Reading Notes on Historical Articles

Citation: Greer, Allan. "National, transnational, and hyper national historiographies: New France meets early American history." Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 4 (2010): 695-724.

Argument: This article argues that the national historiographic traditions continue to exert their powerful influence on the modern societies. The question asked by the author states, "Have transnational currents in the colonial history of North America surpassed the distortions that associate with the political framing of studies on the beginning of the modern period?

Main points: Historians from Quebec, Canada, and United States frequently view New France in their national traditional views across the current borders. There is nothing significant about the big history,' a phenomenon which encompasses large parts of the world within its visionary field. Lastly, the finest historical monographs that exist today are microhistorical studies of unidentified individuals.

Evidence: The author selectively examined the historiography of New France to come to his conclusion regarding the topic. He has also analyzed the Canadian historiography history to establish the centricity of the history of North America.

Assessment: This work brings more light into the nature and character of historiography in North America. Additionally, it informs the reader that specialists who framed the New France situated their work in a broader hemispheric context. Furthermore, it brings new knowledge in the sense that the existing historiographical habits act to prevent the understanding of expansive colonial formation that died before the creation of the modern states.

Citation: Neylan, Susan. "Unsettling British Columbia: Canadian Aboriginal Historiography, 19922012." History Compass 11, no. 10 (2013): 845-858.

Argument: Right litigation and the landmark cases that originate in BC's have enlightened historians on the constructs of history in the courts. The trends that exist outside the disciplines of historians in British Canada have touched them beyond educational aspects.

Main points: Fixation on the history of colonialism has kept the British-Columbians at the forefront. The Recent historical expansion is seen to be pushing past the exploration of BC's Canadian Aboriginal's in colonial history. Current studies consider colonialism in the contexts of Aboriginal epistemologies and history. Additionally, the existing indigenous scholars have demanded an increased amount of control in their bid to produce accounts with exclusivity as the central theme.

Evidence: The study has made use of the historiographic records of Canadian Aboriginal History published from 1992. It relied on the past studies of the history of Canadian Aboriginal's that various modern scholars carried out since the twentieth century. This analysis thus presents the most current revelations on the history of British Columbians and its formation.

Assessment: Evidence presented by the article informs the history body of the most current and detailed aspects of the formation of British Colombia. It fosters the adoption of cross-cultural dialogues and provides alternative histories that prove more reliable than the existing historical narratives.

Citation: Gordon, Alan. The Hero and the Historians: historiography and the uses of Jacques Cartier. UBC Press, 2010.

Argument: Even though Cartier was an essential figure in Saint-Malo during his lifetime, he achieved more significance in the invention and imagination of the nineteenth century Canadians. His influence stems from the creation and passage of his past notions on to the future generations.

Main points: There are some historical meanings that Canadians, both francophone and anglophone, have invented for Jacques Cartier since the Nineteenth Century. First, Cartier has been conscripted to serve nationalist historiography in Canada. He is also seen by Canadians to give the nation a sense of time by providing historical constructs that are used by Canadians up to date.

Evidence: Majority of evidence form the article is derived from the review of the recorded transition of humankind from Renaissance to early Western Civilization period. The evidence used by the author indicate that Cartier was never a Canadian but a mere national fiction that was created across Quebec to help them achieve their own identity.

Assessment: The story of Cartier as a national symbol constitute the point of contact between the existing French and English Canadian nationalisms today. The study brings a rich knowledge that can be used to understand the ideology that united Canada as a country from various colonies.

Citation: Harald E. L. Prins, "Children of Gluskap: Wabanaki Indians on the Eve of the European Invasion," chap. 4 in American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, eds. Emerson W. Baker, Edwin A. Churchill, Richard D'Abate, Kristine L. Jones, Victor A. Conrad, and Harald E. L. Prins. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 95-117.

Argument: America is the beginning of an unheralded experience for both the Indians and the Europeans. In such notion, America is considered the place where two previously separate histories intersected and started, however unequally, to shape the future of the nation.

Main points: To the Europeans, America was a new world, an object of consciousness that made the native Indians to battle them at every point of their invasion efforts. To the natives, what was new in America was the presence of the white strangers who invaded the continent and started to work their will without the plan to leave again.

Evidence: The study gathers past literature on the age of exploration when the Europeans exchanged their Mediterranean research for the Atlantic lookout. It utilized the available excerpts of the Northern exploration history to draw its conclusions. Also, it used documentary evidence with recorded hearsay, maps and political manifestos that prompted the invasion of America by the Europeans.

Assessment: The knowledge brought forth by the study is integral to the understanding of the composition of various racial groups in the United States. It also informs the reader of how Whites became the majority ethnic group in the United States.

Bibliography

Gordon, Alan. The Hero and the Historians: historiography and the uses of Jacques Cartier. UBC Press, 2010.

Greer, Allan. "National, transnational, and hyper national historiographies: New France meets early American history." Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 4 (2010): 695-724.

Harald E. L. Prins, Children of Gluskap: Wabanaki Indians on the Eve of the European Invasion," chap. 4 in American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, eds. Emerson W. Baker, Edwin A. Churchill, Richard D'Abate, Kristine L. Jones, Victor A. Conrad, and Harald E. L. Prins. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 95-117.

Neylan, Susan. "Unsettling British Columbia: Canadian Aboriginal Historiography, 19922012." History Compass 11, no. 10 (2013): 845-858.