New France
New France ( French: la Nouvelle-France ) originally referred to generally the territory in North America which France occupied and partially colonized between 1534 and 1763. In 1608, the name New France became the officially chosen name for the French territories that were now combined into a French colony .
The heartlands included the area around the Saint Lawrence River and the Acadia adjoining it in what is now eastern Canada, as well as the Mississippi Valley ( Louisiana ) in what is now the United States. At the height of its expansion in 1712 and before the Treaty of Utrecht , the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Great Lakes and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico . The entire area was administratively divided into the five colonies of Canada, Acadia, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Louisiana. With the Paris Peace of 1763France lost almost all of its North American territories to colonial rival Great Britain .
1534–1600: The French conquest begins - Jacques Cartier
See also: French colonial rule in Canada .
In 1524 the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano undertook a first research expedition to the east coast of North America on behalf of the French crown under Francis I. Verrazano sailed the American east coast between today's states of North Carolina and South Carolina and Cape Breton Island . The French conquest of the North American continent did not begin until ten years later with the seafarer, trader and researcher Jacques Cartier . In 1534 he reached the area around the confluence of the Saint Lawrence River in the Atlantic Ocean and took possession of it for France. Cartier's expedition, which was also supported by the French crown, was commissioned to find a navigable northwest passage to China . Francis I took good note of the occupation of overseas territory, but was not interested in colonization. This attitude corresponded to a general view that was only reversed when the potential economic and political power of North American possessions began to be recognized. In 1535 and 1536, Cartier undertook another expedition that took him up the Saint Lawrence River to the Indian settlements of Stadacona , near the present-day city of Québec , and Hochelaga , which was located in the area of the present-day city of Montreal .
In 1541, Cartier and Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval attempted to build a colony with several hundred settlers. The Charlesbourg-Royal settlement had to be abandoned two years later due to illnesses and attacks by the indigenous people. In the period that followed, it was primarily the economic background that ensured an almost permanent French presence in North America and thus formed the basis for the colonization policy that began decades later. French fishermen appreciated the rich fishing grounds on the Atlantic coast and in the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River. The first peaceful contacts with native Indians took place - a circumstance which historians believed played a major role in the subsequent rapid conquest of France on the North American continent.
After all, it was again the economic situation in Europe that brought the new world into the focus of the French. After the almost complete extinction of the European beaver, French traders discovered the region's wealth of fur animals. As early as 1580 there were regular trade relations between French trading companies that sent ships to the areas known as Canada and Acadia , and the nomadic tribes of the Hurons and Iroquois there . Subsequently, and until 1663, the French territories were under the French trading company Compagnie de la Nouvelle France and not directly under the Crown of France.
1600: First settlements
At the turn of the century, France began to gradually rethink the future and significance of the North American territories that French seafarers had taken possession of for France. The primary interest at this time had been to find a conceivable direct sea route to Asia and China, from which it was expected that trade would flourish. However, economic crises in the European monarchies set in motion a process of rethinking. They recognized the steadily growing economic importance of the North American area for their own fishing fleets and the lucrative trade in beaver furs . The main focus of this consideration was the potential wealth these North American regions represented for European France. It was still not about real and permanent colonization of the overseas possessions. Rather, permanently manned trade bases should better guarantee the movement of goods to the European mother countries.
Only gradually did this process develop a competitive dynamic between Portugal, Spain, England, the Netherlands and France, the leading seafaring nations in Europe. The increasing economic importance of North America no longer only required to guarantee the not really secured claim to the new property through permanent settlement. Instead, it also became clear that a race for the as yet unexplored and propertyless remaining areas would begin. Fixed settlements on the coast gained a new meaning. They no longer served only as bases for the export of the furs hunted or traded in the hinterland. Rather, they were increasingly seen as logistically significant starting points for geographically more extensive discoveries and the associated land grabbing . An imperial race began. At the French court one began to notice the intensity with which the European rival Great Britain enlarged its overseas possessions.
However, early attempts at permanent French settlement all failed. In the area of Acadia, roughly equivalent to today's Nova Scotia , the establishment of a trading post on Île de Sable (today: Sable Island ) failed in 1598 . In 1600 the plan to establish a trading post near Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence River also ended in disaster: only five settlers survived the harsh winter.
1603-1635: Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain was an adventurer, trader and explorer. His father, too, had gone to sea and - after a non-verifiable but gladly told story - had told his son about huge Indian cities in the interior of America that would await their discovery. Between 1603 and 1633, Champlain set sail a total of twelve times and explored the North American Atlantic coast and the mainland there.
First expeditions
For a long time, the primary interest of the French court had been to find a conceivable direct sea route to Asia and China, from which it was expected that trade would flourish. This changed around the turn of the century. It is true that the French King Henry IV also justified the financial support of the planned ship expeditions with the longed-for discovery of a navigable Northwest Passage through the mainland masses of America to Asia. In addition, the French monarch authorized Champlain to attempt to found a settlement.
On his first voyage (1603), Champlain reached what is now Montreal. On his second voyage (1604–1606), Champlain and Pierre Dugua de Mons reached the small island of Île Sainte-Croix . The island, which was then in the so-called Acadia and only 26,000 square meters in size, is now based on the demarcation between the US state of Maine and the Canadian New Brunswick . The arrival of the French, whose approaching ship with its white billowing sails resembled a mythical giant bird, was observed by the Passamaquoddy who lived there and is still part of the oral history of the tribe. The first contact between the French and the Passamaquoddy was friendly and characterized by mutual respect - a potentially groundbreaking experience for the dealings with the newcomers and the natives in the area of Acadia. The hope of possibly having found a suitable place for a permanent attempt at settlement was dashed again in the harsh Canadian winter. Thirty settlers died. The survivors owed this primarily to the support of the locals, who stood by their side to help. Champlain decided to give up the settlement. The settlers crossed the Baie François (today: Fundy Bay ) in the spring of 1605 and moved the colony to the bay, where they founded Port Royal , today's Annapolis Royal . Only three years later this project also failed. In 1610 another attempt was made to settle in the same place, which had to be abandoned in 1613 after it was completely destroyed by the English.
Like Cartier decades before, Champlain sailed into the mighty Saint Lawrence River, which was then known as the Rivière du Canada . He drove upriver, passed the Iroquois settlement Stadacona and reached the then Hochelaga . Also on board was François Gravé , Sieur du Pont (Pontgravé), a merchant, fur trader and citizen of Saint-Malo , who quickly recognized the perspective of the region visited, which was rich in fur animals.
