Article by Renée Girard
Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, 2021
Cet article explore le rôle de la nourriture comme outil d'interprétation identitaire afin de co... more Cet article explore le rôle de la nourriture comme outil d'interprétation identitaire afin de comprendre comment l'absence d'épices, de sel et de vin dans les cultures alimentaires wendat, mi'gmaq et innu a suscité chez plusieurs observateurs français de la Nouvelle-France des réflexions sur le corps autochtone. Il remet en question l'opposition binaire nature/culture proposée par de nombreux historiens pour justifier la naissance d'une pensée raciste au 18 e siècle. On y soutient, au contraire, que les premiers balbutiements de la pensée raciale en Nouvelle-France sont apparus dès le 17 e siècle et en dehors de cette dichotomie réductrice qui va à l'encontre de la théorie des humeurs prévalente à l'époque.
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Borealia Early Canadian History, https://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2020/11/09/a-root-that-our-french-call-rosary-foodways-in-indigenous-and-french-north-america/, 2020
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Mémoires du livre, 2015
When the Revolutionary government in France declared Freedom of the Press in 1789 it did not anti... more When the Revolutionary government in France declared Freedom of the Press in 1789 it did not anticipate the flow of counter-revolutionary pamphlets attacking its decision to nationalize the French Church and require all clergy to swear an oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This article examines the conditions surrounding the printing of these religious pamphlets by investigating the career of one provincial printer in the border town of Metz—Jean-Baptiste Collignon—who worked with émigré bishops to produce them and who was guillotined in 1794 for counterrevolutionary activities. The authors explore the production and distribution of religious pamphlets, the ideological commitment of revolutionary printers, and the regional nature of censorship in the early French Revolution.
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French History, 2019
This article examines the Bordeaux bookseller and printer Arnaud-Antoine Pallandre’s two censorsh... more This article examines the Bordeaux bookseller and printer Arnaud-Antoine Pallandre’s two censorship trials in 1775 and 1790 to compare state–media relations during the late Bourbon monarchy and the French Revolution. An entourage of protectors kept Pallandre in business even though he flouted pre-revolutionary book trade legislation. After 1789, his printing and bookselling shop became a centre of pamphlet sales and counter-revolutionary gatherings that came under intense scrutiny by patriots in the clubs, the National Guard and the crowds, who pressured the municipal governments to end Pallandre’s trade in counter-revolutionary pamphlets. He eventually went to the guillotine in 1794. This article suggests that members of formerly privileged groups continued to wield considerable influence over printers and booksellers in France after 1789, making them objects of both government and popular censorship. In the struggle to achieve limits on a free press, printers and booksellers came ...
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Book Reviews by Renée Girard
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HistoireEngagée.ca. https://histoireengagee.ca/recension-de-louvrage-the-history-and-archaeology-of-the-iroquois-du-nord-dirige-par-ronald-f-williamson-et-robert-von-bitter/ , 2023
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Conference Presentations by Renée Girard
Ninth International Conference on Food and Drink Studies
5-7 Juin 2024
Contact, Confrontation, ... more Ninth International Conference on Food and Drink Studies
5-7 Juin 2024
Contact, Confrontation, Adaptation; Corn and Wheat in 17th century New France
The meeting of corn civilizations with those of wheat in New France resulted in a confrontation between two culinary ontologies deeply anchored in their respective cosmologies. Corn-producing nations, such as the Wendat and Haudenosaunee, remained attached to their sacred grain, a source of physical and spiritual life. However, the French’s arrival on their territory affected their environment and limited their production capacity. As for the wheat-producing newcomers, they found in the fertile lands of New France the assurance that they could reproduce the French agricultural system and, by cultivating wheat, a powerful symbol of the Catholic faith, “civilize” its environment.
