Introduction John Hector St

The subject of our course paper is the identifying social circumstances in american people’life in xvii century by “ Letters from an american farmer”
The object of our work is a literary work of John Hector “ Letters from an american farmer’’
The aim of the paper is analyze “ Letters from an american farmer’’by John Hector St.
The tasks we set are the following:
1.to give notion about American literature
2.To acquainted with great writer John Hector st
3.The critical analize “Letters from an american farmer”
The method which is used to write our course paper is analytical as the work is based on the analysis of a content.
The structure of our work consists of the following:introduction, body or main part divided into 3 chapters, conclusion and the list of used literature used. In the introductory part we speak about the american literature.In the body of the course we focus on the John Hector and his work “ Letters from an american farmer”.In conclusin I summerize my work and give my opinion about this work
1.1 Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813), a French-American farmer and writer, was one of the most perceptive observers of American life in the late 18th century. Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur was born in Caen, France, on Jan. 31, 1735. (Later he would sign his first book J. Hector St. John.) After a Jesuit education and a visit in England, where he learned English, he served as a map maker with Louis Montcalm’s army in Canada from about 1755 to 1759. He left the army but stayed in the New World, where after a good deal of traveling, working as a surveyor, and note-taking, he became a farmer, first in Ulster County, then in Orange County, N.Y. In 1769 Crèvecoeur married Mehitable 1769 Crèvecoeur married Mehitable Tippet, by whom he had three children, the eldest being named America-Francés. For a time his life was idyllic, but the American Revolution interrupted it. Unwilling to commit himself to either side at the time, he tried to visit France, which led to his imprisonment by the British for 3 months. Finally, in 1780 he returned to his old home in France via Dublin and London. While in London he arranged for publication of his most famous work, Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The book provides a comprehensive picture of American life, from Nantucket to Charleston: manners, customs, education, plant and animal life. Crèvecoeur posed as a provincial who sought to answer typical European questions about America. The most memorable portion is Letter Three, “What is an American?” In time ill health largely incapacitated Crèvecoeur. In June 1785 he returned to France, seeking to improve commercial relations between France and America. He prepared a three-volume version of the French Lettres, published in 1789, the year of his return to America and to his position as consul. He was honored by election to the American Philosophical Society. Under the pen name of Agricola, his letters on potato culture, sheep feeding, sunflower oil, and other topics were published in various American journals St. John de Crèvecoeur
Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813), a French-American farmer and writer, was one of the most perceptive observers of American life in the late 18th century.
Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur was born in Caen, France, on Jan. 31, 1735. (Later he would sign his first book J. Hector St. John.) After a Jesuit education and a visit in England, where he learned English, he served as a map maker with Louis Montcalm’s army in Canada from about 1755 to 1759. He left the army but stayed in the New World, where after a good deal of traveling, working as a surveyor, and note-taking, he became a farmer, first in Ulster County, then in Orange County, N.Y.
1.2 What Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur known for?
In 1769 Crèvecoeur married Mehitable Tippet, by whom he had three children, the eldest being named America-Francés. For a time his life was idyllic, but the American Revolution interrupted it. Unwilling to commit himself to either side at the time, he tried to visit France, which led to his imprisonment by the British for 3 months. Finally, in 1780 he returned to his old home in France via Dublin and London. While in London he arranged for publication of his most famous work, Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The book provides a comprehensive picture of American life, from Nantucket to Charleston: manners, customs, education, plant and animal life. Crèvecoeur posed as a provincial who sought to answer typical European questions about America. The most memorable portion is Letter Three, “What is an American?” The book made Crèvecoeur famous. It was published in Philadelphia, as well as in Ireland, Holland, and Germany. He prepared a second edition, in French, much enlarged and more literary: Letters d’un cultivateur américain (1784). The original English versions of some of these letters were not published until 1925 (Sketches of Eighteenth Century America). In 1783, returning to America as French consul to New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, he found that his wife had died and two children were missing. He located the children in Boston, then established a home in New York City. He developed packet-boat service between France and New York. In time ill health largely incapacitated Crèvecoeur. In June 1785 he returned to France, seeking to improve commercial relations between France and America. He prepared a three-volume version of the French Lettres, published in 1789, the year of his return to America and to his position as consul. He was honored by election to the American Philosophical Society. Under the pen name of Agricola, his letters on potato culture, sheep feeding, sunflower oil, and other topics were published in various American journals. After study in Jesuit schools and four years as an officer and mapmaker in Canada, Crèvecoeur chose in 1759 to remain in the New World. He wandered the Ohio and Great Lakes region, took out citizenship papers in New York in 1765, became a farmer in Orange county, and in 1769 married Mehitable Tippet, with whom he had three children.
When the American Revolution broke out, Crèvecoeur found himself in an untenable position: his wife was from a loyalist family and he had friends and neighbours among the opposite faction. Persecuted by both sides, he left rebel country only to languish for months in a British army prison in New York City before sailing for Europe in 1780, accompanied by one son. In London, using his American name, J. Hector St. John, he arranged for the publication in 1782 of 12 essays called Letters from an American Farmer. Within two years this book—charmingly written, optimistic, and timely—saw eight editions in five countries and made its author famous, gaining him such influential patrons as the naturalist the comte de Buffon and Benjamin Franklin, a membership in France’s Academy of Sciences, and an appointment as French consul to three of the new states in America. Before assuming his consular duties in 1784, Crèvecoeur translated and added to the original 12 essays, in Lettres d’un cultivateur Américain, 2 vol. (Paris, 1784).
