Essai sur la Mentalite Canadienne-Francaise by Georges VatierReview by: C. E. FryerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Oct., 1928), pp. 145-147Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1836512 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 02:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.254 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:09:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vattier: La Mentalite Canadiennte-Francaise 145

who, if they lived, were able so to continue until the end. The ad- ventures of the North in this respect are among the tragedies of history.

Next to the military leaders perhaps the greatest asset that the Con- federacy had was furnished by North Carolina in breaking the blockade of her ports, which was kept up until the capture of Wilmington in I864. As the South was a purely agricultural country it had at first to rely on foreign trade to obtain almost every manufactured article used by civilized man in peace and war. Mills and factories had to be built, provided with machinery, and worked by competent men. The countries of Europe were eager to exchange their products for those of the South, such as cotton, resin, turpentine, tobacco, and the like.

It is to be regretted that there was enough vandalism committed by the troops who invaded North Carolina to call for an order from General Burnside and to decide Commodore Rowan to require that departing vessels be searched for looted property. The military governor and sev- eral Federal officers are on record to the same effect.

< Much is said about the large amount of sickness among the troops as if it were a necessary part of military campaigning. It is an old story and history gives examples of whole armies that disappeared prob- ably from this cause. It was our sad experience in the Spanish-Ameri- can War. We came near eliminating it in 1917 by improved methods of camp sanitation.

The use of verbal orders, confusing letters of instructions prepared by an untrained staff, the lack of accurate maps, guides who were ig- norant of their own country, uncertain names of localities, continued as in the days of Napoleon and often disturbed the well-laid plans of Lee.

EBEN SWIFT.

Essai sur la Mcutalite Canadienne-Fran('aise. Par GEORGES VAT- TIER, Docteur es-Lettres, Directeur des i-tablissements de la Mission Laique Frangaise a Salonique. (Paris: Champion. I928. PP. iv, 384. 50 fr.) THE nmentality of French Canada is essentially a relative or com-

parative matter. For purposes of study it can be thrown against a European background and viewed as an oversea variation of a normal French type. Or, it can be regarded as in antagonism to the mentality of English-speaking Canada, defending itself from anglification in a long, embittered effort to maintain British North America a free field for two races, two languages, and two diverging civilizations. No Ca- nadian historian of either race, bred in the traditional history of the struggle for the survival of French Canada, could discuss the question of the two mentalities without instinctively betraying bias. Consequently it is a relief to have a European scholar try his hand at the French side of the question, particularly a scholar of the French school with a gift for lucid analvsis, and without the besetting vice of censoriousness. Twenty-five years almost have elapsed since Andre Siegfried first made

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.254 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:09:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

146 Re ,iezws of Books

the mentality of French Canada a subject of interest by the publication of Le Canada: [es Deux Races. At that epoch the tide of ultramontanism was ebbing perceptibly, and the animosities aroused by the war of the Transvaal were being softened by the new entente cordiale. Since then such issues as imperial defense and participation in the last war, the continuation of the dispute over separate schools in Ontario, and above all conscription with its aftermath, have brought race differences in Canadian politics into yet sharper relief. In the midst of the turmoil Professor Vattier came to Canada. A seven-years residence in the Dominion convinced him that to a Frenchman French Canada could be- come an absorbing study. Manifestations of mentality which for long had been obvious and even commonplace to many presented themselves to him as novel and remarkable; and he has pursued an extensive his- torical investigation in order to reveal French Canada to French readers. The result is a book which takes a definite place amongst works relating to the history of Canada; in fact as an interpretation of French Canada it stands by itself, with a surer appeal to historical students than Sieg- fried's more transitory discussion.

According to Professor Vattier-and in this lhe follows the canonical legend long in vogue-the mentality of French Canada sends its roots deep into the piety and missionary zeal of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Catholic France. As virtually a church colony, its mentality grew more self-consciously and conservatively Catholic as France passed through the age of Voltaire. The cession of I763 began the challenge to its survival, ending in the otherwise inexplicable division of powers at confederation, which had the effect of legalizing a French Canada. The slow but ultimately proud adoption of British citizenship was facili- tated by the alienation of French Canada from the prevailing mind of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, from French liberalism of 1830 and 1848, and above all from F'rance of the Third Republic. Hence to a modern Frenchman the strange paradox of a loyalty of sentiment to the name and memory of France, combined at the same time with an alle- giance of reason and self-interest to British law and government. There is, of course, nothing new in the enunciation of this duality; there is iiuch that is new, however, in Professor Vattier's presentation of it. For he has penetrated with unerring insight the very minds of French- Canadian historians and men of letters. With the single exception of Salone, from whose work on the colonization of New France he quotes largely, he has succeeded in explaining French Canada to Frenchmen through the actual words of the successive leaders of French-Canadian thought. On points of detail Canadian critics would disagree with him. Thus, he seems to have overlooked the influence of the ultramontane re- vival of the nineteenth century, nor does he appear to be aware of the transatlantic reach of the English Tory reaction followed by the counter- xvailing wave of British liberalism in the 'thirties and 'forties, affecting both French and Englislh Canada alike. When, further, departing from

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.254 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:09:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Wright: Sat Cristobal de la Habana I47

sound argumuent, he turns prophet and proclaims the eventual collapse of confederation, to be replaced by the experiment of a French Canada, standing -separate and alone, shunning alike the United States, and France, and English Canada, its former federal associate, we feel that he is displaying his own mentality rather than that of the people he is describing. But in general there is no existing work that explains French Canada as well as this. It merits a place in every library of Canadian history.

C. E. FRYER.

Historia Documientada de San Cristobal de la Habana en el Siglo XVI. Basada en los Documentos Originales existentes en el Archivo General de Indias cn Sevilla. Por IRENE A. WRIGHT, B.A., F.R.H.S. Two volumes. (Havana: Academia de la His- toria de Cuba. I927. PP. xxiv, 314, 263.) IN January I919 the Cuban Academy of History, to commemorate

the four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Havana, offered a prize consisting of a gold medal and $300 for the best history of the city "during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ". Only two essays were submitted and, although Miss Wright's book deals only with the sixteenth century, it was awarded the prize on November 28, I9I9 (not " I927 " as stated in the prefatory note), because it alone represented original re- search. However, it was not until I924 that the necessary funds for the printing were made available and the work was finally published in I927.

Miss Wright spent many years in the Archivo General de Indias at Seville, and her narrative, which occupies I79 pages of volume I., is based exclusively upon the unpublished source-material cited in the foot-notes. She also selected-and the emnbarras de choix must have been tantalizing -I8o documents which are printed in full with the original spelling: 49 documents in volume I. and I3I in volume II. The first document re- printed is dated March 20, 1538, and Miss Wright tells us that there are relatively few prior to that date, and none at all prior to I515. Thus she has found none relating to the expeditions of Narvaez (I513-15I4), nor to the establishment of the city on the south coast of the island (prob- ably July I514) or to its removal to the present site, then known as Puerto Carenas, in I5I9.

The history of Havana in the sixteenth century, like that of other Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, was dominated by two great fears: fear of the French corsairs in the first half of the century, and fear of the English buccaneers in the second. The mother country appears to have been roused to action only when the one or the other danger became imminent. The fortifications of Havana, e.g., La Fuerza, El Morro, and La Punta, owe their existence entirely to a crying need for immediate protection, and no money or men were ever forthcoming except in re- sponse to desperate appeals for help. Incidentally we learn that the Spanish population of Havana in I550 numbered only 70 souls, that its

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.254 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 02:09:10 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions