I have written substantially about political history. I now beg a moment for historic politics, specifically the historic moment we experienced on November 5. Although this blog’s political statements are usually indirect, the product of the historical perspective it provides, it is also my view that silence in the face of pressing moral issues is […]

When the French-Canadian Legacy Podcast reached out to me, several months ago, to ask why I choose to tell the Franco-American story, I was quick to write that “we’ve only scratched the surface.” That is, we know the outline of Franco-American history, but there is so much that still lies beyond historians’ reach or that […]

This year will start with back-to-back posts on Honoré Beaugrand’s Jeanne la Fileuse, the classic Quebec novel on late nineteenth-century emigration. Although a fairly conventional love story drives the plot, Beaugrand did not hide his own politics. My blog posts will cover his treatise on emigration—and those he deemed responsible for the mass exodus. Moving […]

In coming weeks, blog posts will address the “human vestiges of the vast continental French empire in North America,” with apologies to the Huguenots. It begins to trace the French-Canadian story as Britain sought to consolidate its hold over its new subjects, and it will carry this drama well past American independence—as far as the […]

The several million Americans of French or French-Canadian origin, who are among the oldest Americans of European stock, are for the most part human vestiges of the vast continental French empire in North America. Thus began historian Mason Wade’s essay on Franco-American history in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, published a half-century ago. In the 1950s […]

Thank you for visiting my Franco-American history blog. Keep checking in, in coming weeks and months, as this page grows and comes to represent the full range of my research and writing. Do not hesitate to get in touch with questions or comments. I will be pleased to hear from you.