Gobineau

On Selune's reading list is Arthur de Gobineau "Voyage à Terre-Neuve". Gobineau was a french aristocrat, who fancied himself a man of letters and later became a diplomat. He was sent in 1860 to ensure that the English were abiding by the terms of the treaty of Utrecht.

 

Signed in 1713, the treaty ceded Newfoundland to England, but granted exclusive fishing rights to the French on a large portion of the Island shore. Gobineau was very proud of the savvy french negotiators, who let the English have a worthless island in exchange for lucrative fishing rights. Was he right or deluded? Your call.

The agreement was however a recipe for ambiguity: The French could fish, but not establish permanent settlements, why the English could establish settlements, but not make the only living possible on these shores.

 

Gobineau was therefore sent to investigate on the steam ship Gassendi along with an English counterpart on the Telane.

The two quickly became very good friends and, amid weeks of intense partying in Saint-Pierre, Sydney, Halifax and St John's, found the time to explore the most remote parts of Newfoundland.

They quickly established that all was well in the best of worlds. Certainly there were a few English settlements on the west coast, and they had to fish for a living, but they promised to stop and leave as soon as the French would ask. Certainly the French captains and officers on the northeast coasts established some nice homes, but they did leave them to the care of an Irish groundkeeper when they sailed home for the winter. A few years later small Irish villages grew around the captains houses but what can you do? In the words of Gobineau, the Irish, like all ichtyovorous people, multiply in a startling manner.

All being perfectly satisfactory, Gobineau could claim his mission a success and return to his Parisian life with a clear conscience and maybe a few broken hearts in NewFoundland, and his name to a remote inlet on the west coast