Translators Notes

The history of New France, by Father Charlevoix, is too well known and too highly esteemed both for style and matter to need any explanation of its scope or object here. The praise of Gibbon will alone assure the English reader that as an historical
work it is of no inconsiderable merit.

It is, however, strange that while nearly all the other works of the French historian can be found in our language, no attempt has hitherto been made to present to English readers the history of a colony which passed under English rule; and that even among American scholars no one has yet undertaken a version of this well-written history of New France. Yet that French colonial empire embraced no small portion of our own republic, and has left ineffaceable marks of the Gallic rule in the names imposed on natural features, and even on settlements that have risen to the dimension of cities.

In undertaking to supply the want, I purposed to myself to make it a work of enduring and positive value. To a translation made with care and study I designed to add not mere occasional notes, but exact references to authorities for every statement in the text, without further remark where the authorities sustained the statement, but explaining and collating the evidence on points of disagreement. The addition of some biographical information, ethnological and other notes, as well as the supplying of obvious omissions, seemed necessary.

This has proved a task much greater than, from my familiarity with the subject, I had anticipated, but I trust that it is not labor spent in vain.

Of the preliminary matter little need be said. In this I refrained from notes. The chronological tables would have led to too diffuse remark. The List of Authors stands as Charlevoix’s expression of opinion. In this I corrected the titles of the works in most cases from the works themselves, so as to make it useful for reference.

In translating a work of such frequent reference, I have, while making it as idiomatic as possible, adhered to the author’s style and manner. For the same reason, I have retained his orthography of proper names, giving, however, where a name is incorrect, the proper form in my notes. It is thus, for the use of the scholar, Charlevoix absolutely.

All the maps of the original edition are here reproduced, and portraits added to enhance the interest if not the value of the work.

Resuming here the study of many years, I could scarcely enumerate all the friends whose suggestions and aid have enabled me to present the information here gathered. Yet I may mention the late Abbé Ferland, the Abbés Laverdiere and Taschereau, in Canada; the late Henry de Courcy and Rev. Felix Martin, in France ; Doctor E. B. O’Callaghan, Hon. Henry C. Murphy, and Francis Parkman, in this country.

JOHN GILMARY SHEA.
New York, May 1, 1866.

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