This book on Guillaume Coppier (1606 - 1674), the early 17th-century French traveler, indentured servant, colonist, mariner, moralist, baroque chronicler, antiquarian, humanist, sometime pirate and slaver of sorts, is essentially a reading of Coppier, the man and his chronicle. Coppier's Histoire et voyage des Indes Occidentales, et de plusieurs autres regions maritimes, & esloignees (History and Voyage to the West Indies and to Several Other Maritime and Faraway Regions) was published in Lyon in 1645. Given its objective and context, this effort-part amateur historiography and translation and part novice commentary and interpretation-is also a survey of past appraisals of Coppier's chronicle. Like all such endeavors, this essay informs on the essayist; it is a sort of voyage, and a long one at that.

"Gerard M. Hunt is a man without a country, trying to piece together in essays, editorials and scholarship a country of his own from three quite separate nations: French Colonial by birth and upbringing; United States by military service and higher education; and Canada by profession in teaching and scholarship. The three have by no means come together in a single national unity. His homing tendency seems to be towards St. Martin, but St. Martin is itself an amalgam - a clump of volcanic earth still divided, for no good reason, between two independent sovereigns thousands of miles away. He is a unitary citizen without an integrated polity. (...) Many of Gerard's essays are grave and penetrating trials. Many are sentimental - catching up with childhood comrades, sharing grief over a lost friend or relative. Several of these discourses are critiques of the wayward tendencies of French efforts to govern Saint-Martin from Paris through Guadeloupe. The most serious and extensive of essays aim at encouraging a greater sense of historical awareness and of community solidarity among St. Martiners ..." From "Foreword to Rambling on Saint Martin" by Theodore J. Lowi

This book on Guillaume Coppier (1606 - 1674), the early 17th-century French traveler, indentured servant, colonist, mariner, moralist, baroque chronicler, antiquarian, humanist, sometime pirate and slaver of sorts, is essentially a reading of Coppier, the man and his chronicle. Coppier's Histoire et voyage des Indes Occidentales, et de plusieurs autres regions maritimes, & esloignees (History and Voyage to the West Indies and to Several Other Maritime and Faraway Regions) was published in Lyon in 1645. Given its objective and context, this effort-part amateur historiography and translation and part novice commentary and interpretation-is also a survey of past appraisals of Coppier's chronicle. Like all such endeavors, this essay informs on the essayist; it is a sort of voyage, and a long one at that.

"Gerard M. Hunt is a man without a country, trying to piece together in essays, editorials and scholarship a country of his own from three quite separate nations: French Colonial by birth and upbringing; United States by military service and higher education; and Canada by profession in teaching and scholarship. The three have by no means come together in a single national unity. His homing tendency seems to be towards St. Martin, but St. Martin is itself an amalgam - a clump of volcanic earth still divided, for no good reason, between two independent sovereigns thousands of miles away. He is a unitary citizen without an integrated polity. (...) Many of Gerard's essays are grave and penetrating trials. Many are sentimental - catching up with childhood comrades, sharing grief over a lost friend or relative. Several of these discourses are critiques of the wayward tendencies of French efforts to govern Saint-Martin from Paris through Guadeloupe. The most serious and extensive of essays aim at encouraging a greater sense of historical awareness and of community solidarity among St. Martiners ..." From "Foreword to Rambling on Saint Martin" by Theodore J. Lowi