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

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century the fledgling colony at Qu ebec would be used variously as

an experimental model for settlement and a New World land grant

system, a fur trade outlet, and a missionary base for reaching deep

into the continent. As the French colony survived, and later thrived, it

impinged directly on the competing and virtually identical interests of

the English and Dutch empires. These were two of France’s oldest

rivals in Europe. An inescapable fact that governed New France’sfate

is that as it survived and expanded, it became more of an irritant for

its historic enemies. In sum, New France’s success contributed to its

demise in the massive struggle for control of the continent, a victim

of English imperial agendas and the growing American colonies

to the south (see “The Old World Becomes the New World” in the

Documents section).

New France to 1663

Champlain returned to New France in 1633 with a handful of settlers

following an agreement between England and France. His energies

and almost fanatical dedication to colonizing the New World explain

why popular imagery grants him the title “Father of New France.”

When he died in 1635 before the colony had realized its full potential,

he left no obvious successor, a central concern for the troubled colony

until the monarch, Louis XIII, assumed full control in 1663. He

directed his capable administrator, Cardinal Richelieu, to engineer

the development of New France. For almost two decades, under

Richelieu’s tutelage, the colony struggled to survive.

Economy

A mercantile system that most expanding European powers employed

at the time governed New France’s economy. Countries weighed a

colony’s worth by its ability to enrich its economy and strengthen its

position in checking the might of its rivals. Colonies were a source of

raw materials, a developing market for products crafted in the mother

country, and a strategic extension of empire. Although it exhibited

French cultural qualities, Cardinal Richelieu’s design for New France

followed classic mercantile guidelines. The Company of Hundred

40 New France to 1663

Associates, a group of investors, benefited from a virtual monopoly

on trade and in turn received the responsibility of bringing modest

numbers of settlers to New France. Mirroring the ongoing religious

tensions in France, it barred Protestants from the colony. Coupled

with the religious element, this ensured that New France would be

exclusively Roman Catholic. Despite the backing of the crown, the

company faced bankruptcy by the mid-1640s and ceded its powers

to a group of settlers.

Religious Impulse

The church played a central role in New France’s mission. The

mandate for the religious groups was twofold: to minister to the

French Roman Catholic settlers and to convert Native peoples to

Christianity. The Récollets, members of the Franciscan order, were in

Quebec as early as 1615. But it was the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus,

who placed an indelible stamp on colonial development in New

France and deeply affected Amerindians. By the time this order of

dedicated, well-educated priests fixed New France in its sights for

missionary work, it had already been tested by carrying the Christian

message to Asia, South America, and Africa. Thanks to the Jesuits’

prolific reports to France well into the eighteenth century, called the

Relations, historians have a rich—if not biased—source for descrip-

tions of the environment, culture, and Amerindians of New France.

The Jesuits, with the support of the Ursuline nuns, were

responsible for establishing in Quebec the first college for Native

American boys, a girls’ school, and a hospital in the 1630s. They

attempted to turn the Algonquian groups near Quebec away from

their traditional lifestyle of seasonal hunting and fishing and gain an

appreciation of Christianity and farming. In addition, the “Black

Robes,” as they were called by Native peoples, fanned into the

hinterland to proselytize. Canada’s most famous Jesuit missionary,

Jean de Brébeuf, achieved a modest success among the Huron. Jesuits

accepted in part the radically different cultures and belief systems of

the Amerindians they encountered. Lamentably, they also inadver-

tently introduced diseases such as smallpox and measles, sicknesses

for which North America’s Native peoples carried no natural

resistance. The diseases swept rapidly, crippling the ability of eastern

New France to 1663 41

tribes to survive. The Huron, for example, were decimated by the

twin swords of disease and Iroquois attacks in the late 1640s. Several

Jesuit priests, including Brébeuf, were tortured and killed in the raids.

The tragic story of the Huron makes a dramatic, yet not unusual,

example of the difficult position in which Native peoples found

themselves. Even in the light of the historic conflicts that predated the

arrival of Europeans, their various connections with European-based

peoples put them into a vicious cycle of disease, violent clashes, and

distorted trading patterns. Over time this dramatically eroded their

numbers and sapped their ability to maintain control over territory

that they had used for generations.