The founding of Québec (1608)
Authorized by the French crown and together with six settler families of a total of 31 people, Samuel de Champlain laid the foundation stone for Québec , today's capital of the French-speaking Canadian province of the same name, in 1608 . This renewed attempt at settlement, which now took place not in the area of Acadia and the first landing site for French seafarers, but at the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, was the first successful and lasting one. The colonial settlement of Québec was declared the capital of the overseas possessions now officially known as the French colony of New France, and Champlain was appointed its first governor general in 1627 .
With this step, the planned and systematic development of the French overseas property in North America, which was called La Nouvelle France , began. The phase of a now actively pursued colonization and expansion policy began, which found its expression in a rapid and steady expansion of the North American territory. Québec, located on the St. Lawrence River, not only served as the base and transshipment point for the fur trade, which took place further inland, and which solitary trappers kept going by hunting the hides themselves or trading with the local Indian tribes. The city on the river was also an excellent starting point for deeper advances into the “wild” interior of the country and thus the starting point for new colonization and ambitiously advanced occupation of the new world.
Champlain's policy as governor general
In view of the difficult climatic conditions of the North American winter and numerous epidemics, the construction of the Québec settlement initially proved to be arduous. Out of 32 settlers, only nine survived the winter. Although new immigrants arrived in Québec in the spring, one of the main future problems of the French colony became apparent early on: the climatic conditions in these colonies, which are more northerly than the English settlement points, turned out to be significantly less favorable for the new settlers. The conditions for agriculture, the core sector of colonial settlement, were poor. This had consequences for the influx of immigrants who preferred to seek their fortune in more southern colonies. In addition, the settlers on the St. Lawrence River usually did not get very old. In 1630 their number had only increased to 100. Ten years later, Québec had 359 residents.
During this period and out of this situation, another characteristic of the territory of France developed. Samuel de Champlain, the first governor, recognized the urgency to get on well with the indigenous people in this climatically and economically difficult situation and to come to terms with them as much as possible - quite differently from the colonial policy of rival England . A not inconsiderable number of historians point out that for Champlain there was in fact no other option than to establish a friendly understanding with the numerically far superior Indian tribes - in contrast to the English colonies, which, due to their already dense population, opened up completely different strategic options .
Under Champlain's leadership, the French new settlers began to build friendly relationships with the so-called Sauvages ('savages'), the indigenous people of the region, the tribes of the Algonquin and Montagnais . This even went so far as to let young French men of the colony grow up with the Indian tribes. The aim was not only to learn their language and customs, but also their behavior in difficult and life-threatening climatic conditions. With the help of these Native American men of French descent, who were popularly known as coureurs des bois ( rangers ), it was possible to extend French influence south and west to the Great Lakes , an area mainly controlled and populated by tribes of the Hurons became. These tribes later developed into the most influential allies of the French. In 1609, Champlain established friendly ties with the Huron tribes, whom he and his men supported against the Iroquois . But this intervention came at a high price: Champlain incurred 150 years of hostility from the Iroquois, who soon sided with the English to fight the French settlers and their settlements. The clashes between the French and the Hurons on the one hand and the Iroquois supported by the British on the other lasted until the final defeat of France in 1759. During this period, the Iroquois attacked the large settlements of Québec and Montréal several times, with Montreal in particular several times was on the verge of complete destruction.
Compared to the colonial settlements of the English to the south, the French settlement projects developed only very sparingly and slowly, demographically and economically. The reason for this was not only the mostly adverse climatic conditions. The main reason was the different weighting France and England placed on their overseas possessions. England recognized more quickly the economic and strategic importance of new overseas acquisitions for its own global political status. Financial support was resolutely provided for the construction of new settlements and the influx of English and non-English immigrants was supported. Permanently delivered goods and goods enabled brisk trade with the local tribes.
In France, on the other hand, people remained undecided and hesitant about the future of the new lands for an unduly long time. This was also due to the fact that France was militarily much more tied to the continent than England due to a large number of European conflicts. The multitude and intensity of these conflicts actually led to the exhaustion of financial and human resources.
It was Champlain who soon realized that without a significant intensification of its colonization efforts, New France would have no long-term chance of holding its own against England's much more intensive expansion of its colonial empire. With Tadoussac and Québec, New France had only two fixed trading posts. To make himself heard, Champlain traveled to France in 1627 and met the then Prime Minister, Cardinal Richelieu , whom he was able to convince. Champlain argued that New France had a large number of economically exploitable natural resources (gold, minerals, furs, fish stocks) that only had to be tapped. For this, however, it is necessary to develop unexplored areas through settlement bases. The cardinal eventually urged King Louis XIII. To resolutely colonize New France on the English model. Richelieu himself called the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France (also known as Compagnie des Cent-Associés) into being, the aim of which was to encourage large numbers of French compatriots to emigrate to Québec and the other French territories with the help of plots of land that were promised and so to attract investors for this project. In fact, this amounted to the introduction of a semi-feudal economic system. The system of manorial rule ( régime seigneurial ) was based on the principle of land allocation by the crown to individual landlords , who parceled out their glory and distributed it to landlord settlers who were obliged to lease and serve. Richelieu's influence also led to an increased number of missionaries such as the Franciscan Recollects (Récollets) and the Jesuits .
In the course of this planning, Samuel de Champlain was appointed governor of New France - a sign of the French crown that it was finally creating well-planned and central administrative structures in the North American colonial areas. Despite his far-sighted analysis in the sense of the imperial interests of France, a personal and less farsighted concern of Richelieu developed into a serious obstacle to a more successful colonial policy in the future: According to Richelieu's wishes, both immigration and the stay of non-Roman Catholic settlers in New France were strictly prohibited placed. Protestants either had to convert to the Roman Catholic faith or to leave the colony. Many of the French and European immigrants who had already settled in New France instead went to the prosperous English settlements, in which religious affiliation was irrelevant. Potential newcomers to New France now became subjects of the English crown.
For New France this development led to a characteristic peculiarity: the Roman Catholic Church became an increasingly decisive factor and after Champlain's death in 1634 it became almost the sole determining social force. An influx of French missionaries, and in particular Récollets and Jesuits, began, who then advanced into the non-colonized areas of the Great Lakes, which were mainly populated by Iroquois tribes, and founded mission stations - a circumstance that did not improve the already hostile relationship between the Iroquois and the French led.