While corn and wheat remained powerful identity markers, necessity and accessibility led both groups to engage in culinary compromises. During the initial days of the colony, the newcomers appropriated corn as emergency food to compensate for the scarcity of wheat. This nourishing grain allowed them to survive when supplies were missing and the newly tilled soils not yet ready to produce. Meanwhile, the Innu, the Mi’kmaq, and the Atikamekw saw their dependence on European food products increase as they participated in the fur trade. The newcomers’ appropriation of land compromised their access to the ancestral territories that had been essential food reservoirs for them until then. They had no choice but to adopt the wheat flour provided by their French allies. However, adopting the food of the Other involved crossing a boundary that not everyone was ready to cross because eating like the Other carried the danger of becoming the Other.
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The Environmental Impacts of Early Modern Catholic Missions in the Atlantic Space
Université du ... more The Environmental Impacts of Early Modern Catholic Missions in the Atlantic Space
Université du Québec à Montréal, 18 March 2024
“A twin land under the same constellation,” Pierre Biard’s perception of New France’s environment.
Unlike the Spanish, who were conscious that they had to confront an unfamiliar environment in South America, the French, who arrived in the Northeastern part of America in the early 17th century, expected to find a replica of their habitat. The Jesuit Pierre Biard, who sojourned in Port-Royal from 1611 to 1615, described in his Relation de la Nouvelle-France addressed to Louis XIII, a “twin land” situated on the same latitude as France. Thus, according to the beliefs of the time, based on humoral and climate theories, this geographical situation implied the possibility of reproducing a European type of agriculture on the new continent. While Biard suggested that only the influence of Satan could explain the state of the wilderness he observed, he assured the king that the very essence of the beings - humans, animals and plants - who inhabited this land that looked towards France was based on the same principles and was tempered by the same constellations as those under which the mother country was thriving.
However, despite his enthusiasm, Biard could not ignore the rigors of the North American winters so different from those of his “douce France.” To explain this discrepancy, he argued, like Samuel de Champlain before him, that the motherland’s climate could be replicated by transforming the forests into cultivated land. In fact, for Biard, all that was missing to create a ‘new’ France was the hand of civilized man to “désensauvager” both the environment and the humans who inhabited this coveted territory.
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Dans Des Sauvages publié en 1603, Champlain décrit une célébration à laquelle il assiste qui cé... more Dans Des Sauvages publié en 1603, Champlain décrit une célébration à laquelle il assiste qui célèbre la victoire de ceux qu'il nomme les Montagnes, Estechemins et Algoumequins sur les Iroquois. Cette communication propose une réflexion sur cet événement inscrit par plusieurs historiens dans la mémoire coloniale comme le moment fondateur d'une alliance franco-autochtone, un moment clé de la genèse de la Nouvelle-France qui se concrétise 5 ans plus tard dans l'établissement d'un poste de traite à Québec. Je propose une réévaluation de l'interprétation de cette rencontre à travers une relecture du texte de Champlain et une réflexion sur les événements qui ont précédé et suivi cette alliance. L'établissement de Chauvin en 1600 d'un poste de traite à Tadoussac laisse supposer qu'une entente entre Français et les Autochtones de la région avait déjà été conclue. Le choix malheureux de l'île Sainte-Croix en 1604, suivi du transfert à Port-Royal en 1605, ainsi que les recherches de Champlain le long de la côte Atlantique pour un endroit plus propice à l'installation d'une habitation, démontrent que « l'alliance » de Tadoussac pesait peu dans les choix des administrateurs coloniaux. Une revisite de la mémoire coloniale ainsi qu'une comparaison avec la mémoire autochtone permet ainsi d'obtenir une perspective plus nuancée sur cet événement qui dans ce jeu de mémoires a des ramifications jusqu'au présent.
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In early modern France, foraging practices were associated with a 'primitive' style of food procu... more In early modern France, foraging practices were associated with a 'primitive' style of food procurement, with times of dearth and poverty. It was believed those practices brought humans back to the level of animals. The French explorers and missionaries who wrote about their culinary experiences in the Northeastern part of the North American continent at the time of contact paid little attention to the non-cultivated plants used by the diverse Indigenous groups they encountered. Imbued by their own food culture, they failed to acknowledge, not only the plants, but also the Indigenous science behind the management of those natural resources. One of the many consequences of the French-Indigenous encounter was the imposition on Indigenous peoples of the settlers' dominative approach to nature and, subsequently, the systematic erosion of their various food systems. The case of the Mi'kmaw chiquebi, (Apios americana) clearly illustrates this process. Once an essential part of Indigenous diets, by the 20th Century, the root had fallen into almost oblivion.
