Old Régime in Canada

Francis Parkman was one of America's first great historians, and he wrote history with the soul of a novelist. "The Old Régime in Canada" chronicles the twenty years when French colonial North America hung in the balance, a scattered collection of fur traders, missionaries, and settlers clinging to the St. Lawrence while the vast interior of a continent unfolded before them. This was a world of brutal winters, Jesuit martyrs, Native American alliances, and a colonial administration perpetually starved of resources and authority from a distant French court. Parkman captures the extraordinary tension of a society caught between empire and wilderness, between Catholic zealotry and pragmatic survival. His prose is vigorous, partisan, and utterly alive. If you believe history should read like literature, this is where American historical writing began.