With the realignment of French colonial policy - this was also an obstacle to better development - the introduction of manorial rule, a system that was partly similar to feudal feudal feudalism , which remained a characteristic organizational feature of the Saint Lawrence area and the attraction of New France until the 19th century certainly not increased for potential European emigrants.
1629: First military conflicts between New England and New France
During this time and under the special conditions mentioned above, the race between New England , which was constantly expanding and striving for new settlement areas, and France, which was only just beginning to actively secure its own claims, intensified.
Two different developments culminated here: On the one hand, there was more and more a natural dynamic of constantly growing settlements towards new potential settlement areas. But intra-European imperial tensions also cast their first shadows in the struggle for supremacy in the new world, which a few decades later resulted in open wars. It quickly became apparent that the purely verbal claim to an area by a European mother country could in fact not prevent the individual advancement of individual settler groups. For example, as early as 1628 Scottish settlers, attracted by the rich fishing grounds, settled in the French claimed area of Acadia, today's New Brunswick . Around 1630, English fishing colonies also emerged in the Newfoundland area and in what is now the US state of Maine. The more southern English colonies in Massachusetts , Boston , New York and Philadelphia prospered and already had several thousand inhabitants. As a result, English and Scottish colonists now pushed from both sides into the sparsely populated areas of Canada around Acadia and the fertile St. Lawrence Valley, which were claimed by France. These developments raised tensions until the first actual military confrontation. British troops conquered Québec in 1629 and held the city until it was returned in the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1632. Governor Champlain, who had been deported to France by the English, returned to the colony. In 1634 he commissioned his compatriot Sieur de Laviolette to establish the Trois-Rivières trading post .
1630–1701: parallel conflict between French settlers and Iroquois
Beyond the continually simmering conflict between English and French colonialists over settlement areas and the competition between their European mother countries for North America, a third line of conflict determined North America's colonization: the relationship to the various native Indian tribes.
Around 1630 a development that was difficult for the French colonialists and had a long prehistory intensified. Due to their good relations with the Indian tribes of the Hurons, Algonquin and Montagnais , the French came into ever more intense conflict with the Iroquois, who had been at enmity with France's allies for decades and who now sided with England to control the French invaders drive out. This was especially true for the area of the Great Lakes to be developed by settlers, which was especially important for the requisition of skins. And it was also true of Montreal, which, down the St. Lawrence River, had developed into an important port and trading hub for the onward shipping of goods acquired upstream.
The conflict with the Iroquois had already begun in the age of Cartier, who in 1534 was the first to see and set foot on the later Île de Montréal , the island on which today's Montreal was built. The Iroquois had built the Hochelaga settlement there, but to the astonishment of the French on the Champlain expeditions, it had completely disappeared a few decades later. In the area of Montreal lived mainly tribes of the Hurons at that time, while the area of origin of the Iroquois tribes comprised an area south of today's New York and Lake Ontario and extended to the Hudson Current. When Champlain went ashore near Tadoussac on St. Lorenz in 1601, he and his companions were asked by the Huron tribes for support against the Iroquois, which the adventurers gave. The beginning of a friendship, but also an enmity, was made.
For reasons that have not yet been fully clarified, the Iroquois tribes began to push north to St. Lawrence and came more and more into conflict with the Hurons, Algonquin and Montagnais tribes living there. One theory for these expansion efforts refers to the strong decimation of the beaver in the Iroquois homeland due to the possibility of hunting with firearms. Around 1630 the conflict within the native Indian tribes intensified, as the Iroquois now obtained firearms themselves through trade relations with Dutch colonialists. The Dutch had established trading posts on the Hudson since 1620.
Around 1640, the Iroquois, whose tribes had lost the basis of trade in their territories since the disappearance of the beaver, learned how lucrative the fur trade had also developed beyond the Iroquois tribal areas. Since, in the case of French trade, the pelts were requisitioned mainly in the Great Lakes region and Montreal was the trading and shipping point for the resale and transport of the fur business downstream, the route of the French fur traders necessarily led through the Iroquois region. These tried now to become the sole middleman between European traders and Indian tribes. Since the French had sided with the Iroquois opponents early on, a front position arose that lasted until the takeover of New France by Great Britain in 1763: the French and Hurons stood against the English and the Iroquois. Both tribes allowed themselves to be drawn into European colonial conflicts.
In the early 1640s Iroquois attacked Wyandot for the first time, a French settlement in the border region of New France. In 1649 another bloody attack on the region took place, in which some settlements were completely destroyed and hundreds of settlers were killed. The survivors formed alliances with smaller tribes from the Great Lakes area. The conflict grew stronger and stronger. Conflicts took place mainly among the Indian tribes, but their effects were momentous for the settlers as well.
Peace negotiations between the French and the Iroquois tribes in the 1650s failed due to resistance from the most powerful Iroquois tribe, the Mohawk . As a result, there were heavy attacks on New France and Montreal and a huge expansion of the Iroquois area, which now reached from Virginia to St. Lawrence. In the middle of the 1660s, France decided to send the Carignan Salières regiment overseas, which penetrated into Iroquois ancestral territory, captured its chief and destroyed the villages that had escaped. The Iroquois then sought peace that would last for a generation. When the French regiment left New France in 1667, the male colonists' duty to do military service had developed as a result of this process.
In a short peacetime of around 20 years, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, who grew up with the Mohawk, and his brother-in-law Médard des Groseilliers were able to penetrate as far as the Mississippi. They enabled France to develop trade routes outside the territories of the hostile Iroquois. A circumstance that not only hindered trade, but also repeatedly led to heavy losses among traders. In 1683 the fighting between the French and Iroquois rose again when Governor General Frontenac decided to bring the fur trade to the Iroquois more under control and thus deprived them of an important livelihood. Again there were heavy attacks on French settlements.
Frontenac's actions also led to a falling out with the Iroquois educated explorers of the Mississippi and Ohio areas. The Native American educated French, known as rangers, entered English service and founded - a development with serious consequences for New France, as it turned out to be - the Hudson's Bay Company , which enabled England to gain control of the Atlantic shipping of all skins. In 1698 the Iroquois asked for the so-called Great Peace, which came about in 1701. The French agreed, as this development also enabled them to see the Iroquois as a buffer between their and the English territories.
In the French and Indian War from 1756 to 1763, however, the old front position flared up again. The Iroquois again sided with Great Britain and helped as allies in the conquest of Montreal and Québec, which ultimately led to the end of New France. Overall and in retrospect, it can be said that this pattern in which native tribes participated or were involved as allies in armed conflicts between European powers did not pay off in any way for the former owners of North America: These early alliances and alliances did not change the situation That, once the power struggle for the supremacy of European powers was decided, the former allies were got rid of, their living spaces were pushed back, they were disenfranchised, expropriated and decimated.