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Food Identity and Racial Boundaries in early New France Food played a salient role in the mental ... more Food Identity and Racial Boundaries in early New France Food played a salient role in the mental universe of the first colonial observers in North America. Studies devoted to the emergence of a racial boundary between Europeans and Indigenous peoples commonly focus upon European interpretations of Indigenous bodies but overlook the important role of food in the othering process. The reintegration of food into an ontology where "nature" and "culture" intersect and merge demonstrates that the Mi'kmaq, the Nêhiraw and the Wendat rejection of foods considered essential to humoral balance by the French shaped colonial perceptions of Indigenous peoples and French understandings of race as a concept. "We are all made & are subject to the same principles." This vision of homogeneous humanity stemming from a single genealogical line defines the colonial texts of New France. Marc Lescarbot saw in the Mi'kmaq "forgotten and disinherited cousins" of the Gaul ancestors. Like the Jesuit Pierre Biard, who affirmed that the French and the Mi'kmaq share the same humanity, the Recollect Gabriel Sagard maintains that the Wendat were "of the same nature" as the French. The perceived similarities extended beyond bodies because, as Le Jeune asserts, even "souls are all of the same thrust &… do not differ substantially." According to the Catholic Church, all humans come from the same Adamic stock and thus share the same fundamental essence. This perception takes its source from the Bible and theories inspired by the works of Hippocrates and the 2nd-century Greek physician Galen. According to the galenic system based on the humoral theory, all men shared the same primal essence. Their differences come from external factors like the environment in which they live and the food they eat. This belief led French administrators and missionaries to envision a policy of francisation, convinced that if their Indigenous allies adopted French ways, especially the French diet, their essence would be transformed. However, the Indigenous rejection of food products considered by Europeans as essential to humoral balance, like spices, salt and wine, provoked reflections throughout the 17th century and a questioning of the galenic principles. At the end of the century, colonial observers associated the absence of these products in Indigenous diets with a difference that was as much physiological as cultural. French missionaries and colonists' experience in New France led them to question the galenic principles. It provoked a reflection on the immutability of the Indigenous identity (essence) and, consequently, on the impossibility of starting a process of francisation among peoples whom they came to recognize as fundamentally different, not only by their culture but by their very nature. All these reflections aimed at defining the Other through their diets contributed to and reinforced the idea of a biological border between the French and the Indigenous.
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A quintessential mode of resurrecting victims of drowning: tobacco smoke and the persistence of I... more A quintessential mode of resurrecting victims of drowning: tobacco smoke and the persistence of Indigenous practices in eighteenth century France.
In the sixteenth century, French fishermen and sailors adopted the use of smoking tobacco through their encounter with the Indigenous people of Northeastern America. Conscious of the symbolic dimension of the practice, they integrated it into their own ontology. In the western world, the aromatic smoke of incense, perfumes, and spices rising in volutes symbolized the vital breath, the soul which rises towards God. Similarly, smoke from tobacco served as a visual and olfactory link between the human and the divine. Introduced in France, the practice acted as a social binder and helped sailors, soldiers, and the starving population to endure their dreary and painful lives by providing them with artificial well-being. Meanwhile, the French elite preferred to snuff rather than smoke tobacco because of the association of the practice with the lower class and the “perverted” rituals of Native Americans. To distance the use of tobacco from its pagan origins, medical practitioners desacralized and medicalized the herb and recommended its use in the form of ointment, oil, salt, crystal, perfume, and pill. Ironically, from the late eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, tobacco smoke enemas became the quintessential mode of resuscitating drowning victims. The procedure became popular after a physician witnessed the rescue of a woman who had been taken out of the river. A soldier had offered his pipe to the desperate husband and had encouraged him to use it to blow smoke into the rectum of his wife. In the Age of Enlightenment, as science sought to move away from popular superstitions, it appears that medicine turned a blind eye to its own contradictions. The use of tobacco smoke to bring the soul of a deceased back into his body illustrates the powerful fascination and attraction the sacred herb of America still exerted upon the French in the eighteenth-century.
