II.

History

A.

Beginnings

At the end of the 16th century the fishing and whaling grounds of the Grand Banks and the Gulf of St. Lawrence swarmed with fishers and whalers from western Europe. They found they could add to their income by trading cheap metal goods for the furs the indigenous people offered them. Thus the fur trade became a goal in its own right.

A.1.

Early Charters

To extend its control over the region, the French monarchy granted mining and fur trading monopolies to individuals. One such grantee was Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts, who in 1603 received a monopoly for trade in Acadia. In 1604 he and his associate Samuel de Champlain built a base there, which they moved the next year to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) on the Bay of Fundy. This was the first year-round European settlement in what is now Canada. Three years later the monopoly was revoked, but Champlain came back in 1608 and established a trading post at the narrows of the St. Lawrence. He called this post Québec. For most of the next 27 years Champlain remained in command there, trying to develop the colony.

The French government, however, was more interested in short-term profits than in building colonies. It did not become serious about developing its North American colonies until 1627 when King Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, set up the Company of One Hundred Associates and gave it the monopoly. Each of the company’s associates had to invest 3000 livres (in today’s money, about $100,000) and bring in 200 to 300 settlers a year for 15 years. The main purpose of this company was to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity; its monopoly of the fur trade was to provide the finances for that task. At that time, all the settlers in Acadia and Canada together were estimated to number 107. To the south, by contrast, the English and Dutch already numbered at least 2600.

A.2.

Relations With Indigenous Nations

Champlain formed military alliances with the neighboring Algonquin, Montagnais, and Huron nations. The French wanted to obtain furs for the European trade and to convert these pagan nations to Christianity. The Algonquin and Montagnais were nomadic hunters and gatherers; they could supply the furs. The Huron were sedentary farmers, growing corn, beans, and squash in present-day southern Ontario. They could provide the converts. These nations welcomed the French, who provided their wonderful metal goods and cloth in exchange for a few furs. Relations between the French and these indigenous people were good, mainly because the French, unlike the English, did not covet the lands of the inhabitants. They never tried to displace the indigenous peoples, but instead settled on vacant land.

Good relations with these allies, however, meant bad relations with their enemies. These nations had a common enemy to the south, the powerful Iroquois confederacy. In 1609 Champlain, with two of his men, joined a war party of their allies in invading the territory of one Iroquois group, the Mohawk. The ensuing clash with a Mohawk hunting party began a century of intermittent but costly warfare between the French and the Iroquois.

A.3.

The Missionaries

In 1613 Champlain persuaded an organization of Roman Catholic priests, known as the Récollets, to send four missionaries to Canada to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity. They were followed in 1625 by four members of another Catholic priestly organization, the Society of Jesus or Jesuits. By 1633 the Jesuits had replaced the Récollets in New France and established a mission in Huronia, their name for the land where the Huron lived. Living in several large villages between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay, the Huron numbered around 20,000 people. Here the Jesuits made many converts, but as many or more clung to their old beliefs. The Huron were thus divided into hostile religious factions. In addition, their numbers had been reduced by half from an epidemic of European origin to which they had no natural resistance. They were thus easy prey for the Iroquois, who launched a major assault on them in 1648. By the following year the Huron nation was crushed and dispersed; many of its people were assimilated by the Iroquois to replace their own heavy losses.

The Canadian settlements at Québec and Trois-Rivières also came under attack during this period. Nevertheless in 1642 a group of devout Catholics established a missionary base on the Île de Montréal (Montréal Island) and managed to survive frequent Iroquois assaults. By 1698 the French and their indigenous allies had defeated the Iroquois, who had lost half their warriors in battle or from epidemics. In 1701 the Iroquois were forced to accept French terms for peace by the Treaty of Montréal.

A.4.