The bustling city along the St. Lawrence that represents the social

and economic capital of modern Quebec was founded by a religious

order in 1642. Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, a soldier working

for the Société de Notre-Dame, obtained a grant to set up a religious

community at the location of the former Iroquois settlement of

Hochelaga. Supporting the enterprise was an energetic and extra-

ordinary laywoman, Jeanne Mance. Given its position as a western

outpost during the early development of New France and being close

to Iroquois raiding parties, the tiny settlement never truly fulfilled its

original mandate to be a religious beacon to Native peoples in the

hinterland. Instead, after struggling for years and all but dropping its

missionary role, Montreal, as it would be called after its famous

outcropping named by Jacques Cartier, would emerge as one of New

France’s key trading and financial centers.

New France by 1663

Manifold problems plagued the hundreds of settlers who made their

way to New France in the several decades after its inception. An

inadequate labor supply and low number of permanent settlers

remained important issues. Clearing land from the dense forest was a

backbreaking enterprise. The colony received only marginal attention

from France; poor administrators oversaw its trading companies.

Intense and sustained warfare with the Iroquois through the early

1660s depleted supplies and discouraged settlement. By the time that

the crown took direct control over the fate of New France, there

42 New France by 1663

were roughly 3,000 settlers. This number paled in comparison with

the nearly 90,000 English and Dutch colonists to the south. But with

the reinvigorated attention of the French monarch, New France

received a boost that would ensure more positive developments.

Significantly, it would also make the colony a more attractive target

for the English and their American colonists (see “A Portrait of Life in

New France” in the Documents section).

NOTE

1. Olive Dickason, Canada’s First Nations (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,

1992), 82.

New France by 1663 43

Chapter 3

The Age of New France

(1663–1763)

The Rise and Fall of New France

Samuel de Champlain and a handful of settlers returned to Quebec in

1633 and reestablished a colony that struggled to survive into the

1660s. With royal attention and an infusion of funding, New France

then flourished as an agricultural, fur trading, and commercial

outpost for the French well into the eighteenth century. Although

modest in numbers compared with the English and Dutch settlements

to the south, the French experiment in the New World succeeded in

clearing land along the St. Lawrence system using a land grant

system that borrowed heavily from European feudalism. The French

gained an excellent sense of the continent’s interior with a fur trading

network that extensively relied on Native peoples. Dedicated religious

missionaries pushed into the hinterland in an attempt to convert

Amerindians. Throughout this period, the French and their allies

clashed periodically with the Iroquois, one of the strongest tribal

networks in the Northeast. In Acadia another colonial enterprise

prevailed, separated by geography from New France and distin-

guished by different immigration patterns and relationships with

Native peoples.

Unfortunately for the peoples of New France, the relative successes

of the colony helped to seal its fate as the rising tide of imperial

The Rise and Fall of New France 45

The pivotal battle on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec during the Seven Years’ War. This illustration depicts the French forces under the

Marquis de Montcalm and the British forces under James Wolfe during the clash on 13 September 1759.

Source: Library and Archives Canada / National Archives of Canada, Print Collection / C-001078

competition gained momentum. Mastery of the lucrative fur trade,

strategic control of the commanding St. Lawrence water system, a

persistent clash of cultures and religions, and a desire to maintain

a presence in the Great Lakes region and the territory west of the

Appalachian Mountains led to a large-scale rivalry for continental

control. Wars, followed by unsatisfactory peace treaties, character-

ized the period from the late seventeenth century into the late

eighteenth century. With the final collapse of New France at the

hands of the English and their Am erican colonial allies came a

crushing reality for the roughly 70,000 French in North America.

They experienced bitter defeat and abandonment by an imperial

regime that found the possession of Caribbean sugar islands more

attractive than the scrappy Canadian settlements. The rise and fall

of New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries set the

stage for an often contentious relationship between the French and

English that underscores a g reat deal of Canadian history.

Royal Control and Governance

Unlike in the English colonies, where royal control irritated the

relationship between colonists and imperial masters, the French

experiment in the New World received new life with a monarch’s

attention. In 1663 New France became a royal colony, a formal

province of France. The youthful Louis XIV assumed direct control of

the troubled colony. He relied on an able administrator, Jean-Baptiste

Colbert, to engineer the colony’s economy, settlement, and defense.