The expansion of New France
1635: Rise of the Catholic Church and the founding of Montreal
Samuel de Champlain died in 1635. If the position of the Catholic Church had already been socio-politically influential through Richelieu's influence, it now developed for a time into an all-determining social force. This increase in importance was primarily due to the weakness and ambiguity of the state's organizational structures. Since the beginning of colonization in 1629, the administrative responsibility for the settlements was the responsibility of the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France, which took care of the allocation of land and economic development, but did not create any systematic administrative structures. The development of the colony depended solely on the personal authority and skill of the governor appointed by the French crown. The church, on the other hand, was tightly organized in a strictly hierarchical manner, recognized as a moral authority and, as a trustworthy institution, was at the center of everyday life for Catholic settlers. With the death of Champlain a vacuum arose that the Catholic Church in Québec knew how to use.
The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal , a lay community founded by Jesuits, endeavored to set up an idealistic-utopian Christian settlement project following the St. Lawrence River inland. Their goal was not to build trade relations, but to convert the Indians. The Ville-Marie settlement, founded in 1642 by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve on the Île de Montréal, formed the cornerstone of what is now the metropolis of Montreal .
In addition to trappers and rangers, it was Catholic missionaries who pushed deeper and deeper up the St. Lawrence River towards the Great Lakes and set up mission stations. They began with the missionary work of the Wyandot, allied with the French, but also tried to convert the Iroquois who lived there. This behavior by the Catholic missionaries intensified the already simmering conflicts between the Iroquois natives and the French. During this time, the Iroquois tribes pushed eastwards towards the settlement of Montreal, where they tried to displace the Algonquin who lived there and to take over their central position in the fur trade with the French. Several attacks on Montreal took place and almost led to the destruction of the city. In the course of the growing tensions between the European colonial powers England and France, the English understood how to make allies of the Iroquois, who were hostile to the French endeavors.
In the mid-17th century, Montreal still comprised only a few dozen settlers. According to a political myth that is widespread to this day , it was the settler Adam Dollard des Ormeaux who finally managed to avert the impending doom of Montreal with a consciously symbolic, suicidal act. Knowing about the impossibility of defeating the outnumbered Iroquois, Dollard is said to have carried out a bloody martyrial attack on the Iroquois with some French settlers and allies Wyandot. According to legend, no French attacker survived. But the losses on the part of the Iroquois are said to have been so high that they refrained from attacking Montreal from then on, which is said to have ensured the city's survival.
1663: "Nouvelle France" becomes part of the French national territory
In 1663, Louis XIV decided to give the colony of New France better military security, to promote colonization and to put economic development on a better foundation. Since the beginning of the French conquest, the Compagnie de la Nouvelle France had determined the fate of the territory with only moderate success. Now the king declared the colony a province of France and thus placed it directly under the French crown.
The new province received a system of government and administration, which remained in force until the end of New France in 1760. The administration of Québec was reshaped along the lines of France. A supreme administrative body was created, which was directly subordinate to the French Crown (the French Minister of Maritime Affairs). Members of this body were a governor, a superintendent and the head of the Catholic Church of New France, the Bishop of Québec. The governor was responsible for the military and foreign affairs of the colony. The superintendent was the head of the colonial administration and decided on settlement matters, land allocation, legal provisions and the economic framework. The Bishop of Québec was able to exert his influence on social and legal decisions.
Despite the administrative reorganization of the colony, personal factors in particular played an important role in its further development. Power struggles between Chevalier de Mercy, Québec's first superintendent, and Bishop François de Laval hampered the effectiveness of the structural reforms introduced. This changed with the appointment of Jean Talon , the superintendent of 1665 and 1672, who brought the only moderately prosperous colony on a long-lasting growth path in a decisive way.
The strengthening of the French troop presence in 1665, when Louis XIV sent the Carignan Salières regiment overseas to secure Québec, played a decisive role in the positive economic development that was now beginning. The force of more than 1000 soldiers managed to stop the constant attacks by the Iroquois on the city. In addition, the concept of carrying the Indians' war into their own territory outside the settlements led to the end of the blockade of the fur trade. In 1667 the five Iroquois tribes requested peace with the French. Although this should prove that no final peace had been achieved, the temporary end of this permanent conflict led to the flourishing of trade in the colony.
A new stream of immigrants from France led to the establishment of more settlements. At Talon's initiative, breeding animals and seeds were made available to the newcomers. The soldiers of the regiment received an offer to remain as settlers on their own soil in Québec after completing their military service. The settlements of former troops near Richelieu thus also formed a bulwark against potential Iroquois attacks from the south.
A statistical study of the conditions commissioned by Jean Talon in 1666 determined a population of 3215 inhabitants in the colony. The increase shows that the new colonial policy was beginning to take hold. However, the study also found a disproportionate excess of male colonists. 2034 men were compared to only 1181 women. At Talon's recommendation, Louis XIV decided to send women between the ages of 15 and 30 to New France. Between 1663 and 1673 more than 800 filles du Roi (" daughters of the king ") arrived there. The majority of these women came from humble backgrounds or were orphans with very little personal possessions. In the collective memory they are still considered to be the “primordial mothers” of the Francophone Canadians. Willing to strengthen the demographic development of the colony, Talon tied hunting and fur trade rights to marriages and guaranteed young married men and fathers generous financial state support. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of births. In 1671 Talon was able to register over 700 newborns in France. In the first decade after the colony was placed under the French crown, the number of inhabitants grew by over 9,000.
At the same time - and this was an amazing component of French colonial policy - marriages between French colonists and Native American Indians were encouraged and encouraged. With the children from these relationships, a new subclass emerged , the members of which were called métis or sang-mêlés . Even so, they were recognized as a legitimate part of French colonial societies. Today's descendants include none other than the later immensely popular Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau . As a result of this realigned population policy, more than 90 percent of the colony inhabitants were born on North American soil and only about 10 percent reached the settlements as immigrants from Europe.