Reorganization

The 100 associates saw little return on their investment, and few of the indigenous people were converted to Christianity. Hence in 1645 the associates leased their fur trade monopoly to the colonists, who formed a corporation, the Community of Habitants, and assumed the colony’s administrative costs. Two years later the king appointed a council at Québec consisting of the governor-general, the head of the colony’s Jesuits, the governor of Montréal, and a secretary. In 1657 the council was reorganized to consist of the governor-general, the resident agent of the Company of One Hundred Associates, and four councillors elected by the residents of the three districts—Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal. Thus, the colony now had a form of representative government. Unfortunately it proved to be incompetent; its self-serving members ran up huge debts for supplies shipped from La Rochelle, France.

At this time the Iroquois were inflicting heavy casualties on the settlers. They also blocked the flow of furs coming from the west, the economic lifeblood of the colony. Very few settlers came from France, and many who had come gave up and returned to the mother country. By 1660 the population of Canada and Acadia was barely 2500. Colonization by private enterprise had proved a conspicuous failure. Only the monarchy could save New France.

Fortunately King Louis XIV was able and willing to take charge of all the French colonies. In 1663 New France became a province of France, like Brittany or Normandy (Normandie), but owing to the slowness of trans-Atlantic communications, one with far more independence. The minister in charge of colonial affairs, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was a very competent administrator. He reorganized the government of New France, providing it with an efficient administrative structure. The government of the colony now consisted of a governor-general, an intendant, and a Sovereign Council, all located at Québec, with local governors at Trois-Rivières and Montréal, and law courts for all three districts. The senior official was the governor-general, responsible for military matters and for relations with the indigenous nations and the English colonies. The intendant, a noble trained in law, was the official responsible for civil affairs: justice, law enforcement, and the maintenance of the colony’s finances.

B.

Expansion and Exploration

After Louis XIV took charge of the colonies in 1663 and the Iroquois were temporarily forced to come to terms, New France began to expand to the west, looking for furs and a direct route to the Pacific. The French had the means for this expansion: alliances with the indigenous peoples and control of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. They also had a means of transport—the birch bark canoe—which they had adopted from their indigenous allies.

The French had learned early of a mighty river flowing south of the Great Lakes: the Mississippi. In the 1630s Jean Nicollet had traveled to Lake Superior and perhaps as far as Lake Nipigon, a route that he thought would lead him to China. In 1673 Louis Joliet and the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette reached the Mississippi and went down it as far as the Arkansas River. They were followed by an expedition of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, that descended the river to the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1699 Louis XIV decided that France had to gain control of the Mississippi Valley, so he created a new colony, Louisiana. Its purpose was to protect New Spain (Mexico) from incursions by the English. Louis’s grandson had been made king of Spain; hence he felt compelled to safeguard the Spanish colonies. Louisiana grew slowly but played its intended role of hemming in the 13 English colonies between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. The French then expanded their influence into the southwest, establishing a trade route between New Orleans, the chief city of Louisiana, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

As the French moved into Louisiana, they became embroiled in wars with the Fox, Natchez, and Chickasaw nations. The Fox and the Natchez were crushed, but not the Chickasaw. After a decisive defeat by the Chickasaw at the Battle of Ackia in 1736, the French gave up their attempts to expand into what is now the north part of the state of Mississippi.

To the west, the French explored the Missouri River, and the La Vérendrye family crossed the Great Plains as far as the Black Hills of South Dakota and the fork of the Saskatchewan River. The explorers believed that a bay of the Pacific Ocean, or a great river leading to it, could not be far to the west, and that they would be able to establish an ocean-to-ocean trade route. Finally, an expedition commanded by Captain Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre reached the barrier of the Rocky Mountains in 1751. Then war came, and the French had to abandon attempts to reach the Pacific.

C.

Rivalry and War

It became clear early that the continent was not large enough for both the French and the English. In 1613, during a time of peace between the nations, a party of settlers in the English colony of Virginia, led by Samuel Argall, destroyed a French mission post in disputed territory near Mount Desert Island (now in Maine). In 1629 Champlain was forced to surrender Québec to Anglo-Scots freebooters, the Kirke brothers, when they captured his supply fleet and laid siege to the town. Canada was restored to him three years later.

