King’s Daughters
When you combine history with cartography and porn art, what you get is a map like this one. Normally, I would have been reluctant to post such a picture. However, since the painting comes from a museum (musee De la Civilization in Quebec City), it’s fully legitimized and raised to a sufficient level of intellectual sophistication, and I am emboldened to do so.
The painting shows women swimming down the St Lawrence river from France to Quebec City. The French colony in Quebec lacked women inhabitants. Women were therefore sent to the Quebec colony to increase the local population of the colony. They were called the King’s Daughters. In the interim, the French Canadian colonist workers were having a go with the indigenous women.
It’s up to the readers to decide on who the painting is offending the most; the indigenous women, the French women explicitly brought in to increase the population, or the French Canadian colonists workmen. Besides that, you can also judge for yourself on the artistic value of the painting, including its graphic composition. But please don’t shoot the messenger. Personally, I am now quite lost in my value framework. I don’t know if my value framework lies in the sixteenth century or the current one!