In America again, Crèvecoeur found his home burned, his wife dead, and his daughter and second son with strangers in Boston. Reunited with his children, he set about organizing a packet service between the United States and France, continued an interest in botany, and published articles on agriculture and medicine. A two-year furlough in Europe resulted in a larger, second edition of the French Lettres, 3 vol. (1790). Recalled from his consulship in 1790, Crèvecoeur wrote one other book on America, Voyage dans la haute Pennsylvanie et dans l’État de New York, 3 vol. (1801; Travels in Upper Pennsylvania and New York, 1961). He lived quietly in France and Germany until his death.
Because of his letters, Crèvecoeur was not only for a while the most widely read commentator on America but also a great favourite with such Romantics as Charles Lamb and Thomas Campbell and with the revolutionist Jacques-Pierre Brissot. His reputation was further increased in the 1920s when a bundle of his unpublished English essays was discovered in an attic in France. These were brought out as Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, or More Letters from an American Farmer (1925). Crèvecoeur’s books outline the steps through which new immigrants passed, analyze the religious problems of the New World, describe the life of the whalers of Nantucket, reveal much about the Indians and the horrors of the Revolution, and present the colonial farmer—his psychology and his daily existence—more completely than any contemporaneous writings were able to do. The passage containing his “melting pot” theory and answering the question “What is an American?” is widely quoted, and historians of the frontier depend heavily on his documented account of the stages by which the log cabin became the opulent farmhouse. His charming style, keen eye, and simple philosophy are universally admired.
This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.
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1.3 John Hector’s contribution on american literature.
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Rural society, society in which there is a low ratio of inhabitants to open land and in which the most important economic activities are the production of foodstuffs, fibres, and raw materials. Such areas are difficult to define with greater precision, for, although in nonindustrialized nations the transition from city to countryside is usually abrupt, it is gradual in industrialized societies, making it difficult to pinpoint the boundaries of rural places. A second, related problem is that governments do not use the same statistical criteria for rural and urban populations; in Japan, for instance, any cluster of fewer than 30,000 people is considered rural, whereas in Albania a group of more than 400 inhabitants is regarded as an urban population.
People: Marc Bloch Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin William Cobbett Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur
Related Topics: origins of agriculture primitive culture urban culture hamlet village.In the past, rural societies were typified by their adherence to farming as a way of life. Such cultures were not goal- or achievement-oriented; their members sought subsistence, not surplus. Marked by a high regard for intimacy and traditional values, farming communities were often regulated by kinship customs and ritual, and, in particular, the ownership and care of productive land was strictly guarded by tradition. Collectively, these characteristics are often designated by the term gemeinschaft, an expression introduced by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies. Tönnies described the contrasting nature of urban life with the term gesellschaft, a state characterized by impersonal bureaucracy, rationalized specialization, and mechanization. Gesellschaft is typically associated with modern industry, where people are employees who perform specific, goal-oriented functions in a rational and efficient, as opposed to a traditional and organic, manner. The two terms are sometimes translated as “community” and “society.” Rural inhabitants work with people they know well and are accustomed to relationships of great intimacy and small scale, whereas urban dwellers know each other in narrow, segmented ways that have little to do with family or friendship. According to Tönnies and subsequent sociologists, all societies are characterized by mixtures of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft; the United States, where even agriculture is almost completely mechanized, is closer to the gesellschaft end of the spectrum, whereas rural India, which is still heavily guided by tradition, is an example of gemeinscha
United States: Rural settlement
Patterns of rural settlement indicate much about the history, economy, society, and minds of those who...
Historically, farming societies have had higher birthrates than urban societies; their populations have also tended to be younger, to live in larger families, and to include slightly greater percentages of males. These phenomena were related: it was to a farmer’s advantage to have many offspring, especially males, who could work in the fields as children and then would support their parents as they grew older. Generally, however, as the children became older, there was not enough productive land for all of them to support their own families, and some would migrate to the cities. In this way, cities have historically absorbed the excess population of the countryside, thus tending to become filled with comparatively older people living in smaller families. With the advent of improved health care in this century, infant mortality rates fell, and the increased number of surviving offspring has swelled the number of migrants to the cities. In the industrialized nations the countryside has sometimes been virtually depopulated, to the point that, for example, in 1970 only 6.7 percent of the employed persons in the United States were in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, and forestry. The result has been a global acceleration of the process of urbanization, which has in turn created vast slums in many urban centres. To halt or reverse this process, agricultural-development specialists have suggested methods of increasing productivity without moving large numbers of farmworkers off the land. Among their recommendations are improvements in soil technology and changes in irrigation, seed stocks, and drainage; they counsel against further large-scale mechanization. The habit of the developed nations to apply their own practices of agriculture to situations where they might not be ultimately beneficial has been yielding to the belief that appropriate technologies must be developed for each area.
Are held together by the movement of the fictional narrator of the text, James, the American farmer, from happiness to despair as he records his life as a farmer and his travels to Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Charlestown. In the opening letters, James celebrates America as a place where the oppressed masses of Europe are able to pursue their own self-interest as independent landowners. In the later letters, he deals with problems already causing divisions within the new society—slavery, and the Revolution. Letters is a form of epistolary, philosophical travel narrative that integrates important Enlightenment ideas into descriptions of ordinary American life. It was widely read in the late eighteenth century and frequently translated and reprinted, strongly influencing European perceptions of America. It had some influence on the ideas of the Romantics, particularly Southey and Coleridge.
2.1 The main purpose of “ Letters from american literature”
Letters from an American Farmer: Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs, Not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies of North America, 1782.
Letters From an American, written to A.W.S. Ecuyer since the year 1770 up ‘til 1781.
