good article on How (and Why) to Read Francis Parkman


"However grand the scope of his vision, and however confident his moral center, it would have been difficult for Parkman to imagine a time at which the United States would be the only global imperial power. We don't often use the word "empire" these days--"superpower" has displaced it--but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans and American historians have clearly been in search of new narratives, new frameworks, to make sense of our rapidly changing world. No longer does it seem acceptable to offer a survey of early American history in which the principal aim is to describe the rise of an independent United States, complete and sufficient unto itself. Parkman's insistence on seeing North America's history as a process of imperial expansion rather than the story of the birth of an American nation has never seemed more apt."