Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times. By Carl J. Ekberg. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xiv, 359 pp. $44.95, isbn 0-252-02364-1.)

French Roots in the Illinois Country is placed under the aegis of Frederick Jackson Turner and Marc Bloch, the French progenitor of rural and medieval history. From the former, Carl J. Ekberg borrows the idea of the importance of the rich alluvial environment of the mid-Mississippi Valley; he agrees with the latter's Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française (1931) on the impact on peasant mentalities of the open field and "long lots" tradition, which he finds strikingly similar on the American frontier and in northern medieval France, as is demonstrated through the many plans, maps, and illustrations displayed in the book. This physical and social organization of space was imported into the region, and it thrived in the eighteenth century. . . .

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