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French America April 2, 2025

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.
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For the French being weak in some ways made them strong in others.  They had a colder climate, and their rivers were ice bound for a good part of the year.  This made it harder to attack them.  They had less people.  This made their presence less onerous to the Indians and caused them to seek better relations with the tribes, building alliances which helped them have the manpower necessary to stand against the more numerous British.  They had less economic activity and fewer settlements than the British.  This helped them persuade the Indians that they were less of a threat than the constantly expanding British and facilitated them drawing Indians, even ones in British claimed areas into their alliances.  This situation applied to both New France (Canada) and Louisiana.  In this way the French were able to effectively control a larger portion of North America than any other colonial power with very few people and a low expenditure of funds by the Homeland.

Contrary to their own cultural bias the French, who believed in a strict social hierarchy were forced by their relative weakness to treat the Indians as equals.  They boasted of their power and the vastness of their possessions but in most places their ownership was in name only and merely a boastful fiction on European maps.  The Indians remained sovereign in their possessions and the French were more of the officially accepted European presence in their respective areas.  They would fight with and for the French when it suited their purposes.  They would fight against the British because the British were seen as a power who sought to dispossess them from their lands and the French were only too glad to arm them in their fights with the British if not always join them in the battles.

After the British were able to take, hold and destroy the principle French settlement of Quebec in 1629 the French when they received their colony back in the resulting peace settlement set about expanding the number of inhabitants.  They did this by pressuring the Company of New France, which was the monopolistic fur trading entity which had initiated the colony to begin with, to recruit more colonists.  The French government had no direct control until 1663 when they took over the colony from the Company.  The French, always sensitive to rank and privilege used a system whereby rich men were given titles of nobility (Seigneur) and huge grants of land for equipping ships and sending over colonists.

The colonists that France did send were mostly young single men who were without a means of support in France and thus susceptible to the offer of passage to America if it meant a regular supply of food.  Few families immigrated and few single women.  In addition, many of the young men who came as indentured servants or soldiers tended to return to France as soon as their term of service was completed.  While the new recruits did swell the population when they arrived and while they remained the constant flow of people back to France and the lack of women precluded the French from keeping pace with the rapidly multiplying British.

Much thought has gone into the question of why France, the most powerful, populous and expansive power in Europe during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries were not able to overwhelm the rapid growth of the British colonies with numbers and materiel?  This cannot be explained when we compare the available labor pools of the two countries.  The peasants in France were even poorer than the peasants in the British Isles.  Instead, the difference might be found in the ties which still bound the peasants in France to the land.  In England the enclosure movement had severed this tie for many and forced them into the cities where they eked out a wretched existence making them eager for any opportunity that might present itself.  The French on the other hand while still poor, still hungry and still with little hope for an improvement were tied to the belief that owning their little farms was the only thing between them and utter destitution.  In the end it may have been the lack of an urban poor in great enough numbers that proved the undoing of the French colonial effort.

Another problem which hampered the development of New France was its location and its climate.  Being so far north New France had a climate which was much harsher than that of France itself making it unappealing and also unsuited for the crops which had proven to be the economic lifeblood of American colonies, sugar, tobacco and rice.  The few things that did flourish, such as wheat and livestock were too bulky and hard to ship to make them profitable as exports.  Even the fur trade, which had been the original economic impetus for the founding of the colony, was sporadic at best and since Britain was constantly shipping furs too this was a trade with high competition and fluctuating returns.

And then there was the eternal war with the Five Nations.  The French had stumbled into a perpetual war with the largest and best organized confederation of Indian nations in North America.  As allies of the Huron they had participated in several early attacks upon the unsuspecting Iroquois who were not yet used to European weapons or tactics.  They had inflicted serious causalities on people armed with only Stone Age weapons and in the bargain they had gained an implacable foe.   The people of France had heard of the savage Iroquois and this knowledge did not do anything to help inspire people to volunteer to leave everything they had ever known to brave the cold for a new life in a New World.

