The document analysis worried me a lot from the beginning of the course when I had taken a glace at the course outline. It was clear that the goal of the assignment was to show our critical thinking skills and show that we are able to think historically. To take something that was written in a completely different time period, when people thought in such a different way than you is no easy task.
Looking back on my document analysis the first thing that I noticed is that I talk about certain traits of Samuel de Champlain, such as his “deep need to project himself as a revolutionary pioneer”. I make these claims without any evidence from the document to back them up which kind of nullifies the claim.
Additionally, the connection that I made between Champlain’s package being the most useful thing that King Louis XIII has received and this being the first time of him receiving maps is very loose and was definitely a stretch to make that assumption. Including that Champlain was one of Canada’s first cartographers seems like irrelevant information to add to this piece of writing because nowhere in the original document did Champlain mention anything about it.
I do think that by this point I had shown some growth in my critical thinking ability, I had included knowledge that I had learned in class. I really tried to take a step back from today’s societal normalities and think about what the situation would have been like during the time my document was written. I acknowledged Champlain’s high social class may very well have been the cause for the positive overtone of the letter.
In conclusion, I think that I did show some understanding of historical thinking but I really just answered the questions in the outline minimally.
Letter from Samuel de Champlain to the King of France
Document Analysis