HIST2F90: Money & Power in the Atlantic World

Term 1 - Assignment 2

The Overview:


Assignment 2

The Details:

Option 1: Text analysis: The Jesuit Relations: Early Missionaries in New France

 

In our forum and lesson for Week 11, we read an excerpt from Paul LeJeune; for this option you'll use Voyant Tools as a way to explore the full-text. There will be a workshop style lesson in November to give you some practice with this tool.

In this exercise, we want you to read a primary source related to colonial-era North America. It's a source by a 17th century Jesuit missionary,  Paul LeJeune that we just discussed in our forum on Missionaries.

For this assignment, you will use this specific version of the text from 1636:You can find the text by clicking the link in the title.

For the assignment we want you to read it the text a particular manner. You should already have read a short excerpt in the forum. We now want you to do three things:Are you required to do any outside research? The short answer is some, but not a lot and not fancy research. We're not giving you many outside resources to work with. What you'll need, you'll have to determine. We do expect you to use resources from appropriate lessons, but, to be clear, most of your discussion should focus on the text itself.

You must include visuals (screenshots/URLs) from your use of Voyant Tools to more clearly explain your pre-reading process and hypotheses that you have drawn from it. See the links below with instructions about using Voyant Tools, as well as upcoming hints from the instructor, for examples of how to use and include screenshots.

The object here is to say something analytical about the book and how how Voyant Tools might help that analysis.

How to use Voyant Tools

Planning tip: in the weeks before this is due, we'll do lessons on North American Indigenous Societies and Missionaries, two topics that will both be useful for you in thinking about The Jesuit Relations.
 


Option 2: Critical Map Reading, I: Early Colonial North America 


An exercise in critical cartography: maps are not neutral data - they have points of view. Explore three maps' viewpoints.

 

Historical maps are packed with data. They give us a view of landscapes, territory, communication networks, political relationships – in short, views of the political and spatial organization of societies. So, while it is clear that maps can give us good, hard data, it is also true that we tend to assume that such data are objective: that these lines and objects marking places/spaces are real and beyond any substantial degree of interpretation. Over the past few years, historians and geographers have demonstrated that in fact maps are, like most texts, social constructs and thus can be read in different ways. They typically bear a relationship to power and are thus historically situated in particular political, economic, and social worlds.


Maps are representations of space but because they often bear a powerful resemblance to concrete geographic features of the planet, we tend to think they are factual, or true. As we've seen, they do contain real concrete facts. But they also contain interpretations; the map makers often made choices in what to represent and how to represent it. This human process of interpreting and selecting data adds complexity to how we must understand maps as sources and ask the same critical questions we'd ask of any sources. Are maps biased? Of course they are, but so is all human-produced data. Almost all maps contain elements that are objective, as well as elements that are subjective. The trick is to read it carefully, and critically. How then do we "read" historical maps as data?

Here's Henri Chatelain's Very Curious Map of the South Sea and Continent, 1719.  It's a curious map, indeed! In its broad contours it may look fairly accurate, but the mapmaker has made some interesting decorative choices that say more about his perspective than it delivers an accurate view of the world. Chatelain makes very broad claims regarding who controls which areas of the world, and some interesting projections on the size and shape of different regions. Is he trying to depict an accurate geographic representation of the world here? Not likely, and that is highly suggested by its title, so what else can we learn from this map?

Perhaps the most curious areas of the map appear in the various cartouches. Most maps have one, or maybe two, but Chatelain's map appears to be more cartouche than map! Let's take a look at the cartouche that appears off the west coast of North America. Is this an accurate description of the behaviour of the North American beaver? The fur trade was incredibly important for European merchants and colonizers in the 17th and 18th centuries, so how are we meant to interpret this image? The beaver in this image appear to be working harmoniously, although this in no way reflects the actual behaviour of the animal. They are industrious, and cooperative, walk upright, and each appear to have a dedicated task! We might read this against the grain and suggest that it displays a commentary on European lack of cooperation or a tendency towards indulgence, or competition. In other words, what we see in this cartouche an idea, even an ideology. Thus, this is "data" just like the geographic information, but data of a worldview, not necessarily of geographic data. 

