Scott W. See. The History of Canada. Second Edition

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defended the colony, especially along the Richelieu River, to block

thenaturalinvasionroutefromLakeChamplaintothesouth.

They also fought repeatedly with the Iroquois tribes, in particular

the Mohawk. Administrators successfully encouraged some of the

Carignan-SalièresregimenttoremaininNewFrance.

Because of the large number of bachelor males, including the

engagés and soldiers, French authorities devised a plan to bring women

of marriageable age to increase the colony’s population. The filles du

roi, or king’s daughters as they were called, came from orphanages or

from poorer families. Authorities assessed the moral and religious

character of each fille du roi before she left France. The plan enjoyed

a degree of success. Most were married rapidly after their arrival,

thanks in part to the money and goods, such as livestock, that the

crown had provided for t heir dowry. Upwards to 1,000 filles du roi

made their way to New France, and because of the large number of

children whom farm families in New France typically produced, a

significant number of French Canadians can trace their ancestry to

these hardy women.

After an initial burst of energy bringing people to New France—

the colony’s population doubled from the 1660s to the 1670s—

immigration slowed dramatically later in the century. As a result,

many of Canada’s French descendants can locate their ancestral roots

in seventeenth-century New France. Almost 10,000 people called the

colony home by the early 1680s. Even with the large families, the

farmers and settlers of New France, called the habitants, enjoyed

better prospects of living fuller and more healthy lives than did

contemporary French peasants. Nevertheless, the rigors of life in

New France—from clearing the forest, to braving the elements,

and to coping with periodic attacks by Iroquois— should not be

romanticized.

The Seigneurial System

One of the colony’s most attractive features, certainly from a landless

peasant’s perspective in France, was the seigneurial system. Prompted

by the crown, this land grant plan explains the settlement patterns of

New France and the persistence of peoples in the New World. Some

50 The Seigneurial System

lively historical discussion circulates around the question of whether

the system benefited or repressed the habitants and, given its design

and language, whether it represented an attempt of the French elite

to transplant the feudal system to Canada. Independent of these

important considerations, few dispute the long-term significance of

the seigneurial system for drawing settlers to New France, firmly

rooting them to the soil and creating the environment for a distinct

way of life in the North American hinterland.

Designed to delegate land-granting responsibilities from the crown

to seigneurs, who held the responsibility for finding settlers, the system

was contractual. The seigneurs, vassals of the crown, acquired large

parcels of land to subdivide and distribute to tenant farmers. Although

they technically controlled the land, they were bound to reserve for the

crown certain trees for masts and shipbuilding and the subsoil for

minerals. Their duties included constructing a manor house, building

and maintaining a flour mill, overseeing judicial matters, and helping

to sponsor a local religious presence in the form of a curé (priest). The

seigneurs’ chief responsibility, however, was to facilitate the settlement

of habitants on subdivided land plots. Individual seigneurs ranged

widely. Some (both men and women) came from the nobility, and some

represented the ranks of the military officer corps. Their attention to

their responsibilities also varied dramatically as the system developed.

Some seigneurs lived on their domain and carefully monitored the

development of their seigneuries, while others hired landlords to

supervise their estates. A few sei gneurs never set eyes on their holdings.

The censitaires, the official term for the settlers, were assigned

parcels of land to farm. Typically narrow and long, these strips often

fronted on the St. Lawrence River or other waterways for transporta-

tion. In return for their land grants, the habitants,astheypreferredto

call themselves, annually made modest cash and rental payments, the

latter often in the form of produce. In addition, they could be called on

to work for a few days a year building or maintaining roads. Virtually

all male habitants served in the militia for most of their adult years.

As evidence of the colony’s attachment to the church, habitants were

expected to tithe one-twenty-sixth of their annual crops to the Roman

Catholic church.

While the system existed under an official framework, in practice

there was great diversity in the relationship between habitants and

seigneurs and in the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual

The Seigneurial System 51

seigneuries. Although some habitants became seigneurs, New France

was not a place of genuine social mobility. The habitants, who

preferred not to be called peasants, mirrored Old World peasant life

in many ways. The relationship between power and the holding of

land remained in place throughout the New France era, and although

not particularly oppressive, the annual payments and the nature of

farming on small plots of land meant that the habitants would remain

essentially powerless and closely tied to the land. The system was

based on a contractual arrangement, which afforded some protection

to habitants and certainly was more equitable than the rights

extended to French peasants.

Seigneurial settlements, clustered along the St. Lawrence River and

its tributaries, gave the appearance of one continuous community.