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Épices et Tabac en Nouvelle-France; une question d'humeurs Lors de son séjour à Port Royal en 160... more Épices et Tabac en Nouvelle-France; une question d'humeurs Lors de son séjour à Port Royal en 1606-1607, Marc Lescarbot observant que les Mi'Kmaq n'avaient « l'usage du vin ni des épices » affirme que ces derniers utilisaient le tabac pour « échauffer » leur estomac afin d'en corriger « les crudités provenant du poisson qu'ils mangent. » Cette remarque s'inscrit dans la pensée médicale de l'époque basée sur le système galénique et la théorie des humeurs. Les épices, associées au jardin d'Eden, étaient appréciées depuis l'Antiquité, non seulement pour leur goût et odeur suave, mais aussi pour leurs propriétés thérapeutiques tant au niveau physique que spirituel. Reconnues pour leurs qualités calorifiques, elles étaient perçues au début de l'ère moderne, comme essentielles pour maintenir un équilibre humoral chez les personnes de complexion froide, ou habitant dans des climats froids tel celui de la Nouvelle-France. Les observateurs Français ont tenté de mieux comprendre ce corps amérindien capable de s'épanouir en dehors des critères imposés par les traités de médecine de la Renaissance. Intrigués par la consommation de tabac chez les divers groupes Amérindiens, ils ont cherché à expliquer cet usage en l'intégrant dans des paradigmes qui leur étaient propres. L'analyse de la perception européenne de l'usage du tabac nous révèle les efforts de compréhension et de désacralisation de cette herbe souvent associée au diable. Mais ces perceptions sont conflictuelles et contradictoires. Cette herbe, comme nous informe Sagard, dont on ne peut se défaire qu'avec grande difficulté tant le goût en est charmant est-elle, nourriture ou médecine, sacrée ou diabolique ? La médicalisation du tabac tout comme celle des épices, les réduisant à une question d'humeurs, s'inscrit dans un effort de désacralisation typique d'un dix-septième siècle résolu à se départir de superstitions.
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The French newcomers who came to Canada in the sixteenth and seventeenth century always marveled ... more The French newcomers who came to Canada in the sixteenth and seventeenth century always marveled at the abundance of fish and game they found in the New World. At a time when food was scarce in France, Canada appeared like a “pays de Cocagne.” Cartier and Champlain’s testimonies, among others, reflect this vision. They both provided long lists of edible products observed in the New World. However, those lists work as lexicons and does not inform on how food was used as a language between the French newcomers and the diverse Indigenous groups they encountered. The European food culture of the sixteenth century, modulated by religious restrictions, differed greatly from the Indigenous food culture of the New World. Still, while every culture has developed around food consumption specific rules and taboos, there is an essentiality to food that renders it universal. When communication through language is limited, food and the rituals around it, serve as a diplomatic tool conveying either inclusion or exclusion. Cartier and Champlain had little interest for the food of the “Other” except as a promoting tool to convince the French Crown of the fertility of the New World. However, they knew that offerings of fish, meat, bread signified a desire of alliance and they understood the diplomatic signification of rejecting or accepting those offers. Looking at the interaction between Cartier, Champlain and their men with the Algonquin, Innu and Iroquoian nations they met, reveals the importance of food as language of diplomacy, one that despite cultural difference everybody understood.
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This unexpected encounter, through a book, as an object, of the author, a renowned French botanis... more This unexpected encounter, through a book, as an object, of the author, a renowned French botanist, with a famous Russian noble, the count Fédor Rostoptchine, and a strong-minded woman, sounds like the fabric of a Tolstoian play.