Maps have perspectives - they have points of view. As we've seen, they do contain real concrete facts. But they also contain interpretations; the map makers often made choices in what to represent and how to represent it. Almost all maps contain elements that are objective, as well as elements that are subjective. The trick is to read it carefully, and critically. How then do we "read" historical maps as data?

In other words, maps, as the geographer J.B. Harley reminds us, make "claims to truth" - that is, they claim to tell us "what is". But they almost always are also arguments - that is, they want you to see "what is" in a particular way. Sometimes those arguments are conscious (the author wants the audience to see it a particular way); sometimes it is unconscious (the map reflects the unconscious biases/assumptions of the author). When we "read" a map, we should be thinking about these arguments (these positions, these interpretations) as they can help us understand the politics (and assumptions!) of the time.

The assignment

The assignment: Write a 750-word essay on THREE of the following early modern maps of central North America. Devote roughly half of your text to a discussion of ONE of the maps, and the other half comparing that map with the other TWO. They were produced in different times and different places and probably for different purposes. Each sought to show an audience how to know America, how it was shaped, who its people were, how they lived and governed themselves, and so on. And yet they also made other claims of knowledge, ones rooted more in their authors and their authors' contexts than in America itself.

Resist the urge to assume these maps were objective rendering of space/place; at the same time, resist the urge to dismiss them all as biased. Most sources contain good hard evidence, and fuzzier interpretative angles. The real trick is to critically examine these maps as we would any texts so as to find as much useful information as possible. And what is useful information? Well, that depends on what question we're asking. If we're asking about the map's ability to convey accurate geographic information, then we head in one direction. If we're asking how the map tells more about the map makers and their societies, then that sends us in other directions. But if we think those questions are not related, then we may be missing a lot.

Here, as in your Discussion entries, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. Just as historians have different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:

Finally, two suggestions: (i) most of you will assume that the map reflects the mapmaker's personal knowledge: that the person surveyed that territory and produced this map. Sometimes that's true,  and sometimes it's not. Thus, you should think about how the mapmakers knew what they put to paper. (ii) many of you will also assume that the maps will become more accurate with time. Sometimes that's true; sometimes that's not. Just don't assume that's true.

Do you need to do additional research? Probably, some (looking up the cartographers, or other details on context of the maps, for example). Wikipedia's probably fine for many things. But try Omni (the library website). There are lots of guides and handbooks that often contain quick high-quality information. But, to be clear, this is not a research paper - it's an exercise in reading sources. Talk about the sources (the maps!).

Tip #1: In past years by far the most common mistake on this kind of assignment has been forgetting (ignoring?) what you've already learned in the course, You have read about early European expansion, and the quest for resources in early modern Africa. You should be using that knowledge to help you here.

Tip #2: the images included here are fairly high resolution, but the links take you to higher-quality scans from the Library of Congress. We strongly recommend you read those higher-resolution versions as close reading of some of the details can be very helpful.

The maps:

Champlain, Carte géographique de la Nouvelle Franse faicte / par le Sieur de Champlain Saint Tongeois Cappitaine ordinaire pour le Roy en la Marine, faict len 1612

Louis Hennepin [Recollet, 1704] Carte d'un très grand païs nouvellement découvert dans l'Amérique septentrionale entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer Glaciale avec le cours du Grand Fleuve Meschasipi. [English version here.] 

Pierre Raffeix [Jesuit, 1688], Le lac Ontario avec les lieux circonvoisins et particulièrement les cinq nations iroquoises

John Smith, Virginia. [London, 1624] 

The secondary source:

Gavin Hollis. "The Wrong Side of the Map? The Cartographic Encounters of John Lederer". in Martin Brückner, ed. 2011. Early American Cartographies. Vol. Edition 1. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: Omohundro Institute and UNC Press.

How's your French? For most of you it's probably not great, but two things. First, much of this is pretty easy to translate (oh, look there a river and it's labelled with the word "rivière" - we think most of you will get that!). Second, translation websites are now very good. Google translate is pretty good (and if you use Chrome you can add a translate-this-page button); and there are others available that are better, if slightly less convenient (we often use DeepL, which is very good, if less easy to use).  

Write a short essay, 750 words, due December 4th, by the end of the day (EDT). Using the skills and knowledge you've acquired so far in the course, the Holis chapter, and the maps. No bibliography is required; all references/citations must be in Chicago-style footnotes (a good quick guide to citing LOC primary documents can be found here).


 

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