ABSTRACT
The publication of The History of Canada From Its Discovery to the Present Day (1845–1848) makes François-Xavier Garneau “the national historian” of French Canada, even if his work is hardly read today. Self-taught, Garneau first took part in the movement which promoted education for all, then, after the Rebellions (1837–1839), which shook the British colony, set about writing a history of Canada “written entirely from the point of view of Canadiens.” Opposing French colonial histories, British narratives such as that of Lord Durham, and ultramontane clerical history, he was quickly attacked—the more so as various publications diffused its text: the Manual which is drawn from it distorts the interpretive framework; a malicious English translation distorts the facts; and, the additions, in subsequent editions, erase the work's architecture and argumentation. If it is true that the Histoire by Garneau is the first large-scope work on Canadian history, it is written from the point of view of the losers: the Canadiens who passed under a British yoke in 1761 and submitted to the Act of Union of 1841. The work's concealment is also due to contempt for a “local” intellectual—self-taught—who places the exercise of judgement at the heart of the historiographical process. The Garneau case invites contemporary readers to reflect on the functioning of the historical narrative and on its reading, as well as on the very notion of historical judgement, the one Garneau claims for himself: “the independence of my opinion judging men and things.”