Memoire sur le Commerce Entre la France et les États-Unis D’Amerique, 1784 (manuscript rests in the U.S. Embassy, Paris)
Sketches of the Eighteenth Century America: More “Letters From an American Farmer, 1923.”Eighteenth-century travels in Pennsylvania & New York, 1801.To borrow from this panel’s title, one might say that J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur was the very personification of “Transnational Cosmopolitanism in Myth and Practice.” His name alone is transnational, mythical, and practical, all at once. Born Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur into a family of minor nobility in Normandy in 1735, he later took the anglicized name J. Hector St. John in his adult life as he traveled and worked as a surveyor in the American colonies after the Seven Years War. Ultimately his American “stage name” and his original French name were fused together to render the cosmopolitan title – J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur – that is used for this famous early American author, who was not really American at all. This paper casts light on the man who lived a cosmopolitan life as French soldier in Canada, farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley, author and salon favorite in Paris, and Consul of France in New York City. It focuses on this American farmer and writer who became a French diplomat, and the shattering of his illusions about the coalescence of the Atlantic World in the wake of the American Revolution – where the practice of transnational cosmopolitanism destroyed its myth.
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur is an important figure in the history of American literature for his 1782 work, Letters from an American Farmer. Today, his chapter entitled, “What is an American?” is often cited by American history and literature professors alike for its definition of American identity at the time when the new nation was being born. In a 2004 article in William and Mary Quarterly, professor Christopher Iannini rightly points to Crèvecoeur’s desire to perpetuate cosmopolitanism in Letters from an American Farmer in the face of nationalizing forces in the revolutionary Atlantic world. Iannini cites Crèvecoeur’s dedication of this work to the Abbé Raynal as a demonstration of this ambition, one that is clear from the very start of Letters.[1] In that dedication, Crèvecoeur showed his admiration for the abbé’s “universal benevolence, that diffusive good will, which is not confined to the narrow limits of your own country ...” He added, “There is, no doubt, a secret communion among good men throughout the world, a mental affinity connecting them by a similitude of sentiments: then, why, though an American, should not I be permitted to share in that extensive intellectual consanguinity?”[2] In dedicating Letters from an American Farmer to Raynal, Crèvecoeur celebrated the existence of a transatlantic intellectual community, while clearly stating his goal of being a part of this Republic of Letters
Crèvecoeur’s role in creating the idealized myth of America, and his own cosmopolitan experience began after having served as a cartographer for the French army in Canada during the Seven Years’ War (including the decisive Battle of Quebec). After 1759, Crèvecoeur chose to remain in North America rather than return to France with his defeated compatriots. He worked as a surveyor and mapmaker in northern New York until 1770, when he married the daughter of a wealthy New York merchant. The couple settled on a farm called Pine Hill in Orange County in the Hudson Valley, about sixty miles northwest of New York City and a few miles from the Hudson River. Within a year, he and his wife had a daughter, who was appropriately named America-Francès. Within four years, they had added two sons, had a thriving farm, and the Frenchman Crèvecoeur was settling into the fairly typical rural existence of an eighteenth-century American farmer. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, however, the farm country north of New York City was transformed from an idyllic rustic setting to a main theater of war. In the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear that Crèvecoeur details so vividly in the final chapter of his book, a letter entitled “Distresses of a Frontier Man,” he decided to journey back to France with his eldest son. This journey was fraught with difficulties, starting with several months of imprisonment in New York City at the hands of the British under the suspicion of being a spy, and ending with a shipwreck on the Irish coast. Somehow his personal papers survived all of this – they had given the British cause to arrest him in New York, and they ended up being the manuscript that was published in London as Letters from an American Farmer. Despite the numerous difficulties and long delays, Crèvecoeur eventually arrived at his family’s Normandy estate in August 1781. Nearly thirty years had passed since he had left France, and throughout the summer and fall, Crèvecoeur recuperated from illness and from his rather traumatic journey, while renewing old relationships among the nobility of Normandy. That winter, through the insistence of physiocrats such as the Turgot brothers, Crèvecoeur visited Paris and began taking part in the salon of the Countess d’Houdetot, best known for having been an intimate friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (and made famous by Rousseau’s description of their love affair in Les Confessions).
During this time, Crèvecoeur became a minor celebrity in Paris. A true American farmer, and a Frenchman to boot, Crèvecoeur shared a glimmer of the enlightened enthusiasm which Benjamin Franklin enjoyed in his days in France. Avidly welcomed by those who had dreamed or written about America, Crèvecoeur had come to Paris when the rage for all things American was at its peak.[3] With the close of the revolutionary war and the Franco-American victory over the English, Frenchmen were hungry for news and accounts from their new ally. Crèvecoeur was warmly received in d’Houdetot’s salon, which featured a group of writers that were starting to dominate the Académie française in the 1780s, and included men such as d’Alembert, La Harpe, Target, Marmontel, and the poet Saint-Lambert. If Benjamin Franklin had been the ideal American Statesman, a thinker of great wit, wisdom and simplicity, in Crèvecoeur they found the ideal American Farmer. Here was a man who had made his own way in the backwoods of America, who had established a farm and a happy family with his own toil and sweat while having the vision and talent to record his observations and experiences. His success in Paris, further stimulated by the charm of his rusty, rough French, was ensured by his appearance as proof that a Frenchman could find only happiness and prosperity in the peaceful, rustic, tolerant and free world across the Atlantic.
