The Hudson Bay watershed offers Scott Berthelette a unique vantage point to consider the complexity of French imperialism on the North American frontier. The unapologetic heroes of Berthelette’s Heirs of an Ambivalent Empire are “backcountry specialists.” This motley crew of men, variously identified as voyageurs, coureurs de bois (wood runners), truchements (translators or intermediaries), cultural mediators, and eventually métisé Canadiens, wagged the tail of an empire that sought to yoke them to its own vision of the frontier. Rather than imperial ties, these men relied on kin ties for their success. Ultimately, Berthelette argues, kinship on Native ground laid the foundation for the rise of the Métis.
This book is a meticulously executed doctoral dissertation transformed into a monograph that spans just over a century, from the 1660s to the 1780s. It benefits from the recent explosion of research in two fields: histories of the French empire and...
