Silva, Edgardo Medeiros2017-11-142017-11-142015Silva, Edgardo Medeiros da. "Theme and Subject Matter in Francis Parkman’s The Old Régime in Canada". Revue française d’études américaines, 2015/4 (145). 2015. 224-244.0397-7870http://hdl.handle.net/10451/29711‘There are no political panaceas, except in the imagination of political quacks.’ These are the words used by the American historian Francis Parkman (1823-1893) to suggest that the English and French settlements on the North American continent had been quite different from their onset and were quite possibly bound to remain as such in years to come. This paper examines the failure of France to establish the basis of a well-regulated political community in North America in the context of the Anglo-French rivalry for the control of that continent as conveyed by Francis Parkman in Part Four of his History of France and England in North America (1874), entitled The Old Régime in Canada. Though fact-based, Parkman’s narrative evidences a deep-seated political and cultural bias against the French which sheds some light on the colonial beginnings of New England as well, offering us a story that is novelistic in style and all-encompassing in theme and subject matter.engAmerican HistoriographyAnglo-SaxonismNew EnglandNew FranceRomantic historyjournal article10.3917/rfea.145.0224