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Communications
To the Editor:
Reading in Sara Stidstone Gronim's article
"Geography
and Persuasion: Maps in British Colonial New York," William and
Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser.,
58 (2001), 373–402
, that the French state had supported the traveling, missionizing,
and map-making that for Europeans constituted "discovery," I recalled
a sovereign exception. Louis XIV wrote to Governor Frontenac on May
17, 1674
, "The intention of His Majesty is not that you undertake long expeditions
up the river, . . . and not to push afar discoveries in lands of the
countries so far removed that they cannot be inhabited nor possessed
by Frenchmen."
1
Dunham, Québec, Canada James Brierley
Sara Stidstone Gronim replies:
I welcome Mr. Brierley's point of information.
Notes
1
Quoted in Cornelius J. Jaenen, ed., The French Regime in the Upper Country of Canada during the Seventeenth Century (Toronto, 1996), 20–21.
To the Editor:
The editors of the William and Mary Quarterly have done a great service in arranging the Forum on Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York, 2000), and in publishing the comments of four scholars whose fields of expertise bear on various aspects of that work. Both they and the participating historians deserve the thanks of the historical community.
I should like to comment briefly on Professor
Bellesiles's reply, in which he charged that I demonstrated "an
appalling failure of reading comprehension" (WMQ, 3d Ser.,
59 [2002], 243)
when I characterized his description of colonial America as "nearly
gun-free." Consider the numbers and facts he presents in Arming America.
Bellesiles claims that only
14.7
percent of adult white males (fewer on the frontier) owned firearms.
Of these weapons,
53
percent were "broken or otherwise defective" (p.
13
). If true, presumably only some
7
percent of adult white males had functioning guns. Further, even the
guns of the
7
percent, he tells us, did not really belong to those men because "all
guns" were made into "the property of the state, subject to storage
in central storehouses," and "no gun ever belonged unqualifiedly to
an individual" (p.
79)
. Perhaps Bellesiles would do well to re-read his own work.
Bentley College and MIT Security Studies Program Joyce Lee Malcolm
Michael Bellesiles replies:
No where in Arming America do I write "that only 14.7 percent of adult white males (fewer on the frontier) owned firearms." Professor Malcolm refers here to a statement about a specific sample set, not a universal generalization about gun ownership in early America. To quote again from my introduction: "This book does not argue that guns did not exist in early America, nor that violence did not occur." That strikes me as fairly clear. Additionally, in chapter after chapter I attempt to show the presence of firearms while noting the efforts of various governments, colonial, state, and federal, to increase the production, ownership, knowledge, and use of guns among trustworthy citizens. Even the chapter titles speak to the presence of firearms, chapter 4, for example, being "Creation of the First American Gun Culture." Perhaps I was too subtle in my presentation, but I believe that any fair-minded reader would perceive that I never characterize early America as "basically gun-free." Unfortunately, there are those who choose to misrepresent the Arming America at every turn in hopes that the book will not be read. Not surprisingly, I would prefer that people read my books rather than about them.
To the Editor:
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