F J Marquis de Chastellux- The Prophet

F J Marquis de Chastellux- The Prophet Two hundred and ninety years ago a French aristocrat was so keen to fight in the American Revolutionary wars that he re-enrolled in the French military- then as a profound intellectual visiting the 13 American Colonies fight Great Britain at that time for independence his thoughts are recorded and preserved in his journals and subsequent books such as ‘Discourse on the advantages and disadvantages which result for Europe from the discovery of America’ (To which the native American Indians would rightly reply ‘We never knew we were lost and would have actually preferred it if you had remained in Europe’) and ‘Travels in North America’. Thus working in the military as a liaison officer diplomatically working between different languages and cultures this observer was doing exactly what we are here attempting to do in this blog: To see if there is some flaws in the fabric of the American Empire and so here just over a century after the first Europeans were beginning to develop and exploit the opportunities found in Eastern side of a vast continent we have someone of exactly the same mind as us critically asking- What will happen and what will cause it to fail. And he shares the conviction of this author and expresses that in his own words- that the differences he sees between different parts of the Eastern Seaboard will remain and the foundations of communities he sees will endure despite say in the case of New York- that place going from a few tens of thousands of people to 10s of millions found living there over centuries. Now my source material is an essay about this remarkable man including some of his writing and the book ‘Abroad in America’ actually came from the American Embassy where our Palestinian friends go to throw shoes or clamber up onto the roof to pull down the American flag and of course raise the Palestinian one. Then the book it appears went to the Teachers College library and finally it was a throw out from the Auckland University and hence I now have it! So lets stop chatting and get on with the task of seeing what was happening nearly three hundred years ago –one hundred years after the first European came.