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rfmcdonaldThe late Irish-born Canadian author Brian Moore was perhaps underappreciated by the general public, but he has nonetheless a substantial reputation:
Some weeks ago, I read two of his most famous books: Black Robe, made into a television miniseries by CBC, and The Magician's Wife, his final novel. I read them one after the other; as I did, I found a fascinating number of parallels and differences. The truism that bpooks can be disintuighsed by things they share and things where they differ wasn't never more truer than with these two books.
Black Robe is set in early 17th century Canada; The Magician's Wife, in mid-19th century Algeria. Timing is important here, since in both cases these time frames are located at the very beginning of French colonial settlement. Many observers divide France's colonial history in two: a pre-Revolutionary empire that reached its apex in the 1740s, with the vast North American landmass of New France and Indian trading posts flanking rich Caribbean sugar islands; and, a post-Revolutionary empire substantially created during the Second Empire, centred on North Africa and stretching deep into Africa and Southeast Asia. The French were notoriously relctant to emigrate to their colonies, to establish new societies on the model of British New England and Australia, Portuguese Brazil, or Spanish Gran Columbia and La Plata; Canada in the first colonial empire, and Algeria in the second colonial empire, were the closest approximations to this ideal in French colonial history. The wave of French colonial immigrants has not yet arrived to the Canada and the Algeria described in these novels, and so the protagonists--missionary Father Laforgue and young Norman Daniel Davost in Black Robe, and magician Pierre Lambert with his wife Emmeline in The Magician's Wife are forced to navigate threatening and alien cultures of the colonized.
Conditions in mid-19th century French Algeria are, of course, much different from conditions in early 17th century French Canada. French Canada existed mainly as an economic entity, with French trading posts on the Saint Lawrence river trading with diverse tribes of Iroquoian and Algonkian linguistic background. The French did possess a notable technological advantage, and this did translate into substantial economic and military power; French power, however, was indirect, and far from the Saint Lawrence valley it was more nominal than anything. France itself, before Richelieu and Louis XIV, was only a weakly organized kingdom lacking clear direction in any but the broadest areas; the French colonial effort in Canada, in fact, was a private effort, mounted by merchants and religious orders.
The France of the 1850s was far different, having passed through the Bourbon and Revolutionary reforms that created a unitary state, just beginning to pass beyond the initial stages of the industrial revolution that would eventually make France a modern economic power, and under the plebiscitary imperialism of Napoleon III pioneering the very modern phenomenon of mass media-driven charismatic leadership. (Whether or not Napoleon III was opposed to democracy is a question of debate, though I lean towards the belief that were it not for the Franco-Prussian War he would have allowed the Olivier reforms of 1870 to lay the foundations for a constitutional monarchy on the British model, with relatively more power reserved for the executive.) The entire French colonial effort was driven by the French military, then as now one of the most modern in the world; the French presence in Algeria did begin, after all, in 1830 as a French military response to pirates based in the territory of the Bey of Algiers. Algeria itself was home to a culture very different from Canada, including a large tribal population on the Ibn Khaldunian model but fundamentally an Old World sedentary civilization different mainly in degree not type from France itself.
It's interesting to trace the ways in which the differing natures of the colonizing nations and the colonized areas impact upon the novel. In Black Robe, Father Laforgue is sent to the Huron villages of modern-day southern Ontario out as a missionary, but he remains almost to the very end of the novel dependent on how native Canadians treat him, based on their own perceived cultural and physical needs. That the natives have power is demonstrated by Daniel, who abandons his French heritage for love, becoming Iwanchou in order to be with the woman he loves. The French of Black Robe are dependent upon continued native consent for the success of their colonial missions. Only at the end of the novel, when Huron society is devastated to its core by devastating Old World epidemics, does the balance of power shift towards the French, who can guarantee eternal life in the next world if not this one. Still, the balance of power remains favourable to the natives despite French contempt for their uncivlized cultures, if only because the French have much to learn from their partners.
Algeria is different. To the French who have established their dominance in Algeria, the culture of the native Algerians is fundamentally inferior. This is not necessarily based on any religious animosity, but rather upon the fact that the Algerians are not modern, are non-industrial, religious, and credulous. Pierre Lambert--one of Europe's leading magicians--was dispatched to Algeria in order to demonstrate his magic, portrayed by the French colonial administration not as ingenious tricks but rather as evidence of European magics and divine connections far superior to that of the Algerians. Emmeline could have allowed herself to be seduced, literally and otherwise, by Algerians, but she did not; questions of propriety always intervened, even in the midst of her loveless marriage with Pierre and her lukewarm attachment to the idea of a French colonial mission. The natives do manage to wound Pierre, shooting him in the arm and so ending his ability to perform magic; but, the reader is told that the following year the French win their final military victories over organized Algerian resistance the following year. French colonialism in Algeria is much more mechanized than French colonialism in Canada ever worse, but more inevitable and remorseless, much more modern.
I highly recommend these two books from the literary points of view as well, of course; Moore writes in a simple unobtrusive language that is wonderfully clarifying and elevating to read. Just as important, though, is the first-hand anthropological interrogations of French colonialisms and colonized that these two novels provide.
