Please see Part I here. By the mid-1870s, Robert Desty’s life was apparently more settled. He began the work that considerably eased the burden of generations of American attorneys and scholars, and through which his became a household name in the legal community. He compiled and indexed laws and court cases; he wrote digests; he […]
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American and French: Robert Desty (1827-1895), Part I
Nobleman. Common Soldier. Legal scholar. Disqualified candidate. French. American. The contradictions of Robert Desty’s life cannot but make for interesting reading. That he is not better known—another victim of history—is remarkable. For one thing, to know him by his American name, under which he earned passing fame, misses much of his identity. Desty was christened […]
Continue readingHistory, Heritage, and Survival: Rassemblement 2019, Part II
Please visit this earlier post for an introduction to the Franco-American Centre’s annual Rassemblement. As the Rassemblement moved past academic history—and well past the First World War—on April 26 and 27, we had the opportunity to ponder the theme of this edition. Artist and performer Abby Paige had proposed the “Ship of Culture” as a […]
Continue readingHistory, Heritage, and Survival: Rassemblement 2019, Part I
What do you call a gathering of Franco-Americans and friends of Franco-Americans? If you are in central Maine, it’s a Rassemblement, and you are sure to see it happen every spring. The latest installment of the Rassemblement, an annual tradition for the Franco-American Centre at the University of Maine, was a tremendously thought-provoking and inspiring […]
Continue readingWhy Franco-American History?
Good luck finding a French Canadian who has no personal connection to the grande saignée, the wave of emigration that afflicted Canada from 1840 to the Great Depression. I, for one, could mention my own great-, great-, great-, great-grandparents, Joseph and Dorothée Royer, who spent several years in the United States around 1830. Wave after […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Exeter, N.H.
Much has been made of unconventional Franco-American experiences and stories, on this blog. (See here, here, and here, for instance.) Franco-Americans living in rural parts of New England and New York State are perpetually in the shadow of those who settled in industrial cities and worked in factories. A similar neglect is apparent when it […]
Continue readingThe First Franco-Americans Revisited: Revolutionaries and Refugees
Last spring, on this website, I wrote of Clément Gosselin and other French Canadians who participated in the American War of Independence. After three years, a lengthy labor of love now comes to fruition with the publication of my “Promises to Keep: French Canadians as Revolutionaries and Refugees, 1775-1800,” which will appear in the next […]
Continue readingLa Journée de la Francophonie in Exeter, N.H.
Yesterday, in celebration of Francophonie Day at Phillips Exeter Academy, I was invited to deliver the event’s keynote address. I gladly share my prepared remarks here. Thank you, all, for your presence here. I salute your interest in this language that bring us together—not merely today, I hope, but throughout the year. Thank you especially […]
Continue readingA Franco-American Rebuttal: The View from 1924
Charles Edmond Rouleau attributed a litany of moral failings to expatriated French Canadians—they were lazy but also greedy, improvident and very often intemperate, they betrayed their homeland and their faith. As the nineteenth century wore on, this type of rhetoric, tending to leave Franco-American communities to their own devices, became dominant among Quebec elites. I […]
Continue readingReporting Failure: The National Project That Wasn’t
Let us leave those American factories where our health wilts like a flower kept from the sun’s invigorating light, and seize the land, such as to be a strong, great, happy, and prosperous people. Charles Edmond Rouleau’s words, published in 1896, were very much in the spirit of the times, at least among Quebec’s elites. […]
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