Life in New France

When compared to the lives they left behind in Europe those French who did make the journey and stayed in New France to become free Habitants found themselves in a much better situation then could have been expected looking at all the negatives previously mentioned.  They typically lived on 100 acres of land they rented from one of the Seigneurs.  This was much larger than any piece of land they could hope to control in France.  They could hunt and fish as much as they wanted.  In France this was reserved only for Nobles.  They had diet built upon meat and bread both of which were always in short supply for the poor in France.  Even their housing which was usually tight and warm thanks to the ready supply of building materials and firewood was superior to what the typical poor person would expect in France.

Government

In the development of New France and the British North American colonies we see a laboratory in the differences and the different result of a paternalistic, authoritarian, highly centralized command society competing against one based upon individual initiative, free enterprise and decentralized control.

The French had a highly centralized monarchy that believed in divine right.  The King ruled with no interference from a parliament or council as King Louis XIV, who was king from 1661 to 1715 once said, “I am the State.”  The French were accustomed to following orders and suffering the consequences if they didn’t.  The French government was used to absolute control over the economy and the population, and they expected their North American colonies to fit the mold and fulfill the vision of the king.

To begin with the French instituted an awkward three headed system of government meant to keep any one person from becoming too strong and which resulted in such internecine competition there was more deadlock than there was administration.  There was a Governor-general charged with overall command, an Intendant in charge of civil matters, and a catholic Bishop.  Each had their own constituency at the royal court.  Each had their own agenda.  And each fought the other two for control.  

There was no elected assembly as in the British colonies.  Instead, there was a Sovereign Council appointed by the king and composed of 5 to seven Seigneurs in addition to the Governor-general, the Intendant and the Bishop.  This council held all executive, legislative and judicial power.  And this was a unitary power.  There were no local governments in town, county or township as in the British colonies.

The military obligation was universal, all males between the ages of 16 and 60 were members of the militia and liable to call-up at any times.  Everyone was enrolled in a company and every company had a captain.  The captains served as local law and civil enforcement officers.  Once again, as in all authoritarian states, fearing anyone gaining too much power, these captains were always habitants instead of Seigneurs.

The strict stratification of France was translated to New France.  There were more noblemen in New France than in the more densely inhabited colonies of Britain and Spain combined.  The great land grants given to the Seigneurs could not be sold or subdivided, ensuring that great estates would remain a part of the landscape and keep the inhabitants from becoming landowners.  The Seigneurs were expected to live in the royal towns of Quebec and Montreal maintaining a colonial version of a courtly society.  And it was the Seigneurs who were given nearly every commission in the army, posts in the civil service and licensees to conduct the fur trade.  This reinforced the class system and at the same time restricted most of the people and their talents from building a better and more prosperous society.

The Second New France

In name there was one unified colony, New France, there were two distinct areas each with their own situation.  In the valley of the St. Lawrence River the French followed the pattern of most colonies; they built settlements and the slowly spread out into the interior as their population grew. This is where the largest portion of the population settled, and this is the area that is usually considered when discussions turn to New France in relation to the British colonies.

But this was only one section.  Beyond the Great Lakes stretching west to the Mississippi and beyond was what the French called the Upper Country.  This was a vast area that was the home of the fur trader.  A few scattered settlements, small and completely dependent on the larger and more powerful Indian tribes with which they interact.

There were a few forts, and a couple of towns however, by 1750 this vast area had only a population of approximately 2,000 while at the same time the population in the St. Lawrence valley had reached 52,000.  The few towns and forts often acted as almost semi-independent districts.  The distance from the royal authority weakened the hand of the king’s representatives and the near proximity and power of the Indians often forced the local commanders to act in contravention to royal orders and in conformity to local realities.

The Iroquois had driven most of the French allied tribes out of the east and many had fled their homelands finding refuge in great inter-tribal refugee camps west of Lake Michigan.  They moved away from the shores of the Great Lakes to avoid the relentless pillaging and kidnappings of the Five Nations, but they found that the further they retreated the further the Iroquois pursued.  The only hope they and the French had was their unity against their mutual enemy. 

Besides their monopoly on European manufactured goods the French used another stratagem in their quest to penetrate the vast Upper Country and to tap its resources.  More than their British contemporaries the French married into the tribes.  They would take an Indian wife thus making themselves a member of a family and clan system.  The new wife became an interpreter and teacher, a guide and a helpmate.  These familial alliances were indispensable to the French colonial effort in the Upper Country and became a lasting feature in the area.  Eventually the offspring of these numerous marriages formed their own villages and a distinct culture blending the native and the European ways.

