A Voyage to Newfoundland: By a Surgeon in Napoleon’s Army

A Voyage to Newfoundland: By a Surgeon in Napoleon’s Army

Dominique Jean Larrey (1766-1842) was French surgeon who served in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Larrey played an important role in the development of modern battlefield medicine. Larrey was with the French army when Napoleon suffered his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. After the fall of Napoleon, Larrey turned to practicing civilian medicine. In this translated excerpt from Larreyâ€™s memoirs, the surgeon describes a visit to the island of Newfoundland in Atlantic Canada.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Revolutionary France found itself at war with much of Europe. European monarchies felt threatened by the French Revolutionâ€™s anti-monarchical, anti-aristocratic, and egalitarian ideals. They feared that the revolution would spread to their own countries. The leaders of Revolutionary France, for their part, declared that if other European nations opposed the Revolution in France, then they would spread the revolution across Europe.

Through the 1790s, France fought against a large coalition of enemies, including Spain, Great Britain, Prussia, and Austria. By the late 1790s, Napoleon Bonaparte, a Corsican-born French officer, emerged as one of the most skilled commanders of the Revolutionary French armies. Napoleon led French forces into the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt in the late 1790s. Larrey accompanied Napoleonâ€™s armies as they travelled around the world on various campaigns.

In this excerpt, Larry describes a visit to Newfoundland. Newfoundland, an island off the coast of eastern Canada, was probably settled in early times by the ancestors of the Beothuk, an indigenous people. The Beothuk disappeared in the early 19th century, after European colonists deprived them of much of their traditional hunting and fishing land.

The other indigenous people who frequented the island of Newfoundland were the Inuit, who came from the Canadian Artic and Greenland, and the Micmac people from Maritime Canada (Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and New Brunswick). Newfoundland was also briefly occupied by Greenlandic Norse, or Vikings (Scandinavians). The Vikings set up a camp on Newfoundland at Lâ€™Anse aux Meadows around 1000 AD. This was the earliest known European settlement in the Americas outside of Greenland. The Norse disappeared from Greenland during the 15th century, bringing an end to their visits to Newfoundland.

Europeans returned to Newfoundland around 1500. Italian sailor John Cabot explored the island on behalf of England in the late 1490s. Soon afterward, French, Basque, English, Spanish, and Portuguese fishermen and whalers began to exploit the rich fishing and whaling grounds of Newfoundlandâ€™s Grand Banks. The cod fishery was particularly important. The fish was dried, salted, and then exported abroad.

The British and French fought for control of Newfoundland in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. After the Seven Yearsâ€™ War (French and Indian War), France formally ceded Newfoundland to Great Britain. Newfoundland remained a British colony until after World War II, when Newfoundlanders voted, by a narrow margin, to join Canada. As a result, Newfoundland and Labrador became Canadaâ€™s most recent province.

Newfoundlandâ€™s historic cod fishery collapsed in the 1990s, due to over fishing. But the growth of offshore oil drilling helped to revive the provinceâ€™s economy by the 2000s.
Country USA
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-01-16
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-01-16
Format	Kindle eBook

A Voyage to Newfoundland: By a Surgeon in Napoleon’s Army

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