Given the hardships of traveling overland in the period, most habitants

favored the front lots on river systems and displayed a reluctance

to move deeper into the hinterland through back lots. Thus, the

approximately 200 seigneuries by the early eighteenth century remained

tightly clustered along the major water systems of New France, chiefly

between Quebec and Montreal. The farming that took place on the

plots was not sophisticated yet gave evidence of some crop rotation.

Habitants, overwhelmingly devoted to growing wheat as their primary

crop, also planted peas, oats, barley, rye, and corn (maize). Some of the

more successful farmers exported wheat. New France clearly experi-

enced a rhythm of life, with powerful official connections between

church and state, tenant and landholder. Social distinctions remained

important. New France’s hierarchical society harked back to the Old

World in many ways. Yet ample evidence suggests that habitants

enjoyed some freedoms, aggressively asserted an independent streak,

and regularly ignored state regulations or church edicts. In short, the

peasants of the Old World were swiftly becoming the Canadiens of

the New World (see “AChurchPerspectiveonWomenandTheir

Clothing” in the Documents section).

The Fur Trade

Agriculture by the eighteenth century outpaced the fur trade, yet the

latter remained a central focus of New France and helped to set the

stage for continental rivalry. The independent-minded French-Canadian

52 The Fur Trade

coureurs de bois, originally encouraged by Champlain, became adept at

avoiding governmental controls. These trappers and traders availed

themselves of Amerindian technologies, guidance, and often partner-

ships. They used birchbark canoes, snowshoes, and toboggans and

learned survival skills from Native peoples. Trapping was an attractive

lifestyle to the offspring of many habitants, w ho engaged in the

enterprise for part of a year or a portion of their life. With increased

sophistication, large groups called voyageurs, often engagés work-

ing in teams, were contracted to bring furs out of the Great Lakes

region and the deep hinterland. Furs, especially the beaver, were

rapidly being depleted in the East.

Great rivalries marked the fur trade throughout the colonial

phase. The English supplanted the Dutch traders of the Albany area

after 1664, while in New France, Montreal became the most

significant trading center as trappers filtered into the upper country

of the West and North, called the pays d’ en haut. Greater distances

made the traders hard to regulate. Ironically, in spite of the fact that

the trappers’ activities were often technically illegal, the French

dramatically extended their knowledge of the interior through their

efforts. Forts and trading posts were built deep in the continent to

facilitate and protect trade along the major water routes, an example

of which was Fort Michilimackinac, at the narrow passage between

Lakes Michigan and Huron.

Other factors made the fur trade empires complex and sharpened

the imperial rivalry that would bring about the collapse of New

France. Traders Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers and Pierre-Esprit

Radisson, upset at having their furs confiscated for running afoul of

regulations, offered their mapping and exploration services to the

English and thereby provided the spark for the Hudson’sBay

Company. Chartered by Charles II in 1670, the company received a

vast territory, Rupert’s Land, with drainage to Hudson Bay. At

roughly half the size of present- day Canada, the grant encompassed

diverse groups of Native peoples without their consultation. The

Hudson’s B ay Company immediately set up an intensely competi-

tive fur trading dynamic in North America by offering an alternative

system. The English traders relied extensively on Amerindians to

bring furs to small posts, called factories, on Hudson Bay for

processing and shipping to England. The other more traditional

system, controlled in New France, relied on a lengthening overland

The Fur Trade 53

route that used waterways and the Great Lakes. Traded in Montreal,

furs passed out the St. Lawrence River on their way to Europe. The

rivalry between the two systems persisted until 1821, when the

companies finally merged into the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Towns and Trade

Although New France had an overwhelmingly agricultural orienta-

tion into the eighteenth century, between one-fifth and one-third of

the population lived in nonrural settings. Town life differed

substantially from life in the seigneuries. Montreal, despite its roots

as a religious bastion, rapidly became a thriving trading location

thanks largely to the fur trade. Quebec City, the administrative

capital, remained the largest town in New France. Even after the

construction of a road between the two cities in the 1730s, various

waterways remained important year-round transportation routes by

boat or sleigh. French merchants controlled the bulk of the colony’s

trade, but on a local scale, merchants, including women who ran

provisional and clothing businesses, maintained a robust livelihood.

Although the extent and impact of the merchant class in New France

continues to trigger intense debate among historians, clearly the

colony’s largest communities displayed some of the economic diversity

that other colonial American cities experienced in the period. While

limited manufacturing took place in New France, such as shipbuilding,

the cities and towns basically served as trading, merchant, and

financial centers.