Crafted in a classic mercantilist framework, New France was to be a

tightly knit series of settlements that would be relatively self-sufficient

and defensible. It would serve as a New World trading center, a

source for furs, timber, and minerals, and a market for manufactured

goods from France.

The colony’s power structure operated in a hierarchical fashion,

with governing authority delegated from the crown through ministers

such as Colbert. While the appointed Sovereign Council held the

responsibility for military protection, land grants, and justice, real

control lay in the hands of three individuals: the governor general,

the bishop, and the intendant. No mechanisms for self-governance

Royal Control and Governance 47

existed. While English settlers in some American colonies adopted the

practice of town meetings, New France fashioned an elitist political

culture. Yet despite the autocratic structure, New France’s inhabi-

tants enjoyed a degree of freedom that stood in dramatic contrast to

contemporary European peasants.

The governor general represented the crown’s interest in the

colony. His duties were a mixture of the ceremonial and functional.

The governor was responsible for diplomacy, including relations

with Native peoples, and he essentially supervised military affairs.

New France’s g overnors came from the nobility, and many had

military expertise. The best example of a dynamic governor in the

seventeenth century was Count Louis de Buade Frontenac, who

gained a reputation as the “fighting governor” on both sides of the

Atlantic. Self-assured and energetic, he ordered forts to be constructed

in the Lake Ontario region. During his two terms as governor (1672–

1682, 1689–1698), Frontenac expanded the French connections to

the interior, galvanized the fur trade, and proved himself a fearful

opponent as New France clashed repeatedly with the Iroquois and

the English.

A second important council member was the bishop, the leader

of the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population in New France.

Given the centrality of religion in shaping political and social events

in contemporary France, the head of the Roman Catholic church in

the New World became an essential ingredient of colonial govern-

ance. By design few Protestants lived in New France, and given the

missionary impulse of several Catholic orders in the colony, the

bishop potentially wielded a great deal of influence. Indeed, he often

played a crucial function in shaping the course of civil affairs.

Illustrative of the power that an aggressive and committed bishop

could exercise was François de Laval. A seventeenth-century cleric,

Laval created a parish system, established a seminary, and developed

schools for arts and crafts. Although the bishop’s impact on governing

the colony faded over time, the church maintained a central role in

determining political and social matters. For example, it became a

major landholder in New France. One religious order, the Sulpicians,

controlled vast portions of Montreal island.

The intendant, a bureaucratic position, rounded out the govern-

ing elite. Intendants controlled justice, finances, and even military

matters because governors required their support to pay for troops

48 Royal Control and Governance

and purchase supplies. In the late seventeenth century, intendants

instituted a justice system based on a French model, the coutume de

Paris. New France’s first intendant after the colonial restructuring,

Jean Talon (1665–1672), proved to be one of the most influential in

the colony ’ s history. Faced with the imperative of bringing settlers

to clear land and develop agricultural settlements, Talon and his

officers drafted town plans and sponsored a variety of industries to

provide goods for colonial use, such as shipyards and a brewery. He

attempted to improve the fisheries, timber production, and livestock

development and sought to diversify the colony’s agricultural output.

Many of his designs to create lasting industries and villages were not

successful in the long run; nevertheless, his contributions as an

effective bureaucrat helped to increase the colony’s population. In the

hands of a skilled administrator, the intendant position wielded

tremendous power.

The Peoples of New France

Given the rigors of surviving the transatlantic passage and adapting

to life in the New World, New France appealed only to certain kinds

of people. Historians have determined that while most colonists came

from the French lower orders, they were rarely destitute. Many of the

settlers came from Normandy and western France, while cities,

especially Paris, provided soldiers and large numbers of the filles du

roi, young women transported to New France at the crown’s expense.

Many single males made their way to the colony for three-year

terms of labor. For their promise to work, these engagés received

passage both ways, modest wages, and room and board. The system

was designed to attract some permanent settlers to the colony as well

as to provide a temporary labor pool, but it lacked a requirement for

the workers to remain in the colony once their terms had expired.

Probably fewer than half the engagés remained in New France.

Military officers and enlisted personnel were another important source

of permanent settlers. Committed to protecting the fledgling colony,

France regularly sent professional troops to New France for tours of

duty. The most famous in the seventeenth century was the Carignan-

Salières regiment. Over one thousand men from this contingent

The Peoples of New France 49