Thus Crèvecoeur embarked on a period of his life that he would later recall as his golden age, or as he put it, the “shining link” in the chain of his life’s events.[4] Indeed, the years 1782-83 marked a transformation for the French nobleman who had lived the life of a soldier, surveyor, traveler, trader, farmer and family man in the American wilderness. In Paris, he became a well-connected member of an intellectually dazzling group in one of the most refined cities in the world of the 1780s. Although he had left America in a state of great personal anguish over the war and its resultant distrust among neighbors, in Paris, Crèvecoeur played the role of the blissful American Farmer.
As Crèvecoeur participated in the salon society of Europe’s cultural capital, Letters from an American Farmer became a hot item in Paris.
2.2 what were the Letters from an american farmer.
Those who lacked a good command of the English language wanted a French version of the Farmer’s life. Crèvecoeur struggled with his discomfort with the French language, and was reluctant to translate his Letters until Madame d’Houdetot convinced him by promising the aid of her circle in the preparation and publication of his French edition. It would seem that if this point in his life was the “shining link” in the chain of his life’s events, it was because Crèvecoeur was at the peak of living the ideal cosmopolitan existence. His American idetity, his successful literary production, the flattering appeals for a French translation of Letters, and his heady success in Parisian society all must have been tremendously intoxicating for Crèvecoeur. He undoubtedly felt at that moment that he had finally achieved that ardent cosmopolitan desire – that “extensive intellectual cosanguinuity” – that he had expressed in his dedication to Raynal in Letters from an American Farmer.
And at this time in late 1782, the friendship of Madame d’Houdetot and her circle offered another remarkable opportunity for Crèvecoeur. Madame de Beauvau, who was intimately associated with some of the highest members at Court (such as Minister of the Navy de Castries), used her influence to obtain a government post for Crèvecoeur. He was given use of Monsieur d’Houdetot’s suite at Versailles with two secretaries to write a report on America and its mineral, agricultural and commercial prospects for France. For seven weeks, Crèvecoeur worked at assembling this report. Maréchal de Castries was impressed with Crèvecoeur’s report on America, which glowed with information regarding bountiful opportunities for French trade and stunning maps of the vast American territory. Crèvecoeur’s maps fascinated Louis XVI, an amateur cartographer himself. The King’s esteem for his work pushed Crèvecoeur’s name to the top of the list for consulships in the growing French diplomatic corps in America.[5] Crèvecoeur eagerly seized the opportunity to be reunited with his family, as well as the chance to serve the French government and to further the connection between France and the new republic. He was granted the consulship of New York, which encompassed New Jersey and Connecticut, and most importantly, would take him back to the region where Pine Hill was located.
On June 22, 1783, Crèvecoeur was officially named consul of New York and he began his preparations to leave France. The completion of the French translation Lettres d’un cultivateur américain was left in the hands of his friends Target, Saint-Lambert and Lacretelle. [6] On several occasions in the summer of 1783, Crèvecoeur lamented the slow process of approval for his new edition to his confidant from the d’Houdetot salon, the duke de La Rochefoucauld. In early September, Saint-Lambert informed Crèvecoeur that, despite Foreign Minister Vergennes’s approval, the Keeper of the Seals Gaillard had disapproved of his work. Crèvecoeur vented his anger to La Rochefoucauld, writing “it is unfortunate that ideas which would only be simple reflections in Philadelphia seem so terrible in Paris...”[7] He added, “If it can only be that it [Lettres] remains forgotten, I will retranslate it and I will publish it in Philadelphia where censorship is unknown.”[8]
The difficulty in gaining approval for his new edition was not his only complaint against the French government. Before Crèvecoeur even left for America, he was already frustrated with his new post, and the obstacles to establishing a regular packet boat service between France and America. Just before he sailed from France in September, he wrote to La Rochefoucauld, emphatically expressing his unhappiness,
I confess to you that my zeal is indeed diminished ... Ah! If I had an income of 200 louis I would return to cultivate my lands and my friend(ship)s and whoever would want to be consul would become it. If there is so much audacity and servitude, at 48 years old, to start obeying after having been free and independent all one’s life, it is a little difficult, at least I find it so...”[9]
But Crèvecoeur did depart for New York just days after penning this letter, leaving his son Ally behind in France, as he was now eleven years old and ready for a Continental education. Crèvecoeur was assured that his son’s education would be taken care of by Madame d’Houdetot and her circle, which now included Thomas Jefferson. (Crèvecoeur, as a man of the Enlightenment, even went so far in his preparations to be sure that the ship that would carry him was fitted with Benjamin Franklin’s novel invention, the lightning rod.) Finally, in late September 1783, the packet boat Courier de l’Europe, carrying its new lightning rod, Crèvecoeur, and the recently signed Treaty of Versailles as well, set sail for New York.
Crèvecoeur’s return to America was less than triumphant. He was returning to the country that he had left in 1781, when he was profoundly troubled by its war against Britain and the physical and mental toll which that conflict had exacted on him personally. He was worried about the fate of his family and concerned that New Yorkers would remember his indifference toward the Patriot cause and be displeased with his appointment.[10] Soon after disembarking on November 19, Crèvecoeur’s worst fears were realized: he discovered that his farm had been burned in an Indian raid, his wife was dead and his two younger children were missing. Crèvecoeur was devastated. For days, he was physically unable to execute the duties of his new office, turning down invitations to attend receptions and balls in honor of him and of the new Franco-American relationship. He stayed in the house of his friend William Seton, who had helped to secure his release in 1780 from the British prison in New York.[11] Again, Seton faithfully worked for Crèvecoeur, investigating the details of the Pine Hill tragedy. Finally, seventeen agonizing days after Crèvecoeur’s arrival, he learned that his children were safely living in Boston.[12] While Crèvecoeur would not be able to travel from New York to Boston until the spring, he was comforted by the news that his children had survived the tragic destruction of Pine Hill, and were being cared for in a comfortable household.[13]
Crèvecoeur was then able to take up the reins of his new position at New York, and worked hard to develop the ties between France and the United States in following years. He asked La Rochefoucauld to send him French journals, academy proceedings, newspapers and the like, in the hopes of establishing a meaningful exchange of news, and of scholarly and scientific information between the two countries. He engaged Seton as his agent in the founding of regular packet service between New York City and France’s Atlantic port at Lorient. He sought this regular shipping service to augment French trade, especially through the importation of luxury goods into America.