A wide range of people inhabited the colony’s cities. A Canadian

aristocracy partook of social engagements that reportedly impressed

European visitors. Merchants hawked manufactured goods and

foodstuffs, such as rum and molasses, from France and its West

Indian colonies. Cultural and social gulfs separated the comfortable

townspeople from the habitants, reinforcing the sharp class distinc-

tions of New France. Upwards of 4,000 slaves were present in the

colony—both Amerindians from the Mississippi River region and

people transported from the Caribbean. The upper classes owned

most of the slaves, who were not extensively used for agricultural

labor as was the case in the English colonies.

54 Towns and Trade

New France Before the Conquest:

A Distinctive Society

Over several generations, the population of New France became

Canadien, despite the French imperial model for growth and control.

By the eighteenth century, the colony exhibited a unique culture and

set of values. Thousands of colonists had successfully adapted to the

North American environment. Most of the inhabitants were humble

subsistence farmers, yet they enjoyed a freedom of movement and

certain benefits within the seigneurial system. Moreover, at least for

males, the opportunity to seek one’s fortune in the fur trade provided

an alluring alternative to wringing a living from the land. Even with

its obvious class layering, the colony’s society provided an essential

component of the future Canada. Another important element, the

English and their American colonial allies, had been affecting New

France from the earliest moments of exploration. The centuries-long

contest between the French and the English for North America would

determine the continent’s fate and irrevocably chart the unfolding of

Canada’s history.

Contest for the Continent

Various factors shaped the struggle for the continent, including

imperial rivalry, competition for trade and furs, strategic command of

ports and waterways, and the historic tension between the

predominantly Protestant and relatively self-governing American

colonies and the Roman Catholic and autocratically ruled New

France. From the 1613 raid of a Virginia privateer on Port-Royal to

the defeat of New France in the 1760s, colonial contests were

thoroughly intertwined with titanic wars on the European continent.

Identifiable patterns underscored these engagements, which

ranged from small raids to elaborate battles. Mercantilism, practiced

by all major European powers at the time, implied a zero-sum rivalry.

If your enemy or competitor had more possessions, then it was by

definition richer or better positioned to trade and exert influence.

Native peoples were triangulated into the European-based agendas

from the earliest moments of contact. This dynamic in times of peace

Contest for the Continent 55

and war meant that Amerindians would be increasingly marginalized,

despite the fact that they continued to outnumber whites in vast

regions of Canada well into the nineteenth century. Moreover,

colonial peoples, French and English alike, pursued their own

agendas for defense or control over resources. The colonial struggles

typically overlapped with wars on the European continent, although

they generally had distinct names and a different chronological range

of armed engagement. These wars were early illustrations of global

conflicts. Finally, diplomats and militarists determined the territorial

makeup of the New World through peace treaties in the Old World.

Inevitably they did not have colonial interests foremost in their

thoughts. As a result, grander imperial considerations subsumed

colonial ideas. Before the most important wars are discussed, it is

instructive to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of the

European powers and their colonial possessions.

New France: Strengths and Weaknesses

The French employed many strategies to maintain their possessions

in the New World. They effectively used an extensive network of

relationships with Amerindians. Their knowledge of the North

American hinterland was far superior to that of their English rivals

because of their extensive fur trading empire. In addition, the French

maintained, or at least claimed, an expansive fort network that ranged

from staffed enterprises to abandoned palisades. In the broadest sense,

the French planned to keep English troops and American colonists

hemmed in by the natural boundary of the Appalachian mountain

chain that followed the North American spine.

The French could count on many advantages in periods of conflict.

The military and militia command system was clearly designed and

well staffed; virtually all males served in the militia. The typical French

fighter, experienced in battle, used natural defenses and hit-and-run

raids to harass the enemy. In addition, the French-controlled water-

ways that the English considered ideal invasion routes, such as the

St. Lawrence River and the Lake Champlain/Richelieu River corridor,

froze over for almost half the year and were thus relatively easy to

56 New France: Strengths and Weaknesses

defend. Algonquian allies, from the Mi ’ kmaq in the East to the

Illinois in the Great Lakes region, provided formidable support in

times of hostilities. American colonial dynamics also shaped events.

The various colonies disagreed on a host of issues, and while their

sporadic attempts to work together in a collaborative fashion

become one of the important ingredients of the American Revolu-

tion, only the northernmost colonies of Massachusetts and New

York earnestly supported the struggle to defeat New France.

The French also faced deficiencies and flaws in their colonial

design, problems that would become more debilitating over time. For

example, New France’s population of roughly 50,000 in the mid-

eighteenth century paled when compared with the almost one million

American colonists. The colony had only a few key ports and cities

for the English and their American allies to target for attack. In each

of the four major conflicts, these allies repeatedly sought to capture

the prizes of Quebec, Montreal, and the important French trading

center and fort at Louisbourg. In addition, the English were generally

in a more favorable economic position to wage war. Both the English

treasury and the far more diverse and richer American colonies would

have defining roles in bringing about a French defeat in North America.

