A NOT-SO-NEW WORLD
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
Series editors:
Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown,
Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher
Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture,
Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
A NOT-SO-NEW WORLD
Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America
Christopher M. Parsons
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Parsons, Christopher M., author.
Title: A not-so-new world : empire and environment in French colonial North America / Christopher M. Parsons.
Other titles: Early American studies.
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Early American studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004263 | ISBN 9780812250589 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Canada—History—To 1763 (New France) | France—Colonies—America—History. | North America—Environmental conditions—History. | Imperialism—Environmental aspects. | Horticulture—North America—Foreign influences—History. | Imperialism and science—France—History.
Classification: LCC F1030 .P268 2018 | DDC 971.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004263
CONTENTS
Introduction. The View from Champlain’s Gardens
Chapter 1. Discovering a Not-So-New World
Chapter 2. Communicating Cultivation
Chapter 3. Cultivating Soils and Souls
Chapter 4. The Limits of Cultivation
Chapter 5. The Science of Novelty
Chapter 6. How New Was New France?
Conclusion. Cultivating New Relationships
INTRODUCTION
The View from Champlain’s Gardens
In the fall of 1608, Samuel de Champlain began to cultivate a New France at Québec. “On the first of October I had some wheat sown and on the fifteenth some rye,” he wrote, before continuing and explaining that “on the third of the month there was a white frost and on the fifteenth the leaves of the trees began to fall. On the twenty-fourth of the month I had some native vines planted and they prospered extremely well.”1 That he focused his account on his efforts to sow grains and transplant vines is not surprising; these were symbolically laden plants that occupied a central place in France’s sense of its own past and its colonial future. With roots in both biblical history and the classical colonialism of Rome, the presence of these plants provided both evidence of France’s moral authority to claim indigenous lands and an augur for the ultimate success of colonialism on a continent that had thus far proven resistant to French ambitions.2 As the horticulturalist Olivier de Serres had recently written in his innovative and influential Théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs, “After bread comes wine, second food given by the creator for the maintenance of life, & the first celebrated for its excellence.”3 Although unified in symbolism, the act of planting grains and grapes was also the staging of an encounter between introduced European seeds and indigenous American vines that Champlain had had transplanted in the colony’s gardens. Orchestrating this encounter and celebrating this proximity became a founding act that set French roots into a new not-so-New World.
In the preceding five years, Champlain (and French colonial efforts more generally) had focused on settlements in Acadia. At St. Croix Island (1604) and Port Royal (1605) in what are now, respectively, Maine and Nova Scotia, Champlain had similarly laid out gardens as he studied landscapes and prepared for shelter and defense. When the settlement that he called the habitation was established at Québec on July 3, Champlain continued these practices. He began to cultivate his new settlement during a challenging summer and fall. He had only recently survived an attempted mutiny, and bitter experience in recent winters had impressed the urgent need