In the years that followed, Crèvecoeur did a variety of tasks that he thought useful for Franco-American relations. He published newspaper articles on farming under the pseudonym “Agricola,” sponsored the exchange of agricultural improvements in France and America; helped found botanical gardens in New Jersey and New Haven (which later officially recognized him for his efforts). Crèvecoeur distributed French medical journals to American doctors, seeds to Harvard University, and copies of General Washington’s speeches to French newspapers. He even supplied information on the new American republic for the expanded and revised version of what had been Diderot’s Encyclopédie.[14]
And yet, while Crèvecoeur took great satisfaction from developing the scientific and literary ties between the two nations, he found the practical matters of the consulship almost too difficult to bear. In an April 1784 letter to La Rochefoucauld, Crèvecoeur bemoaned his inability to focus on cosmopolitan intellectual exchange, stating, “The Business of a consul is singularly opposed to these kind of researches; on Account of the perpetual attendance & the disgusting Minutiae with which it is attended.” He then went on to blame French merchants and émigrés for these problems:
...that Part of the French nation new settled in this country, is the very worth [worst]: They are in a state of of [sic] war with each other, they are min [men] of neither Principles nor property, & by their conduct [give] to the Americans a bad Idea of the nation: Juge here a Poor consul must fare in the Midst of such a set: if he want to do his duty, calumny & scandalous reports are propagated agt him on all sides – he is deceived by false reports, he find a Man to be a consumate Rogue & hypocrite in whom he had reposed some degree of confidence: in short the being consul in this country, untill it is replenish’d by substantial & worthy marchts [merchants] will allways be attended with very disagreable circonstances.[15]
At the end of this letter, Crèvecoeur once again expressed a willingness to leave his consular position, stating, “I will do as well as I can, if the saine [same] degree of calumny agt me reaches Versailles which has been so plentifully spread agt the others ... I will very Patiently submit to my fate, & see another substituted in my Place ...”[16]
Crèvecoeur’s disillusionment in 1784 is clear in his private correspondence. It is obvious that while his optimistic belief in cosmopolitan ties was satisfied by the academic or intellectual exchange between France and America, the mundane tasks of settling trade disputes and building commercial relationships were not to his liking at all. In July, Crèvecoeur wrote that “consular tasks are all squabbling and disagreeable – one must see, hear and please 100 people at once.”[17] Again, Crèvecoeur does not hesitate to blame the French for the problems and conflicts that he encounters as consul. He goes on to say, “Here the Frenchmen that I see are to me a new race of men. Scandalmongerers, slanderers tearing each other apart, haunting American offices, without good faith or morals, they believe that outside of France there are neither any laws nor restraint upon them...[18] These Frenchmen made the job of representing France as a diplomat virtually impossible for Crèvecoeur: “For these men, consuls are the worst kind of beasts, and slander is their customary weapon [...] if I am obliging, they say I am ignorant and weak, if I am firm, they accuse me of being more American than French, and they say that I am haughty and proud...[19] Crèvecoeur’s frustration was clearly boiling over by the summer of 1784. Tired of being attacked, he found that his own cosmopolitanism was the weapon being used against him.
Beyond Crèvecoeur’s words, it was clear in his actions that he regretted his acceptance of the consul’s job. In letters from the autumn of 1784 onward, Crèvecoeur claimed medical problems and nervous disorders, which may have been genuine, considering his breakdown upon receiving news of the Pine Hill massacre. He wished only to return to France, be attended to by a French doctor, and retire peacefully. It was perhaps an attempt to resurrect the simple rural lifestyle he enjoyed on his Hudson Valley farm prior to the American Revolution. From 1785 to 1787, he was able to return to France, and during this time he produced a second French edition of Lettres d’un cultivateur américain, and helped found the Société gallo-américaine with Brissot de Warville. This small group of Parisians included Étienne Clavière, a Swiss banker, friend and associate of Brissot, and Nicolas Bergasse, a lawyer from Lyon, who contributed trade information from southern France.[20] According to their constitution for the Société gallo-américaine (Franco-American Society), they sought to strengthen the commercial and cultural ties between America and France. During this time Brissot and Clavière were collaborating on a major work on the relationship between the two countries. Entitled De la France and Des États-Unis, it was a primary subject of discussion in the meetings of the Société gallo-américaine before its publication in 1787. Crèvecoeur’s foundation of the Société illustrates his desire to link France and America.[21] From the time of his appointment as consul of New York, the main goal of Crèvecoeur had been the development of Franco-American trade and good will. Frustrated by a government that was obsessed with its own financial and political problems, and also by individual immigrants and merchants with bad intentions, Crèvecoeur turned to the foundation of a private society to accomplish what was not being done through official channels. The work of the Société gallo-américaine was short-lived, however. Crèvecoeur had to return to America to continue his diplomatic duties in the spring of 1787, and his departure effectively ended the proceedings of that society. It would be subsumed by the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of Blacks), which Brissot would found the following spring in order to work for the abolition of slavery in America.