Other circumstances, however, hampered an even better development. Trying the unjust and degrading semi-feudal farming system of manorial abolish it, and to limit the land acquisition of the already established landowners in favor of new immigrants, failed. The French crown guaranteed selected gentlemen extensive colonial land ownership. In return, this gave rise to obligations for the landlords to build and supply new settlements. These gave away smaller parcels of their property to residents and new immigrants who were obliged to pay rent and perform various services. On the one hand, such a system supported rapid land grabbing. Newcomers were wooed as soon as they arrived. In a very short time, farms spread on both sides of the St. Lawrence to the west and east of Québec. On the other hand, the acquisition of your own farmland in the English colonies to the south turned out to be much easier and caused a massive influx of emigrants there. It was not only as a result of this that the influx of French immigrants into French overseas remained relatively small in relation to that into the English colonies. The repeated attempts of Talons to firmly establish branches of the economy other than agriculture and the fur trade such as the timber industry, mining and shipbuilding failed due to a lack of financial support from France and the scarce human resources. Finally, the renewed involvement of the mother country in European warfare led to the discontinuation of state support for potential newcomers.
1670–1683: French fur trade monopoly and expansion to the Great Lakes
Although the situation in the French colonial territories had drastically improved under the policy of the new superintendent Jean Talon, New France was falling more and more behind in comparison with the English colonies of North America. In contrast to the sparsely populated territories of New France, the settlements of New England, which are climatically more favorable and not subject to feudal economic forms and religious restrictions, prospered.
Since the peace between the Iroquois and the French in 1670, French traders had been able to navigate the Ottawa River and the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence into the wilderness of the Great Lakes. This development was supported by Compte de Frontenac, the French superintendent since 1672. In 1672 he had Fort Frontenac (today: Kingston ) built at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario . Frontenac's protégé Robert Cavelier de La Salle , an enterprising fur wholesaler, used these conditions for further advances into the heart of the continent. Not only did he set up the Niagara trading post around 1678, but he also made his first ship to the Upper Great Lakes, discovered Illinois and sailed the Mississippi downstream to the Gulf of Mexico . In the meantime, the French ranger Daniel Greysolon du Lhut had reached Dakota behind the Great Lakes in 1679 .
By 1680 the French had expanded their fur trading territory over half the North American continent - for the benefit of Montreal, which developed into the main hub for fur and the city of Québec, the French seaport and government center of New France. This quasi-monopoly led to a resurgence of Iroquois attacks and hostilities from 1683 onwards. The Iroquois, the former middlemen, were deprived of their livelihood by Frontenac's policies.
Strategic breakthrough in England with the Hudson's Bay Company
The policy of the French governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac , to protect the French fur traders by building forts in the wilderness of the Great Lakes and thus to enforce a quasi-monopoly on their profits and bubbling state revenues, not only led to the former Iroquois middlemen Anger and anger. Increasingly, the fur trade in the Great Lakes region was handled via the increasingly secure French Saint Lawrence Route and no longer via Iroquois middlemen and their English allies along the Hudson. As a result, after almost two peaceful decades, there were again heavy Indian attacks on French settlements. In 1687 Iroquois tribes raided the fur trade metropolis of Montreal.
The more French control took hold of the lucrative fur trade, the more difficult it became for English traders to bring fur to European ships on the coasts. Parallel to the flourishing of the French fur trade, the importance of this branch of industry had also increased steadily for English settlers. On the one hand, this was particularly true of the English colonies to the south, which lay directly on the Atlantic. In particular, however, this applied to the colonists along the Hudson, where England had taken over the Dutch New Netherlands in 1664 (from that point onwards: New York). English fur traders made use of their good contacts to the Iroquois tribes, who are at war with France. Due to these difficult conditions, the English yields could not compete with those of the French fur traders. With the control of the St. Lawrence Valley, they had a firmly established, safe river trade route from the wilderness of the Great Lakes via the intermediate trading center of Montréal to the Québec shipping point. In this way, English trappers were subject to the taxes levied by New France.
This changed with the discovery of the wealth of beavers in the Hudson Bay area by the Iroquois educated explorers of the Mississippi and Ohio areas, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers . The French, known as “coureurs des bois”, rangers, discovered high-quality beaver pelts in 1660 in what is now the Hudson Bay and reported this to Québec. Frontenac's new policy of boosting state revenue by enforcing strict state licensing has now resulted in Québec imposing heavy fines on Radisson and Groseilliers. From an official point of view, they had requisitioned their skins without a license. The only thing left for the rangers to do was to sue this official order in France. Unsuccessful, as it turned out to be. Now both decided to report their discovery to London. They applied to be allowed to use the route discovered by Henry Hudson and claimed for England to ship their skins. As is so often the case in these days of rapid land grabbing, the respective claims were not without controversy. It is true that a Frenchman had taken possession of the strategically immense strategic access to the mainland for the French crown. Nevertheless, Hudson claimed the bay, which was later named after him, and the surrounding areas for England. A first attempt by London in 1668 to set up a ship trading route across the Hudson Bay proved so successful that just two years later the "Company of Gentlemen of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay" was founded. King Charles II gave the French rangers exclusive rights for fur trade, land distribution and all administrative tasks in the Hudson Bay area. The size of the affected but not yet colonized area ranged from northern Quebec and western Ontario over the prairies of the Rocky Mountains to the Arctic .
This coastal area not only proved to be rich in high quality beaver pelts , but also opened up the long-awaited own trade route for the English from the interior of the continent to the Atlantic coast - a development with serious consequences for New France, as it turned out to be; the Hudson's Bay Company now made it possible for the British to gain control of the Atlantic shipping of all skins and to end the de facto French monopoly on this main branch of the economy. From here, this impression arises, the European island power England, well aware of its own strength, actively pushed forward the expansion of its own territory in the direction of what is now northern Canada and the French-ruled areas.
From France's point of view, English settlers had occupied French territory under the protection of the English crown. As a result, attempts were made on the one hand to keep themselves harmless by taking possession of new territories south of the Mississippi and Ohio. The opening of a separate English trade route into French territories was, however, strategically and economically too important to be able to go back to business as usual. In 1682 France launched a counterattack. It founded a French Hudson's Bay Company and established its own trading posts on the Hudson Bay. This mixed situation, which touched vital colonial interests, would soon lead to an open war in which the Iroquois tribes sided with the English. What began as a race of individual fur traders for economically usable territories developed into a military conflict between New England and New France and their mother countries.
Evasion attempt to the south - the founding of Louisiana
When England took possession of Hudson Bay, the French were faced with a serious problem. The English had broken the quasi-monopoly of New France, established their own access to the productive areas of the Great Lakes and set up their own direct shipping point on the Atlantic. In addition, according to the French point of view, English traders exploited French territories without New France benefiting from this trade. The simpler trade route across the Hudson Bay suddenly led to the loss of importance of the line across the St. Lawrence River.