Late in the century, New France was involved in King William’s War (1689-1697), which was partly an offshoot of a wider European war. The English settlers in New York, who supported the Iroquois in their attacks on Canada, suffered heavy losses. The French destroyed the English frontier settlement of Schenectady and two settlements in New England. In response, the English colonists tried to capture Québec and Montréal, which cost them dearly. The treaty ending that war was merely a truce as the belligerents in Europe regrouped.

Hostilities recommenced in Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713). That war ended with France ceding Newfoundland to Great Britain (the union of England, Scotland, and Wales). The French retained fishing rights on the north shore, thereafter known as the French Shore. The French ceded its forts on Hudson Bay and in the southern part of Acadia, which left the French settlers of Acadia at the mercy of the British. France retained Cape Breton Island and Isle Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island).

C.1.

Buildup of Armaments

There ensued 30 years of peace, during which the French economy expanded greatly and that of Great Britain stagnated. France secured its hold on Cape Breton Island (renamed Isle Royale) by building the fortress of Louisbourg. It also established settlements in the Illinois country and more garrisoned posts in the Great Lakes basin. In 1744 fighting erupted again in King George’s War (1744-1748), part of a contest by the British to prevent French dominance of the world’s markets. British colonists, with British naval aid, captured Louisbourg, but it was returned to France at the war’s end in exchange for Madras (now Chennai) in India.

The British then prepared to renew hostilities at the earliest opportunity. They were determined to destroy the French colonial empire and become Europe’s dominant imperial power. The French sought to avoid war at all costs because their colonies and ships were at the mercy of the British navy; they had failed to create a strong enough navy of their own. The British established a naval base, Halifax, in Nova Scotia. Agents of Virginia land speculators canvassed the Ohio River valley, offering trade goods at very low prices to draw the indigenous nations out of their alliance with the French. The French, aware of the British determination to seize the Ohio Valley and then go on to the Mississippi to sever Canada from Louisiana, built a chain of forts from Lake Erie to the forks of the Ohio in what is now eastern Pennsylvania.

C.2.

The French and Indian War (1754-1763)

In 1753 the governor of Virginia sent an emissary, Major George Washington, to the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf in the Ohio Valley, ordering him to retire from the lands claimed by Great Britain. The commander received Washington courteously but rejected the ultimatum. The next year Washington was sent back with a force of militia. The clash of arms that followed marked the start of the French and Indian War.

For the first two years, the war went badly for the British and their colonists. Attempts to capture Fort Niagara, near Lake Ontario, and Fort Saint-Frédéric, on Lake Champlain, failed. An army led by Major General Edward Braddock marched on Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio, but was destroyed by the French and their indigenous allies. Only in Nova Scotia did the British enjoy any success; there they captured Fort Beauséjour. The British then expelled the original French settlers, the Acadians. Many went to France, although some returned years later. Others made their way to Louisiana, where their descendants, the Cajuns, reside to this day.

As the war progressed, the French destroyed British frontier forts and ravaged the frontier settlements. Then the tide turned. The British sent 20,000 regular troops to their colonies, along with a quarter of the ships of the British navy. In rapid succession Fort Duquesne, then Fort Niagara, were taken, and a British fleet and army laid siege to Québec. A battle there on the Plains of Abraham, lasting half an hour, resulted in the surrender of the city in September 1759. The next year the French failed in an attempt to recapture it. The remnants of the French forces, facing three British armies, were forced to capitulate. Three years later, when peace was negotiated, the French ceded Canada and the remaining part of Acadia to Great Britain, and Louisiana to Spain, France’s wartime ally.

So ended New France. Of that vast area, France kept only some fishing rights in Newfoundland and the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which are still French territory today. Louisiana briefly came back into French hands in 1800, but was sold in 1803 to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.