Crèvecoeur returned to his consular duties in America in 1788 with his new edition of Lettres, as well as letters of introduction from Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson to some of America’s leading figures, such as Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin, George Crèvecoeur returned to his consular duties in America in 1788 with his new edition of Lettres, as well as letters of introduction from Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson to some of America’s leading figures, such as Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin, George Washington and James Madison.[22] To these men Crèvecoeur proudly presented the 1787 edition, which went far beyond his 1784 translation in praising America.[23] In return, these men showered him with praise. In February 1788, Benjamin Franklin wrote to Crèvecoeur from Philadelphia,
Dear Sir, I received from you last summer, and I should have informed you sooner, a most agreeable present, your excellent work ... The favorable point of view under which, with such indulgence, you have observed our country will have, I am persuaded, the good effect of convincing a certain number of distinguished Europeans to come settle among us, and this acquisition would be extremely advantageous to us.[24]
In 1788, Crèvecoeur had a town in Vermont named after him (St. Johnsbury), and he was awarded the key to the city of New Haven, along with a group of his Parisian friends, whom Crèvecoeur had recommended to that city. In 1789, Crèvecoeur was inducted into the American Philosophical Society for his Letters, his work on Franco-American relations, and not least of all, for his contributions to agriculture through his articles under the pen name Agricola. It is remarkable that Crèvecoeur could reap such honors just a few years after he had slipped away from his farm in Orange County, miserably escaped New York City to return to France, only to return as a high diplomatic official and literary phenomenon.
But by 1790, Crèvecoeur had had enough of his post and again used illness to gain permission to return to France. The French Revolution had been roiling for almost a year, and Crèvecoeur was eager to return to France. In the summer of 1790, his closest friends were at the peak of their influence in Paris, and had he wanted to play a significant role in the Revolution, they certainly would have welcomed him. At the time of Crèvecoeur’s return, Target was the Speaker of the Constituent Assembly and Brissot was one of the leaders of the Girondins. But, like the abbé Raynal (albeit more subtly), Crèvecoeur distanced himself from the Revolution. He had seen how political faction was capable of hindering government in his years as consul. He had lived the fear and painful loss that comes with war in his bitter personal experience during the American Revolution. For Crèvecoeur, this final return to France was an opportunity to live the dream which he had expressed in his first year as French consul when he wrote to La Rochefoucauld in November 1784, “If it were not for my children, I would thank the minister and I would go hide in a corner of Normandy for the rest of my days...”[25] Now, in 1790, Crèvecoeur did just that, retiring to his family estate, never to see America again.
In the remarkable life of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, the highs and lows of Franco-American cosmopolitanism are evident. As Durand Echeverria described in his work Mirage in the West, the dream of America and the mutual admiration of Frenchmen and Americans peaked in the 1770s and 1780s, before dissipating under the intense pressures of state-building in America and the Revolution in France. As a writer and intellectual, and in his experiences in Paris, it was easy for Crèvecoeur to celebrate the cosmopolitan exchange across the Atlantic Ocean that was more than just a myth. But as a diplomat between 1783 and 1790, the practices of national self-interest and political and economic behavior that he had to deal with on a daily basis ultimately disillusioned him about that exchange.
John Hector St. John de Crevoecoeur (1735 – 1813) is considered one of the most celebrated American authors in Europe during the 18th century for his influential collection of essays, Letters From an American Farmer, “Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs Not Generally Known, and Conveying Some Ideas of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies in North America” (1782). Crevoecoeur became a celebrated figure for his ability to describe to Europeans what made Americans distinct; including the “American dream,” the American frontier, and the concepts of equal opportunity and self-determination. Interestingly, Crevoecoeur was neither an American (born in Normandy, France, naturalized in New York), nor a traditional farmer (though he did own a sizable farm in New York).
Crevoecoeur emigrated to New France, North America in 1755, served as a French Colonial Militia surveyor during the French and Indian Wars, and naturalized as a citizen in New York in 1759. During the American Revolutionary War, St. John tried to return to France to see his sick father, but when he crossed British-American lines to enter British-occupied New York City, he was imprisoned as an American spy for three months without a hearing. Eventually, he was able to leave for Britain. So, though he self-identified as “a farmer from Pennsylvania” in the credits for his book, it’s his unique multi-cultural perspective and experiences that enriched both American and European understanding of what it meant to be “American.”
In 1782, the author described himself (using his French name, Jean de Crevecoeur, rather than his American one):
“What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.
He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”
Well-traveled French aristocrat, Crevecoeur, in his skillfully written essays, Letters from an American Farmer, illustrates a contrast between the American colonies and European nations. Crevecoeur’s purpose is to prove the superiority of the policies, systems, and opportunities of the New World and to create an image of America being a better, if not perfect, place in comparison to Europe. He adopts a critical tone toward European nations, but an admiring tone toward American colonies in order to display his ideas about America’s superiority in economic growth and freedom.
Crevecoeur begins his essay by criticizing European nations. In a series of rhetorical questions, he asks if an immigrant can call a country that met him with nothing but “the frowns of the rich [and] the severity of the laws” (11) his homeland. The way these questions were included vividly illustrate his point that there is reason for an immigrant continuing to…show more content…He poses the question “What then is the American, this new man?” (45) and later answers it through a series of empowering statements. This unorthodox structure draws interest and understanding when he says that an American is someone who, “[leaves] behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, [and] receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced” (53). Considering the fact that Crevecoeur identifies himself as an “American farmer” even though he was a French aristocrat, he is implying that he has embraced a new way of life separate from French culture. Furthermore, he unifies himself with his audience and instills a sense of nationalism and pride by saying one becomes an American through “being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater” (57). This statement reflects the idea that all Americans are accepted and given opportunity for prosperity through the use of the word “our” to unify all Americans under one similar
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In 1782, French aristocrat J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, wrote an essay titled Letters of an American Farmer as a way of defining Americans. To persuade readers from countries unfamiliar with the American society is his purpose for writing this. Throughout he shows a feeling of admiration and respect towards the American way of life. In the first paragraph Crevecoeur starts with his claim that America is a “great asylum” put together by the “poor of Europe.”