The French tried to keep themselves harmless by expanding their colony in a westerly direction towards the English (today: American) settlement areas, as the English Hudson Bay made it impossible for them to expand in a northerly direction. At the same time, they hoped, by discovering other navigable rivers, to find another access to the sea that could compensate for the effects of the loss of Hudson Bay. 1673 commissioned Jean Talon the two Jesuit fathers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette with the exploration of the Mississippi , the Missouri and the Ohio . In fact, Joliet and Marquette were the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi, drove it to the mouth of the Arkansas and claimed this area for France. Both also laid the foundation stone for several mission stations on the Great Lakes, such as Sault Saint Marie .
In 1682 Robert Cavelier de La Salle continued exploring the river and reached its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico . In the further course of his voyage of discovery he finally advanced as far as the Ohio river valley and claimed the entire vast territory in a southerly direction as far as the Gulf of Mexico for France. In order to honor the French King Louis XIV, he gave the entire region, which far exceeded today's area of the same name, the name Louisiana . This new claim opened up the urgently needed new potential supply and trade routes to their territory for the French, especially with regard to the two major rivers. On the one hand, the new waterways enabled them to avoid the St. Lawrence River Valley between the Great Lakes and Montreal, which was populated by hostile Iroquois. More important, however, was the prospect of evading the control of French trade by the British Hudson's Bay Company at the Atlantic mouth of the Saint Lawrence.
Ever new territorial claims made the space for colonial territorial expansions steadily narrower, and the various colonial powers moved closer and closer to one another. From the British and Spanish colonies to the south, a race had now begun for the region that stretched as unclaimed wilderness between the steadily growing territories of the three European powers England, Spain and France. This intensified the race to colonize North America. Tensions and disagreements about property claims led to ever increasing conflicts that affected vital national interests. From the French point of view, the main thing was to take possession of the Mississippi Valley and thus not only to connect your own territories, but also to literally put a stop to the British efforts to open up access to the Atlantic from their southern colonies.
These geostrategic considerations also led to a change in the internal colonization policy. It had been found that territorial claims alone were not valid if these claims could not be factually secured. A rethink began: It was decided to secure the theoretical claim by creating a militarily secured settlement. Under the leadership of Frontenac, who was now also governor of Louisiana, a number of militarily manned forts were built to secure claims. This was a new strategy that was now followed in all those areas that were theoretically in the possession of New France, but which could not be populated due to a lack of human resources.
The general problem of French overseas domination - the lack of financial and human resources - caught up with the French here too. In view of the most difficult climatic conditions in the marshland of the Mississippi Valley, rampant epidemics, a lack of immigration and high death rates, the colony soon threatened to wither. The way out was discovered by forcibly shipping people who were not accepted or rejected by French society to Louisiana. The beginnings of the colony at the beginning of the 18th century were made by petty and serious criminals, Parisian clochards , prostitutes, knights of fortune and a few soldiers. The first transports of African slaves arrived around 1719 to remedy the chronic shortage of labor. There were also enslaved Indians belonging to hostile indigenous tribes. A unique colony emerged in which European, French, Indian and African influences mingled - far away from and outside the control of Québec, which is administratively responsible for the development of the colony. This fact brought the French rule in today's perspective the attribute of chaotic rule. The survival of the colony was subsequently ensured by governors such as Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville , who as a rule did not care about the instructions of Québec or French laws and instead concerned more about the enrichment of their own pockets.
1689–1712: Wars with England
King William's War
After there had been insignificant colonial conflicts over and over again in previous years over legal property, regular border drawing and fur trade routes between the British and the French, these tensions now culminated in imperial conflicts. The race to colonize the North American wilderness had led to an intensification of the conflict in view of the ever decreasing open space. You had literally come into close contact with your colonial rival. Loss of territory - as in the case of the British occupation of Hudson Bay or the French occupation of Louisiana - had serious geostrategic and commercial consequences for the colonial projects of the European colonial powers. North American possessions had long since become important factors in European imperial power politics.
Armed conflicts in Europe now offered the occasion and the opportunity to violently resolve North American colonial conflicts. The armed clashes took place in Acadia , the Saint Lawrence River area, Hudson Bay, the borderlands of New France and New England and the colony of New York. The escalation of these conflicts led to an open military exchange between 1689 and 1697, which went down in history under the name King William's War . In 1690, English ships captured Port Royal , the capital of the French Acadia. The province - the oldest French settlement in North America - fell under English rule until the end of the war in 1697. In 1696, French ships devastated remote English fishing settlements and trading posts in Newfoundland. In the same year French sailors conquered St. Johns , the most important English port city in the colony of Newfoundland .
The area of Acadia was the cradle of the first French settlement attempts and, as would later turn out, not only an agriculturally excellent settlement. It was also the home of a colonist community that came to terms with the adverse power relations of changing British and French rule, whose descendants still feel that they are a people of their own, the Acadians , to this day and even 240 years after the deportation of the Acadians . Of greater importance with regard to the geostrategic power struggle for supremacy in North America, however, was that the Acadian area also included the military and strategic strategic access to the Saint Lawrence River and the French settlement to this extent also the survival of the Saint Lawrence region and that of the Capital Québec guaranteed.
The conquest of Port Royals made it possible for the English fleet under Sir William Phips to advance into the Saint Lawrence River. The goal was to take Québec. Here it was shown that under the given circumstances it was not possible to take the heavily fortified city high above the river. Under the direction of Frontenac, the English were under fire and had to withdraw. As a result, French troops devastated areas of the Iroquois, allied with the English, and invaded the border areas around New York.
The course of the conflict in the Hudson Bay area was more successful for France. Montreal-born Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville took Fort Severn in 1690 as commanding officer of several ships, captured York Factory , the new English headquarters at the mouth of the Nelson River , in 1694 , and defeated a superior English fleet in the Hudson Bay. In the same year d'Iberville set course for Acadia and captured the most important English fort, Pemaquid, at the entrance to the St. Lawrence estuary. D'Iberville continued its triumphal march along the English-settled Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland and took St. Johns in 1696.