In the rough country beyond the Great lakes in many ways the French were the smallest and the weakest of the tribes.  The refugees from the east and the indigenous peoples were all better suited to life in the woods than were the French.   All had traditions and skills that stretched back thousands of years, all adapted to living in the woods and sustaining themselves off the land.   The French by comparison were babes in the woods.  They needed guides just to get around and instructions to do the simplest of tasks.  How could they hope to claim suzerainty over the tribes or ownership over the land?

In native culture there was a long tradition, as in all chiefdom type societies of giving gifts to fulfill ceremonies and to seal bargains.  The refugees had barely enough to survive and precious little to use as gifts and therefore, they could not fulfill the traditions.  This is where the French wisely inserted themselves.  They took it upon themselves to supply the grave goods needed for any who died.  They supplied the trade goods necessary to facilitate peace treaties between tribes thus bringing order out of the chaos caused by the mass migration of the Iroquois’ victims, gaining for themselves a place among the tribes and the ability to claim the lands at least among other Europeans.

Louisiana

This area was first reached by French explorers led by La Salle following the Mississippi to its mouth.  Upon realizing the vast extent of the Mississippi watershed and the strategic value of controlling a waterway that traversed the continent La sale convinced the crown to establish a royal colony at the mouth of the great river.  However, when he returned with a fleet of ships and colonists, he was unable to find the mouth of the river and established a colony some miles away in what is now Texas.  This proved to be a disaster that cost La Salle his life and the colony dissolved and returned to France.  A later effort was more successful, and a colony was established which fortified the mouth of the river and pushed inland attempting to link up with traders coming down the river from the Upper Country (Canada).

The French Louisiana colony never gained many inhabitants and of those that did come many were convicted criminals and slaves.  As in the West Indies, the slaves came to outnumber the free inhabitants.  The French stood between the expanding British colonies of Carolina and Georgia and the Spanish to the west.  They welcomed many colonists from the West Indies seeking a better opportunity than they could find in the overcrowded little islands.  

Louisiana never developed a profitable export trade and was always a drain upon the royal treasury.  The weakness of the colony, its situation between two other larger colonial powers pressed home the vulnerability of their situation upon the French.  Consequently, unlike the British colonies Louisiana had a permanent military garrison which further reinforced the French authoritarian and centralized characteristics to the further detriment to the economic and social development of the colony.

As in New France Louisiana was made up of two distinctly different areas.  There was the plantation core which was analogues to the valley of the St. Lawrence River.  Here the European settlers were occupying the land and reshaping it into a plantation system with slaves and expanding civilization.  Then there was the vast interior, which was only nominally controlled by France, but which was in reality still Indian country.

The French treated any Indians they could as mere nuisances to be cleared from the land as they would trees.  Further upriver as the relative strengths of the two parties changed the French showed great deference for the culture and feelings of the Indians.  In the ground in between there was trouble.

The Natchez Indians maintained substantial portions of the ancient Mississippian culture from which they had evolved.  They had the ceremonial mounds, the intricately carved temples and the chiefdom style of government.  The French felt secure enough to begin brow beating the Natchez acting as if they were a subject people even though they were still greatly outnumbered.  In 1729 the Natchez staged a well-coordinated attack upon the French, and they easily overwhelmed them.  The French were only able to maintain their position by enlisting the traditional enemies of the Natchez the Choctaw and together the destroyed the Natchez.

After this rebellion it was abundantly clear to French colonial authorities that the only way to maintain their security was through alliance with powerful Indian allies.  From this point on the policy of the French was to use the Indians as their militia one tribe against another and as auxiliaries against both the Spanish and the British.

Conclusion

All in all, the French North American colonies were a disappointment to the crown.  They never became self-sufficient.  They were a constant drain upon the royal treasury.  They became a cause of war and vulnerability during war.  The French were never able to gain real possession of the land due to their small numbers and they were thus always held in the embrace of often unequal alliances with powerful tribes.  Where the colonies of Britain and Spain enhanced the power of the home countries the French colonies were always detrimental and more of a source of pride than of strength.

From The Book America: Chapter One: Colonial History by Dr. Robert Owens Available at Amazon in paper back and Kindle.