However, this is what offers the copy of Claude Antoine Thory's L'Histoire de La Fondation du Grand Orient de France published in 1812, part of Brock University's masonic collection. It is indeed a unique book that reveals much more than its text. Its multiple annotations in view of a second edition, what appears to be the signature of Fedor Rostopchine, who as general of Moscow had ordered the burning of the city at the arrival of Napoleon's troops, and the letter addressed to Thory by a woman determined to write the history of freemasonry provide a unique window into the world of French nineteenth-century freemasonry.
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Beaucoup de mythes modernes se nourrissent de ceux du passé. Dans l'historiographie de la renc... more Beaucoup de mythes modernes se nourrissent de ceux du passé. Dans l'historiographie de la rencontre entre les Européens et les habitants du nouveau monde, la figure mythologique de 'l'homme sauvage,' inspirée du légendaire Wilder Mann issu de l'imaginaire germanique médiéval, fait office de référence de base. Or ces observations sont fondées sur des théories promues par des historiens du dix-neuvième siècle. Cette fausse perception, ajoutée à une vision mythologique du jésuite intégriste et peu ouvert à la culture amérindienne, subsiste depuis, créant un nouveau mythe en soi. La confusion apportée par le terme 'sauvage' utilisé dans les Relations des Jésuites, et la volonté de produire une perception de non civilisation, a servi à perpétuer ce mythe. Une recherche sur la pertinence de cet 'homme sauvage' dans le registre des mythes français des seizième et dix-septième siècles permet de remettre en question cette vision. En effet, les Amérindiens rencontrés par les jésuites français ne pouvaient être confondus avec cette figure de 'l'homme sauvage', celle ci n'ayant très peu de présence dans l'imagerie fabuleuse française de l'époque. Cette fausse lecture a cependant été récupérée pendant plusieurs années pour soutenir une vision négative et non civilisée des peuples autochtones ou plus récemment pour dénoncer une approche colonialiste. Les faux mythes de 'l'indien sauvage' et du 'jésuite fanatique' ont fini par créer une vision de la rencontre des deux groupes qu'il est maintenant nécessaire de reconsidérer.
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Article by Renée Girard
Book Reviews by Renée Girard
Conference Presentations by Renée Girard
5-7 Juin 2024
Contact, Confrontation, Adaptation; Corn and Wheat in 17th century New France
The meeting of corn civilizations with those of wheat in New France resulted in a confrontation between two culinary ontologies deeply anchored in their respective cosmologies. Corn-producing nations, such as the Wendat and Haudenosaunee, remained attached to their sacred grain, a source of physical and spiritual life. However, the French’s arrival on their territory affected their environment and limited their production capacity. As for the wheat-producing newcomers, they found in the fertile lands of New France the assurance that they could reproduce the French agricultural system and, by cultivating wheat, a powerful symbol of the Catholic faith, “civilize” its environment.
While corn and wheat remained powerful identity markers, necessity and accessibility led both groups to engage in culinary compromises. During the initial days of the colony, the newcomers appropriated corn as emergency food to compensate for the scarcity of wheat. This nourishing grain allowed them to survive when supplies were missing and the newly tilled soils not yet ready to produce. Meanwhile, the Innu, the Mi’kmaq, and the Atikamekw saw their dependence on European food products increase as they participated in the fur trade. The newcomers’ appropriation of land compromised their access to the ancestral territories that had been essential food reservoirs for them until then. They had no choice but to adopt the wheat flour provided by their French allies. However, adopting the food of the Other involved crossing a boundary that not everyone was ready to cross because eating like the Other carried the danger of becoming the Other.
Université du Québec à Montréal, 18 March 2024
“A twin land under the same constellation,” Pierre Biard’s perception of New France’s environment.
Unlike the Spanish, who were conscious that they had to confront an unfamiliar environment in South America, the French, who arrived in the Northeastern part of America in the early 17th century, expected to find a replica of their habitat. The Jesuit Pierre Biard, who sojourned in Port-Royal from 1611 to 1615, described in his Relation de la Nouvelle-France addressed to Louis XIII, a “twin land” situated on the same latitude as France. Thus, according to the beliefs of the time, based on humoral and climate theories, this geographical situation implied the possibility of reproducing a European type of agriculture on the new continent. While Biard suggested that only the influence of Satan could explain the state of the wilderness he observed, he assured the king that the very essence of the beings - humans, animals and plants - who inhabited this land that looked towards France was based on the same principles and was tempered by the same constellations as those under which the mother country was thriving.
