says Watts. Romantic nationalists such as George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and Lyman Beecher used the French model to justify the construction of a nascent empire. Alternatively, writers such as Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Hall presented a less aggressive vision of the nation based on the colonial French themselves. By examining how representations of the French shaped these conversations, Watts offers an alternative view of antebellum culture wars.

Contents:

Introduction : the word paisible

The leaden plates : exploration and ownership

Habitants and the American way of doing things

Gentle as a woman, though braver than a lion : voyageurs, coureurs du bois, and American masculinities

Monstrous exceptions: Anglo patriarchs, French families, and Métis Americans

Nous autres catholiques : nativism and the memory of the Jesuits

Conclusion : such were the place, and the kind of people.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-267) and index.

ISBN:

0807830461

0807857629

OCLC:

64453288

Publisher Number:

9780807830468

9780807857625