Overall, this conflict had not produced any real victor, as was expressed in the peace treaty of 1697 between France and England. The regulations renewed the French entitlement to acadia. York Factory was returned to England. Meanwhile, the war between the French and the Iroquois continued, who - without the help of their traditional ally England - found themselves exposed to massive French superiority. The number of Iroquois tribesmen had fallen in the course of the wars and as a result of epidemic weakening to an estimated 1,300 people, while the French population had grown to about 13,000. This fact led to the fact that the five nations of the Iroquois asked in 1701 for the "Great Peace".
Queen Anne's War - The Loss of Acadia
After only five years of peaceful relations between the English and the French, the military conflict continued as early as 1702 under the name Queen Anne's War . Again, a European campaign offered the opportunity to openly resolve colonial tensions by force of arms - this time without the participation of the Iroquois. The war for the succession to Spain's throne began on the old continent . French troops captured English settlements in Newfoundland in 1705. St. John's was taken for France in 1709 by Canadian volunteers and allied Mi'kmaq Indians. The British again conquered Port Royal, the capital of Acadia, in 1710. In 1711 another British naval attack on New France's capital Québec failed. Ultimately, the outcome of the war in Europe also decided the conflict in North America. The France of Louis XIV was crushed. This had an impact in 1713 in the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht for conditions in North America. France now recognized Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay as British possession. France also lost all of its Acadian territory, with the exception of two small islands in the delta of the Saint Lawrence River. In the end, only the river entrance remained for the French, which was secured by the sea fortress Louisbourg , which was built from 1720 at immense expense .
An additional factor strengthened England's position: in 1707 England and Scotland merged to form the Kingdom of Great Britain , so that British and Scottish power interests were now bundled. This new geostrategic constellation was of the utmost importance for the future race of Great Britain and France over North America. Because now, for the first time, Great Britain could access the entire Saint Lawrence Delta. With the now possible complete conquest of the estuary delta, England had the chance to cut the lifeline of New France, which connected Québec and Montreal with the Atlantic, and thus cut off the heart of New France from the motherland.
1713–1744: Deceptive golden years
France remained in the strategically important border region of Acadia, which lay at the entrance of the Saint Lawrence River to the Atlantic and where the two colonial empires collided, only control of the Île Royale (today: Cape Breton Island ), the Île Saint- Jean (today: Prince Edward Island ) and in particular Fort Louisbourg. In this respect, Louisburg was the last remaining option to secure the entrance to the St. Lawrence River. Logically, Louisburg was developed into a military fortress, the most powerful citadel in North America. Around 1740 the fort had around 2000 inhabitants - a number that doubled over the next few years. Louisburg became a military fortress, but also one of the most important trading ports for British ships from the West Indies and New England, but also for those from Québec and France.
In the coming long period of peace, which lasted from 1713 to 1744, New France began to prosper economically for the first time. Although the French fur trade had now faced strong competition from the British Hudson's Bay Company, the exchange of goods on the longer, more laborious and more expensive St. Lawrence Route also flourished. Indian tribes now often went to Hudson Bay themselves to trade their skins and in return to buy goods there directly. This came at the expense of the economy of New France, which was forced to do business with the Indian peoples before they traded with the British. The French therefore set up new trading posts west of the bay along the small rivers used as Indian transport routes.
Fishing and agriculture, but also shipbuilding, developed as the main economic sectors in New France. The construction of a royal road, the Chemin du Roy between Montreal and Québec, improved the infrastructural link between the important cities and enabled more intensive exchange of goods and faster processing of trade. New ports were built and older ones expanded. The number of new colonists grew rapidly and Québec became an independent colony within New France in 1722 with 24,594 inhabitants. These years of peace between 1713 and 1744 are often referred to as the golden age of New France - even if, this must not be left unsaid, for the Indians it was an age of progressive decimation of their tribes. At the same time, people did not trust the peace with Great Britain, so from 1717 Montreal received a stone city wall , similar to Québec, which had been fortified from 1690/93 .
1745–1763: The end of New France
The golden years of New France lasted until June 1745, when William Shirley , the governor of British Massachusetts, attacked the strategically important Fort Louisbourg in the area of the formerly completely French Acadia. Again, a European war provided the opportunity to question the situation in North America. From 1744 France and Great Britain faced each other in the struggle for the Habsburg succession to the throne on the battlefields of Europe. Great Britain saw its chance now to create clear conditions in North America as well. Under the onslaught of New England troops and the British Royal Navy , the fortress of Louisburg fell at the entrance to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. An attempt at recapture in 1746 failed.
The Peace of Aachen in 1748 determined the return of the fortress to New France, but at the same time it had become apparent that New France's existence was based on clay. Despite the peace in Europe, tensions about supremacy in North America continued to smolder - with clearly assigned roles: only a few steps separated Great Britain and its colony from ultimate triumph, while in New France they opposed their downfall. The new Governor General Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière , who had been in office since 1747, reported his assessment of the explosiveness of the situation to Paris: Although the peace achieved in Europe had for the time being put to rest the jealousy of the British against the French on the old continent, they were seething here unrestrained in tensions discharging violence. Even if the borders were in fact not being touched at the moment, it was to be feared that the British nation of North America would soon get into a mood that would inevitably end with the invasion of the French territories.
In view of the hopeless geostrategic and power-political situation, Galissonière saw only the chance to secure the connection between the heartlands of New France and Louisiana and to strengthen it militarily. This particularly affected the Ohio area, which lay like a buffer zone between the British sea colonies and the French colonial areas in the heart of the continent. If, according to Galissonière's prediction, British troops should ever succeed in advancing westward into Canada, the Ohio territories would have to be used as a barrier to at least hold the enormous colonial areas in the interior of the continent. But if the British were to succeed in breaking this bar inward, the future of North America would belong to the British alone.
Now, in the final phase of the race for the New World, the blatant failings of French colonization policy took revenge: a lack of financial support from the motherland, which is bound in Europe, as well as a narrow-minded immigration policy geared towards catholization had severely hampered the economic and demographic development of New France. New France now had around 50,000 inhabitants, which was a massive increase compared to the previous century; but the North American British colonies were far better populated and developed. Around one million people already lived in the 13 territories, which are much smaller in terms of area. Among these were a good number of French Huguenots who had steadily strengthened the colonies of their imperial rival. While the British colonies became the focal point of all those who escaped from the cramped and stifling European conditions and hoped for a religiously free life, own land ownership and a better social future, the French-ruled settlements remained contact points for a small, tightly regulated group of Roman Catholic French . Economic and ideological motives had stood in the way of a potentially better development. In the long term, this development had not only affected the economic conditions of the imperial competitors. Not only the geostrategic situation with the loss of Acadia and the support of the motherland by sea had brought New France to the brink of extinction; on the contrary, once cut off from the support of France by sea, one was faced with an overwhelming numerical superiority of Anglophone settlers, who formed a much stronger base of military troop potential.
