One New World, Two Big Ideas
David Hackett Fischer
This week, the people of North America are staging two celebrations.
The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States, and it
will be observed as John Adams prescribed in 1776: a "day of
deliverance" in more ways than one, with "solemn acts of devotion to God
Almighty ... pomp and parade ... shows, games, sports, guns, bells,
bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other
from this time forward forever more."
The US Declaration of Independence |
In Canada, today, another ceremony will mark the 400th anniversary of
Quebec City, the first permanent settlement in New France. The ancient
city has organised a party that John Adams could not have imagined, with
months of festivities, fireworks and performances. And this morning, at
precisely 11, the hour when Samuel de Champlain and company were thought
to have landed at Quebec, bells will peal across Canada, from
Newfoundland to Vancouver.
These "great anniversary festivals," as Adams called them, are about
many things. They commemorate the founding of new societies and the
formation of cultures that flourish today. But they also celebrate
ideas, which are the true touchstones of our way of life, more than any
material foundation.
Richard Hofstadter wrote of the United States that "it has been our
fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one." He seemed to
think it was a form of "American exceptionalism," ugly words for an
erroneous thought. Not so. The same might be said in a different way of
Canada and Quebec. In each place, ideas grew from dreams of "prevoyant"
people, to borrow Champlain's word.
In the United States, July 4 is about a great idea in the Declaration
of Independence - its vision of liberty and freedom, equality and
self-government. The Continental Congress gave Thomas Jefferson a
difficult task: frame a vision of liberty and freedom that all could
accept.
Most Americans believed passionately in liberty and freedom, but they
understood those ideas in very different ways. Town-born New Englanders
had an idea of ordered freedom and the rights of belonging. Virginia's
cavaliers thought of hierarchical liberty as a form of rank. Gentleman
freeholders had much of it, servants little, and slaves nearly none.
Quakers in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey believed in a
reciprocal liberty of conscience in the spirit of the golden rule.
African slaves thought of liberty as emancipation. Settlers in the
Southern backcountry understood it as a sovereign individual's right to
be free from taxes and government, and to settle things his own way:
Don't tread on me!
In 1776, Jefferson's job was to bring together these Americans who
were united by their passion for liberty and freedom, but divided by
their understanding of those ideas. With much help from Adams and
Benjamin Franklin, he created a new vision of these principles with many
contrived ambiguities, studied evasions and deliberate omissions on
contested questions. Slavery was not condemned and equality was not
defined, nor could they be without disrupting the common cause in 1776.
And yet Jefferson's soaring vision gave these ideas room to grow, and
that great process became the central theme of American history.
What we might remember today is that Quebec City and Canada grew from
another great idea, different from that of the United States, but just
as expansive and important, and it too will challenge us for a thousand
years.
The idea was Champlain's, the central figure in New France for three
decades, from 1603 to 1635. He had a dream that grew from his
experiences in France. As a child in the small seaport of Brouage, he
had become accustomed to diversity. As a youth in the province of
Saintonge, he lived on the border between different cultures and
religions, and moved easily between them.
The White House |
Born in 1567, he came of age in a time of cruel and bitter conflict.
From 1562 to 1629, France suffered through nine civil wars of religion;
two million to four million people died - out of a population of 19
million. Champlain was a soldier in these wars. He became a devout
Catholic who deeply believed in a universal church that was open to all
humanity, and supported Henri IV's policy of religious toleration for
Protestants. He served the king as a soldier and secret agent, working
for peace and tolerance in France. He also moved in a circle of French
humanists who lived for faith and reason, science and truth. In a
troubled time, they kept the vital impulse of humanism alive. These
forgotten men inherited the Renaissance and inspired the Enlightenment.
With the king's encouragement Champlain and other like-minded men
turned their thoughts to the new world. Champlain travelled through the
Spanish Empire, and was shocked by the treatment of Indians. He made a
written report to the king with his own vivid paintings of Indians
burned alive by the Inquisition, beaten by priests for not attending
Mass and exploited as forced labourers. With others in his circle,
Champlain planned a New France that would be different from New Spain.
On his first visit to North America in 1603, he went unarmed with one
French friend and two Indian interpreters into the middle of a huge
encampment of Indians from many nations - Montagnais, Algonquin,
Etchemin - near the mouth of the Saguenay River.
He approached the Indians with respect, joined with them in a long
tabagie (tobacco feast) and made an informal alliance that endured for
many generations. The same thing happened in 1604, when he made peace
with the Penobscot Indians of Maine at a tabagie in what is now downtown
Bangor. It happened again with the Micmac of Acadia in 1605 and the
Huron and many Algonquin nations after 1608.
All this happened while Champlain was instrumental in founding three
French-speaking cultures in North America - Quebecois, Acadian and
Metis.
These Frenchmen did not try to conquer the Indians and compel them to
work, as in New Spain. They did not abuse them as in Virginia, or drive
them away as in New England. In the region that began to be known as
Canada, small colonies of Frenchmen and large Indian nations lived close
to one another in a spirit of amity and concord. This successful
partnership was made possible in large measure because of Champlain's
dream of humanity.
Certainly, Champlain's founding ideas - like Jefferson's - were
constrained. Jefferson's vision of liberty could not solve the problem
of slavery, or do justice to the Indians. Champlain's vision of humanity
embraced the Indians but not his servants. Still, their founding
principles define our lives today. As the celebrations begin in Canada
and the United States, the people of North America are heirs to two
great ideas: Jefferson's -
and Champlain's.
From The New York Times |