However, despite his enthusiasm, Biard could not ignore the rigors of the North American winters so different from those of his “douce France.” To explain this discrepancy, he argued, like Samuel de Champlain before him, that the motherland’s climate could be replicated by transforming the forests into cultivated land. In fact, for Biard, all that was missing to create a ‘new’ France was the hand of civilized man to “désensauvager” both the environment and the humans who inhabited this coveted territory.
In the sixteenth century, French fishermen and sailors adopted the use of smoking tobacco through their encounter with the Indigenous people of Northeastern America. Conscious of the symbolic dimension of the practice, they integrated it into their own ontology. In the western world, the aromatic smoke of incense, perfumes, and spices rising in volutes symbolized the vital breath, the soul which rises towards God. Similarly, smoke from tobacco served as a visual and olfactory link between the human and the divine. Introduced in France, the practice acted as a social binder and helped sailors, soldiers, and the starving population to endure their dreary and painful lives by providing them with artificial well-being. Meanwhile, the French elite preferred to snuff rather than smoke tobacco because of the association of the practice with the lower class and the “perverted” rituals of Native Americans. To distance the use of tobacco from its pagan origins, medical practitioners desacralized and medicalized the herb and recommended its use in the form of ointment, oil, salt, crystal, perfume, and pill. Ironically, from the late eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, tobacco smoke enemas became the quintessential mode of resuscitating drowning victims. The procedure became popular after a physician witnessed the rescue of a woman who had been taken out of the river. A soldier had offered his pipe to the desperate husband and had encouraged him to use it to blow smoke into the rectum of his wife. In the Age of Enlightenment, as science sought to move away from popular superstitions, it appears that medicine turned a blind eye to its own contradictions. The use of tobacco smoke to bring the soul of a deceased back into his body illustrates the powerful fascination and attraction the sacred herb of America still exerted upon the French in the eighteenth-century.
However, this is what offers the copy of Claude Antoine Thory's L'Histoire de La Fondation du Grand Orient de France published in 1812, part of Brock University's masonic collection. It is indeed a unique book that reveals much more than its text. Its multiple annotations in view of a second edition, what appears to be the signature of Fedor Rostopchine, who as general of Moscow had ordered the burning of the city at the arrival of Napoleon's troops, and the letter addressed to Thory by a woman determined to write the history of freemasonry provide a unique window into the world of French nineteenth-century freemasonry.
5-7 Juin 2024
Contact, Confrontation, Adaptation; Corn and Wheat in 17th century New France
The meeting of corn civilizations with those of wheat in New France resulted in a confrontation between two culinary ontologies deeply anchored in their respective cosmologies. Corn-producing nations, such as the Wendat and Haudenosaunee, remained attached to their sacred grain, a source of physical and spiritual life. However, the French’s arrival on their territory affected their environment and limited their production capacity. As for the wheat-producing newcomers, they found in the fertile lands of New France the assurance that they could reproduce the French agricultural system and, by cultivating wheat, a powerful symbol of the Catholic faith, “civilize” its environment.
While corn and wheat remained powerful identity markers, necessity and accessibility led both groups to engage in culinary compromises. During the initial days of the colony, the newcomers appropriated corn as emergency food to compensate for the scarcity of wheat. This nourishing grain allowed them to survive when supplies were missing and the newly tilled soils not yet ready to produce. Meanwhile, the Innu, the Mi’kmaq, and the Atikamekw saw their dependence on European food products increase as they participated in the fur trade. The newcomers’ appropriation of land compromised their access to the ancestral territories that had been essential food reservoirs for them until then. They had no choice but to adopt the wheat flour provided by their French allies. However, adopting the food of the Other involved crossing a boundary that not everyone was ready to cross because eating like the Other carried the danger of becoming the Other.
