Land-grabbing travellers
To travel is better than to arrive, at least for those you meet. That’s one conclusion you could draw from a new series on the mindset of the American pioneer, which sees satirist Joe Queenan virtually recreating 10 journeys that built America in the years between the /a[ʚQYer and the first Ooon landing.
Frenchman René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle’s 17thcentury canoe journey down the Mississippi explains why Queenan is suspicious of getting somewhere and looking around. “The least interesting people I have ever met are those who stayed at home,” says Queenan, saluting La Salle’s sense of endeavour. He’s far less keen on the way the explorer brazenly claimed the territory of Louisiana, an area that extended to French Canada and was far larger than the state that now bears the same name, for King Louis. Playing this forward, we shouldn’t be surprised that the current US president is a “rapacious real estate developer”, Queenan notes, because US history is full of people who“just showed up from Europe and stole land” – especially the English, who “stole everything”.
Other subjects that Queenan covers in the series include the Lewis and Clark expedition that reached the 2acific in the crossing of the Bering Strait between 4Wssia and #lasMa and the
(ederal #id *ighYay #ct which created the interstate highway system.
(rQm the /a[ǎQYer to the Moon
BBC Radio 4 / Due to begin weekdays from Monday 31 August