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Read Letters from an American Farmer is a series of letters written by French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, first published in 1782. The considerably longer title under which it was originally published is Letters from an American Farmer; Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs not Generally Known; and Conveying Some Idea of the Late and Present Interior Circumstances of the British Colonies in North America. The twelve letters cover a wide range of topics, from the emergence of an American identity to the slave trade.
Letter I: “Introduction” — Introduction of the fictional persona of James, an American farmer, and the commencement of his correspondence via letters with ‘Mr F. B.’, an English gentleman. Doubting his writing abilities, he receives advice from his wife and the local minister.
Letter II: “On the Situation, Feelings, and Pleasures of an American Farmer” — Description of the creatures, plants, and activities on and around the farm owned by James. It comments on the differences between the American model of society and that of European countries.
Letter III: “What Is an American?” — Comparison between the physical environment and the societies that emerge from it. Explores the conditions and aspects of the new American country and what constitutes the identity of its citizens.
Letters IV – VIII — Widely referred to as the “Nantucket sequence” or “Nantucket letters”.[6][7] These letters describe various aspects of the Quaker society on the island of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard:
Letter IV: “Description of the island of Nantucket; with the manners, customs, policy and trade, of the inhabitants”
Letter V: “Customary education and employment of the inhabitants of Nantucket”
Letter VI: “Description of the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and of the whale-fishery”
Letter VII: “Manners and customs at Nantucket”
Letter VIII: “Peculiar customs at Nantucket”
Letter IX: “Description of Charles Town; Thoughts on Slavery; on Physical Evil; a Melancholy Scene” — An account of “Charles Town” (now Charleston), particularly on the institution of slavery in the town and in the Southern United States. It argues about the destruction that revolves around the slave-master relationships and makes an appeal to the North, in particular, that slavery is a truly evil practice in the midst of the new nation of America.
Letter X: “On snakes and on the humming-bird” — Extensive detailing of a wide variety of snakes, including the cultural practices surrounding them; it also mentions their habits and stories that have been told in America, warning people about certain ones. At the end of this letter, the discussion turns to the hummingbirds found around James’ land and their habits and varieties.
Letter XI: “From Mr. Iw——n Al——z, a Russian gentleman describing a visit he paid, at my request, to Mr. John Bertram, the celebreated Pennsylvanian botanist” — Narrated by a Russian gentleman, describing his visit to the famous Pennsylvanian botanist, Mr. John Bertram. The narrator tells of the new methods of fertilizing and irrigation that Bertram has invented and used on his own plants.
Letter XII: “Distresses of a Frontier Man” — Description of the impending American Revolutionary War and James’ turmoil at being caught between forces—American and British—beyond his own control, including anxiety over to whom he owes his allegiance. Also considered is the way of life of Native Americans, with whom James and his family intend to live at the close of the book.
Letters is structured around the fictional correspondence via letters between James[9]—an American farmer living in the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania—and an English gentleman, Mr F. B. However, it’s only James’ letters that are presented, as the addressee’s answers are absent.[10] The work consists of twelve letters that address a wide range of issues concerning life in the British colonies in America in the years prior to the American Revolutionary War. The “Introductory Letter” (Letter I) introduces the fictional narrator James, and each subsequent letter takes as its subject matter either a certain topic (Letter III “What is an American?”) or a particular location that James visits (Letters IV, VI and IX describe Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Charles Town respectively),[2][11] though certain themes span or are referred to within several letters. The exception to this is Letter XI, which is written by a Russian gentleman (“Mr. Iw——n Al——z”) describing his visit to the botanist John Bartram,[12] but who is presumed to also be writing to Mr F. B.[13] Arranged as a series of discontinuous letters, the work can appear superficially disconnected,[14] although critics have identified various levels of coherence and organization.[15]

The text incorporates a broad range of genres, ranging from documentary on local agricultural practices to sociological observations of the places visited and their inhabitants;[16] Norman Grabo describes it as “an example of the American tradition of book-as-anthology and authorship-as-editing”.[14] Whereas early readings of the text tended to consider it “as a straightforward natural and social history of young America”,[17] critics now see it as combining elements of fiction and non-fiction in what Thomas Philbrick has termed a “complex artistry”.[18] In addition to its usual classification as a form of epistolary, philosophical travel narrative—comparable to Montesquieu’s Persian Letters[2]—the text has been considered as a novel,[19] and as a romance.[18][20]

Letters has been said to exhibit a “model of decline”,[21] as the optimistic tone of the early letters is disrupted and the text become increasingly pessimistic; there is a movement from a “joy, pride, wonder” at the spectacle of America,[22] to the “images of the inhuman brutality of slavery”.[23] However, there is disagreement over whether this model of decline is produced by James’ own disillusionment, or whether it is evidence of Crèvecœur’s voice interceding into the narrative;[21] further, critics disagree over where in the narrative the disillusionment occurs, variably placing it .
