Jay Gitlin, coeditor and contributor to French St. Louis: Landscape, Contexts, and Legacy, asks, “What can historical scholarship best contribute to a moment of commemoration like the anniversary of the founding of a city?” (285) This volume and its contributors, who first gathered at a symposium to celebrate the 250th anniversary of St. Louis’s founding, aim to answer this question. Gitlin and his cocontributors argue that the role of historical scholarship in commemoration is not necessarily to debunk myths and obsessions with individual founders but to enliven perspectives that demonstrate the multiple contexts of St. Louis’s history. While limited to the expansion of French perspectives, the book successfully engages St. Louis from local, regional, national, and transnational levels as well as recentering the city in national narratives as a distinctive site whose French presence persisted beyond the Louisiana Purchase. By understanding the city’s French pasts within these wider contexts,...
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