Canada

Article Outline

Introduction; Land and Resources; People; Arts; Economy; Government; History; The 21st Century

New France: 1600-1763

When the French government saw the potential value of the fur trade, the fishing industry, and other resources of northern North America, it began to take more interest in the region, which came to be known as New France. New France would eventually comprise Canada (the area drained by the St. Lawrence), Acadia (now the Maritime provinces), the island of Newfoundland (shared unwillingly with the English), and later Louisiana (the valley of the Mississippi River). France claimed and defended this vast area as its possession. For the most part, however, indigenous inhabitants continued their way of life unaffected by French laws or customs, and they dealt with the French primarily as allies and as customers for their furs. The French claim was contested by the English, who tried persistently to divert the fur trade or to occupy parts of the territory.

Early Years

To confirm its claims to North American territory, France needed to build permanent forts and settlements. But settlements were expensive, and in order to pay for them, commercial colonizers sought a monopoly on the fur trade. Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts, acquired such a monopoly from the king of France, and in 1604 he established a post in Acadia. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain, an explorer hired by de Monts, founded a settlement at Québec on the St. Lawrence River. Champlain, who became the champion of French colonization, understood that a monopoly of the inland fur trade could be better protected there, where the river narrowed, rather than at sites on the open coast of Acadia. Consequently, French colonization began to focus on the St. Lawrence valley. Eventually, Champlain convinced Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to King Louis XIII, of the importance of North America. In 1627 Richelieu organized the Company of One Hundred Associates to develop and administer New France.

To maintain his settlement and develop the fur trade on the St. Lawrence, Champlain had to form alliances with the local Algonquian nations and their inland allies, the Huron confederacy. These indigenous allies brought the furs to Québec, and with their assistance Champlain was able to travel widely and to map eastern North America from Newfoundland to the Great Lakes.

Under the company, the Canada colony continued to grow after Champlain died at Québec in 1635. More settlements were founded, notably at Trois-Rivières (1634) and Montréal (1642). However, the colony remained small in population and dependent on the fur trade. Fur traders also maintained a small French presence in Acadia, and in the 1640s a small, settled Acadian community took root around Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) on the Bay of Fundy.

Development of the Colony

In 1663, when New France still had barely 3,000 people, Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert abolished the One Hundred Associates, ending the era of company rule. Thenceforth, New France was a royal province ruled from Québec by a governor-general, who commanded the military forces and symbolized royal authority. In addition, an intendant oversaw colonial finances, justice, and daily administration. Both officials reported to the Minister of Marine in the king’s court, since all French colonies were administered by the naval department. An appointed Superior Council advised the governor and acted as a supreme court, but there were no elective bodies in the government of New France.

With royal support, the defenses of New France were improved. The Carignan-Salières regiment, a veteran military force of 1,200, arrived in 1665 and waged a campaign against the Iroquois. This campaign led to a peace settlement with the Iroquois. About 400 members of the Carignan-Salières regiment stayed on in Canada as settlers. During the first decade of royal rule, the monarchy also subsidized immigration from France, notably of some 700 unmarried women, who were later called filles du roi (daughters of the king) because the king paid for their transportation and dowries. Their arrival helped balance the male-female ratio, which had been overwhelmingly male. Thereafter immigration from France was slight; the 10,000 settlers reported on the 1681 census became, by natural increase, the ancestors of almost all the French-speaking Canadians of today.

Soon after the peace settlement with the Iroquois, New France acquired a permanent garrison of colonial troops. Soldiers for the colony came from France, but they were commanded by what became a hereditary aristocracy in New France. Military officers explored new territory, built forts, and participated in diplomacy, trade, and warfare with the indigenous peoples.

Trade and Exploration

In 1664 Colbert organized a new company, the Company of the West Indies, to hold the fur trade monopoly. As a settled rural population developed in the St. Lawrence River valley, the fur trade moved westward and northward. After 1670 there was a new competitor in the fur trade. In that year, King Charles II of England granted a trade monopoly in the area of Hudson Bay to a London group, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). However, the fur trade merchants of Montréal were able to compete successfully. They combined the fur trade with exploration and missionary work. Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi River, and René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, reached the Gulf of Mexico in 1682.

Illicit traders called coureurs de bois (woods rangers) and licensed ones called voyageurs pushed northwest toward the prairies. Some remained there, adopting indigenous ways of life and marrying indigenous women. Around 1700, King Louis XIV authorized development of a chain of forts linking the St. Lawrence to Louisiana, a colony newly founded at the mouth of the Mississippi. Some fur traders and their mixed-blood families formed communities of farmers and traders around these forts and posts. Their descendents became the Métis (French for “mixed people”).

French Colonial Society

Religion

The Roman Catholic Church was a powerful element in colonial society. Although France had many Protestants at the time, its official religion was Roman Catholicism, and this was the form of Christianity that France desired to spread in North America. Thus Protestants were prohibited from settling in New France, and Roman Catholic religious organizations were charged with maintaining and spreading the Catholic faith. The first religious organization to send missionaries to New France was the Franciscan Récollet group, who arrived in 1615. In 1633 they were replaced by the richer, better-organized Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. As the church gradually reoriented itself to serving the settler community, members of the Ursulines, an organization of nuns (women devoted to the religious life) came in 1639 to start schools for girls. Sulpician priests, who ran seminaries to educate future priests, arrived in 1657.