Among the most significant and recurring t hemes of Letters is that of the individual and society’s relationship with their environment; the work has been read as an “impassioned, unqualified defense of American agrarianism”.[25] The theme appears especially in Letter II, III and in the letters describing Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, where James’ views are expressive of the doctrine of environmental determinism,[26][27] that human growth, development and activities are controlled by the physical environment.[28] In Letter III he says:Men are like plants: the goodness and flavour of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment.[29]
Anna Carew-Miller suggests that what the text articulates on this subject is “the [cultural] myth that a man’s relationship with the land confirms his masculinity and dignity as a citizen.”[30]

Bibliography

1.Ristopher Iannini, “‘The Itinerant Man’: Crèvecoeur’s Caribbean, Raynal’s Revolution, and the Fate of Atlantic Cosmopolitanism,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 61, No. 2 (April 2004), 224.return to text
2.J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, ed. Albert E. Stone (1782; New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 37-8.return to text
3.Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 39-78.return to text
4.Bernard Chevignard, “St. John de Crèvecoeur in the Looking Glass: Letters from an American Farmer and the Making of a Man of Letters,” Early American Literature XIX, no. 2, (Fall 1984), 186.return to text
5.Robert de Crèvecoeur, Saint John de Crèvecoeur: Sa vie et ses ouvrages (Paris: D. Jouaust, 1883), 76-80.return to text
6.Howard C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain (Paris: Honore Champion, 1932), 23. Return to text
7.“Mr de St Lambert m’informe que Malgré L’indulgence de Mr de Vergennes, Mr Gaillard trouve des choses trop Hardies et trop Longues des Les Lettres d’un Cultivateur Amériquain: il est malheureux que des Idées qui ne seroient que de simples reflections à Philadelphie paroissent si terribles a Paris ...” Crèvecoeur, Caen, to La Rochefoucauld, 3 September 1783, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur Collection, 1783-1788, coll. Julia Mitchell Kunkle, Manuscript Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, cited hereafter as “Kunkle MSS.”return to text
8.“Si cela ne se peut, qu’il Reste dans l’oubly, Je le retraduiray & Je le publiray à Philadelphie où la censure est Inconnu.” Kunkle MSS.return to text

9.“Ah! Si J’avois 200 Louis de rente Je retournerois cultiver mes terres & mes amis & deviendroit consul qui voudroit. Si il y a tant d’audace et de servitude, à 48 ans, comencer à obéir après avoir été Libre et Indépendt toutte sa vie, c’est un peut dur, du moins Je le trouve ainsy.” Crèvecoeur to La Rochefoucauld, 16 Sept 1783, Kunkle MSS.return to text

10.Gay Wilson Allen and Roger Asselineau, St. John de Crèvecoeur: The Life of an American Farmer (New York: Viking, 1987), 128-9. Return to text
11.Julia Post Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916), 88-97.return to text
12.They had been rescued by Gustavus Fellowes, the uncle of one of the five American sailors who Crèvecoeur had helped at Pierrepont in 1781. Fellowes, unable to get news of Crèvecoeur’s family due to the war, took it upon himself to travel to New York, where he found Fanny and Louis-Alexandre, taken in by a destitute neighbor. Fellowes escorted the children to Boston, where he adopted them as his own children. Seton had uncovered this story by finding a letter from Fellowes to Crèvecoeur in England that had ended up in New York City’s dead letter office. Robert de Crèvecoeur, Vie et ouvrages, 86-7.return to text
13.Crèvecoeur traveled to Boston in March 1784, where he was finally reunited with his daughter and younger son. He stayed in Boston until that summer, visiting the city, and reacquainting himself with old friends who were living there. In the summer of 1784, La Fayette returned to America for a hero’s tour, which was partially managed by Crèvecoeur. At Crèvecoeur’s request, La Fayette visited the Fellowes’ home during his stay in Boston in gratitude for their heroic generosity toward the Crèvecoeur children. By the fall of 1784, Crèvecoeur had reassembled what was left of his family, and returned to his duties in New York. Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, 127-42.return to text
14.Mitchell, 100-150. Crèvecoeur’s consular work is covered in great detail by Mitchell.return to textCrèvecoeur to La Rochefoucauld, Boston, 14 April 1784, Kunkle MSS.return to text
Ibid.return to text
15.”Les occupation consulaires sont chicannantes et désagreables – il faut voir, entendre et plaire si l’on peut à 100 Personnes...” Crèvecoeur to La Rochefoucauld, New York, 15 July 1784, Kunkle MSS.return to text
16.”Icy les François que J’y vois sont pour moy une Nouvelle race d’homes – Medisant, calomniareurs, s’entredéchirant les uns les autres; obsédant sans cesse les bureaux Ameriquains, sans bonne foy et sans Moeurs = ils croyent que hors la France il n’y a plus de loix ny de Frein pour Eux.” Ibid.return to text
17.”Les consuls sont pour ces Messrs des bestes noires, et la calumnie est leur arme ordinaire ... si j’oblige, on dit que je suis Ignorant & faible, si Je suis ferme, on m’accuse d’estre plus Ameriquain que françois, on dit que je suis haut et fier...” Ibid.return to text
18.Bergasse was a famous adherent of mesmerism, as well as the defense lawyer in the well-known Kornmann affair. The list of the charter members of the Société comes from the Minute Book of the Société Gallo-Américaine, Paris 1787, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island.return to text
19.Of Crèvecoeur, Brissot stated at the Société’s meeting on 3 April 1787, “To him [Crèvecoeur] we chiefly owe the idea and the formation of our Society.” Quoted in Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, 158.return to text
20.Lafayette’s letter of introduction is cited in Robert de Crèvecoeur, Vie et ouvrages, 138, and Washington’s letter of gratitude for Crèvecoeur’s gift of the 1787 edition is reprinted in the Appendix. The letter from William Short (Jefferson’s secretary) is reprinted in Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, 2ecoeur to La Rochefoucauld, New York, 5 November