North American colonies claimed by France from the 16th-c, including Canada, Acadia, and Louisiana. Their economy was based largely on the fur trade, subsistence agriculture, and fisheries. The population totalled 70 000 at its peak. Canada and Acadia were lost to the British incrementally up to 1763; Louisiana was sold to the USA in 1803.
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This article is part of the series: History of Canada |
| New France |
| Canada under British Imperial Control (1764-1867) |
| Post-Confederation Canada (1867-1914) |
| Canada in the World Wars and Interwar Years |
| History of Canada (1945-1960) |
| History of Canada (1960-1981) |
| History of Canada (1982-1992) |
| History of Canada (1992-Present) |
| Military history |
| Economic history |
| Constitutional history |
| Timeline |
New France (French: la Nouvelle-France) describes the area colonized by France in North America during a period extending from the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River, by Jacques Cartier in 1534, to the cession of New France to the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1763. At its peak in 1712 (before the Treaty of Utrecht), the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to Lake Superior and from the Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. However, France was initially not interested in backing up these claims with settlement. French fishing fleets, however, continued to sail to the Atlantic coast and into the St. Lawrence River, making alliances with First Nations that would become important once France began to occupy the land.
The vast territories of forested wilderness that were to be known as Acadia and Canada were, in some areas, inhabited by nomadic Amerindian peoples or settlements of Hurons and Iroquois.
Foundation of Quebec
In 1608, sponsored by Henry IV of France, Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec with six families totalling 28 people, the first successful settlement in what is now Canada. He also arranged to have young French men live with the natives, to learn their language and customs and help the French adapt to life in North America.
For the first few decades of Québec's existence, there were only a few dozen settlers there, while the English colonies to the south were much more populous and wealthy. Cardinal Richelieu, adviser to King Louis XIII, wished to make New France as significant as the English colonies. In 1627, Richelieu founded the Company of One Hundred Associates to invest in New France, promising land parcels to hundreds of new settlers and to turn Québec into an important mercantile and farming colony. Champlain was named Governor of New France. Protestants were required to renounce their faith to establish themselves in New France;
At the same time, however, the English colonies to the south began to raid the St. Lawrence valley, and, in 1629, Québec itself was captured and held by the British until 1632.
The French Catholic Church, which after Champlain’s death was the most dominant force in New France, wanted to establish a utopian Christian community in the colony.
The transport infrastructure in New France was all but nonexistent with few roads and canals.
Royal takeover
In the 1650s, Montreal still had only a few dozen settlers and a severely underpopulated New France almost fell completely to the Iroquois attempts to drive out the French. In 1663, New France finally became more secure when Louis XIV made it a province of France. The government of the colony was reformed along the lines of the government of France, with the Governor General and Intendant subordinate to the Minister of the Marine in France. In 1665, Jean Talon was sent by Minister of the Marine Jean-Baptiste Colbert to New France as the first Intendant.
The 1666 census of New France was conducted by France's intendant, Jean Talon, in the winter of 1665-1666. It showed a population of 3215 habitants in New France, many more than there had been only a few decades earlier. As a result, and hoping to make the colony the centre of France's colonial empire, Louis XIV decided to dispatch more than 700 single women, aged between 15 and 30 (known as les filles du roi) to New France. At the same time, marriages with the natives were encouraged and indentured servants, known as engagés, were also sent to New France.
Talon also tried to reform the seigneurial system, forcing the seigneurs to actually reside on their land, and limiting the size of the seigneuries, in an attempt to make more land available to new settlers.
Since Henry Hudson claimed Hudson Bay, James Bay and surrounding territory for the English, they began expanding their boundaries across what is now the Canadian north beyond the French-held territory of New France. In 1670, with the help of French coureurs des bois, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, the Hudson's Bay Company was established to control the fur trade in all the land that drained into Hudson Bay. In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle explored the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and claimed the entire territory for France as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. Although there was virtually no colonization in this part of New France, many strategic forts were built there, under the orders of Governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac. Forts were also built in the older portions of New France that had not yet been settled.
In 1689, the English and Iroquois began a major assault on New France, after many years of minor skirmishes throughout the English and French territories. In 1713, peace came to New France with the Treaty of Utrecht. Although the treaty turned Newfoundland and part of Acadia (peninsular Nova Scotia) over to Britain, France remained in control of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Fortress Louisbourg, as well as Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) and part of what is today New Brunswick.
After the treaty, New France began to prosper. These years of peace are often referred to by the French as New France's "Golden Age", but the aboriginal peoples regarded it as a time of continued decimation of their nations. Both France and New France were unable to relieve the siege, and Louisbourg fell. France attempted to retake the fortress in 1746 but failed. It was returned to France under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, but this did not stop the warfare between the British and French in North America. In 1754, the French and Indian War began as the North American phase of the Seven Years' War (which did not technically begin in Europe until 1756), with the defeat of a Virginia militia contingent led by Colonel George Washington by the French troupes de la marine in the Ohio valley.
Fall of New France
New France now had over 50,000 inhabitants, a massive increase from earlier in the century, but the British American colonies greatly outnumbered them, with over one million people (including a substantial number of French Huguenots). It was much easier for the British colonists to organize attacks on New France than it was for the French to attack the British. In 1755, General Edward Braddock led an expedition against the French Fort Duquesne, and although they were numerically superior to the French militia and their Indian allies, Braddock's army was routed and Braddock was killed. This was essentially the death sentence of New France. The garrison in Québec surrendered on September 18, and by the next year New France had been completely conquered by the British. The last French governor-general of New France, Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, surrendered to British Major General Jeffrey Amherst on September 8, 1760. France finally ceded Canada to the British in the Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763.
French culture and religion remained dominant in most of the former territory of New France, until the arrival of British settlers led to the later creation of Upper Canada (today Ontario) and New Brunswick. A Franco-Spanish alliance treaty returned the territory to France in 1801, allowing Napoleon Bonaparte to sell it to the United States in 1803. Translated into French as: De France à paysans : modernité et tradition dans le peuplement du Canada français.
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