To summarize, New France may have been prepared to fend off

glancing blows and loosely coordinated series of attacks by the

English and Americans indefinitely. But if the English devoted a great

deal of attention to events in the colonial phase of their broader

struggles, then the French would find themselves in a more precarious

position. As events would have it, this scenario unfolded in the final

war of conquest.

Colonial Wars to the Conquest

King William’s War (1689–1697) broke out with a devastating

Iroquois raid on Lachine, a community west of Montreal. Part of an

ongoing struggle, the Iroquois attacks on settlements in New France

blended with a general war between France and England, the War of

the League of Augsburg. Count Frontenac, recalled by the French

because of squabbles with his superiors, returned to New France

Colonial Wars to the Conquest 57

when his military expertise was required. Teaming with their

Algonquian allies, the French orchestrated brutal raids on several

New York and New England communities. By the war’s conclusion,

the pattern of harassing skirmishes, with both sides using Amerindian

allies, had been well established. In the contested zone, a fault line

between the southern perimeter of New France and northern New

York and New England, embittered peoples would not soon forget

the massacres and torched villages. In addition, a fleet based in New

England attacked Acadia’s Port-Royal, and the British unsuccessfully

laid siege to Quebec.

The uneasy peace was shattered a few years later with the War of

the Spanish Succession between France and an alliance of European

powers. In fact, French and English colonials had barely taken a

pause from hostilities since the last dispute. Queen Anne’s War

(1702–1713), as the colonists dubbed it, saw a resurgence of bloody

raids directed at small communities on both sides. Significantly, the

English captured Port-Royal, which they renamed Annapolis Royal.

A massive naval and ground attack on Quebec collapsed due to poor

coordination and inclement weather in 1711, a remarkable piece of ill

luck for the British given the extraordinary number of invading

forces. The war’s two largest battles, one successful for the British and

the other a fiasco, pointed to the English and American advantage in

these struggles. The capture of only a handful of key targets would be

required to claim the prize of New France.

The point was clearly made at the Treaty of Utrecht, where the

victorious British picked up territory in the New World that France

had historically claimed. The Hudson’s Bay Company forts that the

French had seized during the conflict were returned, and France

recognized English control over Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and

Acadia. France received the right to use Newfoundland ’ s northern

shore to land and dry cod. It also retained Ile Royale (Cape Breton

Island), where it soon located a fortified trading center named

Louisbourg. The fortress became an object of English and American

desire in future wars. Remarkably, given the fact that neither side had

the right to make such an agreement, the French also recognized

English control over the domains of the Iroquois confederacy. The

territorial shifting, due not to significant losses in North America but

to French defeats in the European phase of the war, engendered

resentful feelings in French Canada toward their imperial masters.

58 Colonial Wars to the Conquest

The French clearly considered the colony a pawn to be used in a larger

context. In the years between this war and its successor, the French

fortified existing forts and built new ones throughout the Great Lakes

region and in the Mississippi River system.

King George’s War (1744–1748), which grew out of Europe’s

War of the Austrian Succession, brought depressingly familiar raids

along the New France–New York–New England border. It also saw

the successful capture of Louisbourg in 1745 by an invading force of

New Englanders, who targeted the French fort because it was a

fishing and trading competitor and strategically guarded the entrance

of the St. Lawrence River. At the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748,

the English returned Louisbourg to the French in return for India’s

Madras. This time it was the British Americans’ turn to be irritated

that their imperial masters had traded a colonial-won prize in the

greater interest of imperial schemes. The peace treaty was but an

armed truce; both sides prepared for another struggle. For example,

in 1749 the English established Halifax in their newly acquired

Acadian possession to serve as a naval counterpoint to Louisbourg.

The Seven Years’ War and the Conquest

The flashpoint for the final war between the English and French came

along another dividing line between the empires in North America,

the Ohio country. A youthful militia officer from Virginia, George

Washington, clashed in 1754 with French forces and met defeat in a

contest for control of the Ohio River. The engagement focused on

the French Fort Duquesne, which was renamed Pittsburgh after

its subsequent capture by the British. Two years later, the North

American skirmishes merged into the European Seven Years’ War

(1756–1763). Going into this conflict, the French position was

far more precarious. Its Amerindian alliances had eroded, and its

overextended and undiversified empire looked like a poor match

for the increasingly unified British American colonies. The French

disadvantages erupted to the surface when an energetic English

political administrator, William Pitt, devoted his attention to removing

the French presence in North America permanently. Pitt focused the

English military might on fighting the colonial phase of the war

The Seven Years’ War and the Conquest 59