Galissonière's considerations were taken seriously in Paris. In the 1750s, France began building a chain of new forts along the Ohio. However, the Ohio area, which belongs to New France, had long been the focus of British settlers and British expansion policy. Their colonies populated so quickly that they expanded into the unpopulated areas around Virginia and the Ohio. In 1749 the British Ohio Company was founded, the aim of which was to locate colonists in the Ohio Valley in a targeted manner. This inevitably led to new tensions. In 1753, Virginia's British governor sent a delegation to the French troops in the Ohio area to protest the military occupation of British territory. The conflict expanded into an open military exchange of blows, for which a new conflict on the European stage provided the occasion.
As a harbinger of European tensions, which a few years later in the Seven Years' War also broke out in the Old World, the so-called French and Indian War had already begun in 1754 . Virginia settlers attempted to build a fort on the site of what is now Pittsburgh . French troops smashed this project and built Fort Duquesne . In the following period, in May of 1754, Colonel George Washington, as the leader of a militia group from Virginia formed on behalf of the British, was defeated by French troops in the Ohio Valley. This armed attack by British settlers amounted to an open declaration of war. France and Great Britain upgraded their troop and ship contingents. British troops took Fort Duquesne, but failed with the intended conquest of Ohio against French troops and Indian tribes who had sided with France.
Despite predominantly French victories in the first years of the war, the British achieved their first successes as early as 1755. First they managed to capture Fort Beauséjour on June 16, and on September 8, with a victory in the Battle of Lake George , they prevented the possible breakthrough of the French into the Hudson Valley . With the conquest of the fortress Louisburg in 1758, the fortunes of war turned decisively in favor of the British. The fall of Louisburg actually meant that Québec and Montreal were logistically cut off from French aid and could only rely on their own troops for defense. The conquest of Louisbourg and British control of the Saint Lawrence River were key to Britain's ultimate victory over France. Numerically inferior contingents from New France now faced a multiple majority of British and New England troops. The fall of New France was only a matter of time.
Consequently, in 1759 British troops conquered the capital Québec. Great Britain succeeded in bringing warships over the Saint Lawrence to the city walls of Québec and besieging the city for several months. In September, Colonel James Wolfe also attacked from the land side. After the lost battle on the Plains of Abraham , the French garrison surrendered on September 18th. In the course of the coming year, British troops conquered the entire remaining territory of New France. The last French Governor General, Pierre Francois de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal , surrendered to his British opponent, General Jeffrey Amherst , on September 8, 1760 . The formal end of New France was sealed by the Peace of Paris on February 10, 1763. Québec, which was geographically revised and reduced by significant areas, became a colony of the British Crown and at that time had 54,000 inhabitants.
The French heritage
Expulsion from Acadia
Despite the end of French dreams of an overseas empire in North America, the French language and culture and the Roman Catholic faith remained the determining social forces in the former New France for the time being. In large parts of the conquered area, Great Britain succeeded in erasing these traces of France through the massive settlement of British Protestant emigrants, which led to the founding of the provinces of Upper Canada (today: Ontario) and New Brunswick.
From the late 1750s and until 1763, the British had forcibly deported the French-influenced Acadians to the former Acadia . These were distributed to different British colonies in North America, returned to France or later settled in what was then the Spanish colony of Louisiana, where their traces can still be found today in the Cajun ethnic group .
The Louisiana Purchase
The French territory of Louisiana fell to Spain after the end of the Seven Years War. A Spanish-French agreement in 1801 led to the return of Louisiana to France. But as early as 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to sell it to the United States of America ( Louisiana Purchase ).
This sale marked the final end of the French colonial empire in North America. It was the end of an empire that stretched at its greatest expansion in 1712 from Newfoundland to Hudson Bay and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Only the small islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are still under French administration.
Quebec
All attempts by the British Crown to assimilate the French Canadians through various measures failed. The awareness of having been conquered and inadvertently subjected to imperial British rule continues to create tension within Canada to this day.
The province of Québec occupies a special position in the Canadian constitution. Not only the French language, the special legal system based on France's tradition and referendums on aspirations for independence underline the difference felt by many Quebecers. In 2006, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted French Canadians to be a nation of their own in Canada. In this respect, the francophone region of Québec with its cities of Québec and Montreal still bears witness to the French dream, which vanished in 1763, of building a “New France” in the newly discovered world.
See also
Documentation
- Brian Mc Kenna, Olivier Julien: Québec, 1759 - The end of New France . Arte, France / Canada, 2009 ( ARD page for documentation )
literature
- Udo Sautter: History of Canada . CH Beck, 2000, pp. 7-25
- William John Eccles (Ed.): Essays on New France . Oxford University Press, 1987
- JMS Careless: Canada: A Celebration of Our Heritage. 2nd Edition. Heritage Publishing House, Mississauga 1997, ISBN 1-895598-06-0 , online
- Dale Miquelon: New France 1701-1744: A Supplement to Europe . McClelland & Stewart, 2016 (first edition 1987)
- Gilles Havard, Cécile Vidal: Histoire de l'Amérique française. Flammarion, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-08-210045-6 .
- Bertrand Fonck, Laurent Veyssière (eds.): La Fin de la Nouvelle-France. Armand Colin, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-200-28765-8 .
- Louise Pothier, Bertrand Guillet, dir .: France - Nouvelle-France. Naissance d'un peuple français en America. Ed. Musée du Château des ducs de Bretagne & Musée d'Archéologie et d'Histoire, Montréal, Pointe-à-Callière. Somogy, Paris 2005, ISBN 978-2-85056-907-4 (exhibition catalog, traveling exhibition 2004–2008 in Brittany and in Canada at various locations)
Web links
- Virtual Museum of New France
- Jesuits in New France , entry at Athabasca University , English, with some links
- Original reports from the priests to Paris 1619 - 1791 , so-called "Jesuit Relations", complete English. translation
Footnotes
- ↑ Sometimes also called Pierre Dugua de Monts.
- ^ Bill Marshall, B: France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2005
- ↑ Hans-Otto Meissner: Scouts on the St. Lorenz River. The adventures of Samuel de Champlain . Cotta, Stuttgart 1966. pp. 233-234.
- ↑ The link to "Jesuit Relations" is out of date, see the following instead