Université du Québec à Montréal, 18 March 2024
“A twin land under the same constellation,” Pierre Biard’s perception of New France’s environment.
Unlike the Spanish, who were conscious that they had to confront an unfamiliar environment in South America, the French, who arrived in the Northeastern part of America in the early 17th century, expected to find a replica of their habitat. The Jesuit Pierre Biard, who sojourned in Port-Royal from 1611 to 1615, described in his Relation de la Nouvelle-France addressed to Louis XIII, a “twin land” situated on the same latitude as France. Thus, according to the beliefs of the time, based on humoral and climate theories, this geographical situation implied the possibility of reproducing a European type of agriculture on the new continent. While Biard suggested that only the influence of Satan could explain the state of the wilderness he observed, he assured the king that the very essence of the beings - humans, animals and plants - who inhabited this land that looked towards France was based on the same principles and was tempered by the same constellations as those under which the mother country was thriving.
However, despite his enthusiasm, Biard could not ignore the rigors of the North American winters so different from those of his “douce France.” To explain this discrepancy, he argued, like Samuel de Champlain before him, that the motherland’s climate could be replicated by transforming the forests into cultivated land. In fact, for Biard, all that was missing to create a ‘new’ France was the hand of civilized man to “désensauvager” both the environment and the humans who inhabited this coveted territory.
In the sixteenth century, French fishermen and sailors adopted the use of smoking tobacco through their encounter with the Indigenous people of Northeastern America. Conscious of the symbolic dimension of the practice, they integrated it into their own ontology. In the western world, the aromatic smoke of incense, perfumes, and spices rising in volutes symbolized the vital breath, the soul which rises towards God. Similarly, smoke from tobacco served as a visual and olfactory link between the human and the divine. Introduced in France, the practice acted as a social binder and helped sailors, soldiers, and the starving population to endure their dreary and painful lives by providing them with artificial well-being. Meanwhile, the French elite preferred to snuff rather than smoke tobacco because of the association of the practice with the lower class and the “perverted” rituals of Native Americans. To distance the use of tobacco from its pagan origins, medical practitioners desacralized and medicalized the herb and recommended its use in the form of ointment, oil, salt, crystal, perfume, and pill. Ironically, from the late eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, tobacco smoke enemas became the quintessential mode of resuscitating drowning victims. The procedure became popular after a physician witnessed the rescue of a woman who had been taken out of the river. A soldier had offered his pipe to the desperate husband and had encouraged him to use it to blow smoke into the rectum of his wife. In the Age of Enlightenment, as science sought to move away from popular superstitions, it appears that medicine turned a blind eye to its own contradictions. The use of tobacco smoke to bring the soul of a deceased back into his body illustrates the powerful fascination and attraction the sacred herb of America still exerted upon the French in the eighteenth-century.
However, this is what offers the copy of Claude Antoine Thory's L'Histoire de La Fondation du Grand Orient de France published in 1812, part of Brock University's masonic collection. It is indeed a unique book that reveals much more than its text. Its multiple annotations in view of a second edition, what appears to be the signature of Fedor Rostopchine, who as general of Moscow had ordered the burning of the city at the arrival of Napoleon's troops, and the letter addressed to Thory by a woman determined to write the history of freemasonry provide a unique window into the world of French nineteenth-century freemasonry.
As true humanists, the French Jesuits who arrived in the New World were deeply influenced by their classical education and, as claimed by Grafton, reverted to ancient ethnographic texts, like Tacitus' Germania, to support their analyse of the Indigenous people they encountered. Books talk to books. Inspired by Germania, the early French Jesuits managed to convey to their readers a subtle critique of their own civilization, enhancing, like Tacitus, the virtuous aspect of the so-called barbarians they described while illustrating the corruption of their respective civilized worlds.
This thesis suggests that the essence of Tacitus' work is definitively present in Pierre Biard's letters and his Relation. His testimonies illustrate the connection the early French Jesuits had with the humanist thought of their time.