In the breadth of his curiosity, empathy and moral intelligence, [Brian Moore] was unique. He wrote persuasively and memorably about terrorists in Ireland, journalists in Montreal, war criminals in France, revolutionaries in the Caribbean, 17th-century Jesuits in New France--and about lost, desperate, yearning people anywhere from Belfast to California.
Some weeks ago, I read two of his most famous books: Black Robe, made into a television miniseries by CBC, and The Magician's Wife, his final novel. I read them one after the other; as I did, I found a fascinating number of parallels and differences. The truism that bpooks can be disintuighsed by things they share and things where they differ wasn't never more truer than with these two books.
Black Robe is set in early 17th century Canada; The Magician's Wife, in mid-19th century Algeria. Timing is important here, since in both cases these time frames are located at the very beginning of French colonial settlement. Many observers divide France's colonial history in two: a pre-Revolutionary empire that reached its apex in the 1740s, with the vast North American landmass of New France and Indian trading posts flanking rich Caribbean sugar islands; and, a post-Revolutionary empire substantially created during the Second Empire, centred on North Africa and stretching deep into Africa and Southeast Asia. The French were notoriously relctant to emigrate to their colonies, to establish new societies on the model of British New England and Australia, Portuguese Brazil, or Spanish Gran Columbia and La Plata; Canada in the first colonial empire, and Algeria in the second colonial empire, were the closest approximations to this ideal in French colonial history. The wave of French colonial immigrants has not yet arrived to the Canada and the Algeria described in these novels, and so the protagonists--missionary Father Laforgue and young Norman Daniel Davost in Black Robe, and magician Pierre Lambert with his wife Emmeline in The Magician's Wife are forced to navigate threatening and alien cultures of the colonized.
Conditions in mid-19th century French Algeria are, of course, much different from conditions in early 17th century French Canada. French Canada existed mainly as an economic entity, with French trading posts on the Saint Lawrence river trading with diverse tribes of Iroquoian and Algonkian linguistic background. The French did possess a notable technological advantage, and this did translate into substantial economic and military power; French power, however, was indirect, and far from the Saint Lawrence valley it was more nominal than anything. France itself, before Richelieu and Louis XIV, was only a weakly organized kingdom lacking clear direction in any but the broadest areas; the French colonial effort in Canada, in fact, was a private effort, mounted by merchants and religious orders.
The France of the 1850s was far different, having passed through the Bourbon and Revolutionary reforms that created a unitary state, just beginning to pass beyond the initial stages of the industrial revolution that would eventually make France a modern economic power, and under the plebiscitary imperialism of Napoleon III pioneering the very modern phenomenon of mass media-driven charismatic leadership. (Whether or not Napoleon III was opposed to democracy is a question of debate, though I lean towards the belief that were it not for the Franco-Prussian War he would have allowed the Olivier reforms of 1870 to lay the foundations for a constitutional monarchy on the British model, with relatively more power reserved for the executive.) The entire French colonial effort was driven by the French military, then as now one of the most modern in the world; the French presence in Algeria did begin, after all, in 1830 as a French military response to pirates based in the territory of the Bey of Algiers. Algeria itself was home to a culture very different from Canada, including a large tribal population on the Ibn Khaldunian model but fundamentally an Old World sedentary civilization different mainly in degree not type from France itself.
It's interesting to trace the ways in which the differing natures of the colonizing nations and the colonized areas impact upon the novel. In Black Robe, Father Laforgue is sent to the Huron villages of modern-day southern Ontario out as a missionary, but he remains almost to the very end of the novel dependent on how native Canadians treat him, based on their own perceived cultural and physical needs. That the natives have power is demonstrated by Daniel, who abandons his French heritage for love, becoming Iwanchou in order to be with the woman he loves. The French of Black Robe are dependent upon continued native consent for the success of their colonial missions. Only at the end of the novel, when Huron society is devastated to its core by devastating Old World epidemics, does the balance of power shift towards the French, who can guarantee eternal life in the next world if not this one. Still, the balance of power remains favourable to the natives despite French contempt for their uncivlized cultures, if only because the French have much to learn from their partners.
Algeria is different. To the French who have established their dominance in Algeria, the culture of the native Algerians is fundamentally inferior. This is not necessarily based on any religious animosity, but rather upon the fact that the Algerians are not modern, are non-industrial, religious, and credulous. Pierre Lambert--one of Europe's leading magicians--was dispatched to Algeria in order to demonstrate his magic, portrayed by the French colonial administration not as ingenious tricks but rather as evidence of European magics and divine connections far superior to that of the Algerians. Emmeline could have allowed herself to be seduced, literally and otherwise, by Algerians, but she did not; questions of propriety always intervened, even in the midst of her loveless marriage with Pierre and her lukewarm attachment to the idea of a French colonial mission. The natives do manage to wound Pierre, shooting him in the arm and so ending his ability to perform magic; but, the reader is told that the following year the French win their final military victories over organized Algerian resistance the following year. French colonialism in Algeria is much more mechanized than French colonialism in Canada ever worse, but more inevitable and remorseless, much more modern.
I highly recommend these two books from the literary points of view as well, of course; Moore writes in a simple unobtrusive language that is wonderfully clarifying and elevating to read. Just as important, though, is the first-hand anthropological interrogations of French colonialisms and colonized that these two novels provide.
