New france

The Viceroyalty of New France (French: Vice-royauté de Nouvelle-France) or Viceroyalty of New France (Vice-royauté de la Nouvelle-France), generally known as New France (Nouvelle-France), was the territorial entity of the French colonial empire that included all the French colonies in North America, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River to the Mississippi Delta, passing through the territory of the Ohio Valley. It existed for a good part of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries and was the main French colony at this time. Its existence can be framed in the period that extends from the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 until the cession of these territories to Great Britain and Spain after the Treaty of Paris of 1763.

History

First scans

In 1524, Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the eastern coast and named the new territory Francesca, after King Francis I of France. In 1534, Jacques Cartier raised a cross on the Gaspé peninsula and claimed the lands in the name of Francis I. Cartier's first two voyages were aimed at finding a passage to the east, while the third sought to discover the legendary kingdom of Saguenay and the establishment of a permanent colony on the banks of the San Lorenzo. In 1534 he reached the Iroquois territory, specifically the Stadakoné camp, and kidnapped the chief's two sons to take them to France. In 1535 he returned them and reached the Iroquois village of Hochelaga, which he named La Chine. He was also the first to bring diseases, to recruit Indians by force and to carry out violent behavior, which led to clashes with the Iroquois. In August 1541, the French expedition with 500 settlers under its charge, which sought to conquer the territory, was forced to establish a fortified colony due to the resistance of the Iroquois; the fort was named Charlesbourg-Royal and was on the site of today's Cap-Rouge district in Quebec. A second fort was built on a cliff overlooking the colony, to improve its protection. Having given everyone a job to do, on September 7, Cartier set out on a reconnaissance ship with a small escort, in search of that famous kingdom of Saguenay. However, bad weather and rapids prevented him from reaching the Ottawa River.

Cartier returned to Charlesbourg-Royal to find the colony fighting the Iroquois for its survival. After a difficult winter, Cartier became aware of the lack of manpower and resources to protect the fort and find the kingdom of Saguenay. He returned to France in June 1542. That same month three French ships arrived with 200 more colonists. After Cartier's departure, the sieur de Roberval took command of Charlesbourg-Royal as lieutenant general of New France, a position granted by the king. After a year the colony saw its attempts at conquest frustrated above all by the hostility of the Iroquois natives, who, with their continuous attacks, drove the colonists to despair; therefore, at the end of 1543 the French decided to escape the Iroquois siege and return to France.

After this bad experience, France was not interested in backing the claim through settlements. French fishing boats continued across the Atlantic to the St. Lawrence River and established alliances with Indian tribes that were of notable importance once France began to occupy the land. French traders realized that the St. Lawrence River region produced fur, especially beaver pelts that were hard to find in Europe, as the European beaver was near extinction. Finally, the French crown decided to colonize the territory to ensure and extend its influence in America.

New France's territorial evolution between 1534 and 1763.

1700.

1756.

The vast territories, which became known as Acadia and Canada, were inhabited by nomadic Amerindian peoples; there were also Huron and Iroquois settlements. An Iroquois settlement near present-day Montreal is indicated in the work of Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The lands were full of untapped natural resources that attracted the attention of Europeans. By 1580, French companies had been established and ships chartered to carry furs to Europe. The interaction between natives and Europeans in this second period is largely unknown, due to the lack of historical documents. Subsequent attempts to establish permanent settlements ended in failure. In 1598 a trading post was established on Sable Island off the Acadian coast, but was unsuccessful. In 1600 another post was established at Tadoussac (now the province of Quebec), but only five colonists survived the winter. A settlement was founded on Santa Cruz Island (Île-Saint-Croix) in 1604, moved to Port-Royal in 1605, abandoned in 1607, reestablished in 1610, and finally destroyed in 1613.

Heyday

New France in its largest extension in 1710.

The first attempts to colonize the territories bordering the Mississippi had resulted in resounding failures. Quebec was founded in 1608 and Montreal in 1642. The colonies grew slowly, partly because religious minorities were not allowed to settle; New France was only Catholic.

By the middle of the XVII century French penetration was fairly modest (the 1666 New France population census yielded a population of 3,215 inhabitants). Due to these failures, in 1663 King Louis XIV decided to take matters into his own hands and the colonization of America came under the strict control of the French crown. From then on there was an incredible boost to colonization. Having explored the valley of the river to its mouth, from Canada, in 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, named the great central belt of the territory Louisiane (Louisiana), after King Louis XIV. In 1684 he had left France with four ships and three hundred colonists to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. The Louisiana colony was founded in 1699 and its capital, New Orleans, in 1718. France soon came into conflict with Great Britain, whose colonies bordered on the French colonies in several places.

Cast from Louisiana and Canada (1763) between Great Britain and Spain, which in turn delivered to the British Florida.

At its largest (before the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht), the territory of New France stretched from the island of Newfoundland to Lake Superior and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. At this time the territory reached its territorial and political apogee. It was divided into five colonies, each with its own administration: Canada, Acadia, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Louisiana.

Fall and end

The proximity to the British colonies, given the increasing extensions of New France, could only provoke new conflicts, especially after the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1756 the conflict broke out in Europe, which was to be the Seven Years' War, which also had a war front in the American colonies. The conflict here was called the Franco-Indian War (and was already the fourth colonial confrontation between the two powers) and lasted nine years. At first it had a clear French predominance, although the final result was favorable to Great Britain when it conquered Canada. Peace was reached with the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763 and meant the loss of all French continental possessions (and, therefore, the end of New France), since it had to ceding Louisiana to Spain in compensation for the loss of Florida to the British. Spanish Louisiana was under Spanish sovereignty for forty years, until 1803, when Carlos IV handed over the territory to Napoléon Bonaparte (then consul of the French Republic) in the Treaty of Aranjuez (1801). This second French sovereignty did not last long, because the following year it passed to the United States through the Sale of Louisiana.

Demographics

The French settlers who populated the French province of Canada came mainly from the former French provinces of Aunis, Brittany, Normandy, Poitou, Saintonge and the French Basque Country.

Fonts

Bibliography