French colonization of the Americas

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in much of eastern North America, on several Caribbean islands, and in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, rice, sugar, and furs.

The first French colonial empire stretched to over 10,000,000 km² (3,900,000 sq mi) at its peak in 1710, which was the second largest colonial empire in the world, after the Spanish Empire.^[1][2]

As they colonized the New World, the French established forts and settlements that would become such cities as

(founded as Saint-Louis de Maragnan) in Brazil.

North America

Background

The French first came to the New World as travelers seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean and wealth. Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I, King of France. In 1524, Francis sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean. He would find parts of New York Harbor. The French would take narrow land ports of the Boroughs Queens and Brooklyn from the upper and lower parts of the harbor until 1609 when the British and the Dutch came to take control of it from the French Verrazzano. He would later give the names Francesca and Nova Gall to that land between New Spain and English Newfoundland, thus promoting French interests.^[3]

Colonization

In 1534, Francis I of France sent

.

The European settlement of

In 1704 the

These additional outbreaks of disease and a series of floods resulted in Bienville ordering that the settlement be relocated in 1711 several miles downriver to its present location at the confluence of the

Antoine Crozat

was appointed to take over administration of the colony, its population had reached 400 persons.

The capital of La Louisiane was moved in 1720 to Biloxi,^[9] leaving Mobile to serve as a regional military and trading center. In 1723 the construction of a new brick fort with a stone foundation began^[9] and it was renamed Fort Condé in honor of Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon.^[10]

In 1763, the

The French were eager to explore North America but New France remained largely unpopulated. Due to the lack of women, intermarriages between French and Indians were frequent, giving rise to the

stated:

"Spanish civilization crushed the Indian; English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him."

— Francis Parkman.[13]

To boost the French population, Cardinal Richelieu issued an act declaring that Indians converted to Catholicism were considered "natural Frenchmen" by the Ordonnance of 1627:

"The descendants of the French who have accustomed to this country [New France], together with all the Indians who will be brought to the knowledge of the faith and will profess it, shall be deemed and renowned natural Frenchmen, and as such may come to live in France when they want, and acquire, donate, and succeed and accept donations and legacies, just as true French subjects, without being required to take no letters of declaration of naturalization."^[14]

French Florida

In 1562,

This irritated the Spanish who claimed Florida and opposed the

Canada and Acadia

The French interest in Canada focused first on fishing off the

near Tadoussac).

Champlain needed to report his findings to

.

In 1608, Champlain founded a fur post that would become the city of

Following the capitulation of Quebec by the Kirke brothers, the British occupied the city of Quebec and Canada from 1629 to 1632. Samuel de Champlain was taken prisoner and there followed the bankruptcy of the Company of One Hundred Associates. Following the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France took possession of the colony in 1632. The city of Trois-Rivières was founded in 1634. In 1642, the Angevin Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière founded Ville-Marie (later Montreal) which was at that time, a fort as protection against Iroquois attacks (the first great Iroquois war lasted from 1642 to 1667).

Despite this rapid expansion, the colony developed very slowly. The Iroquois wars and diseases were the leading causes of death in the French colony. In 1663 when

From 1689 to 1713, the French settlers were faced with almost incessant war during the

Louisiana

On May 17, 1673, explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi River, known to the Sioux as does Tongo, or to the Miami-Illinois as missisipioui (the great river). They reached the mouth of the Arkansas and then up the river, after learning that it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not to the California Sea (Pacific Ocean).^[23]

In 1682, the Normand

In 1698,

in 1702.

From 1699 to 1702, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville was governor of Louisiana. His brother succeeded him in that post from 1702 to 1713. He was again governor from 1716 to 1724 and again 1733 to 1743. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville commanded a French expedition in Louisiana. He founded the city of New Orleans, in homage to

.

Louisiana immigration

In 1718, there were only 700 Europeans in Louisiana. The

to emigrate.

Prisoners were set free in Paris in September 1719 onwards, under the condition that they marry prostitutes and go with them to Louisiana. The newly married couples were chained together and taken to the port of embarkation. In May 1720, after complaints from the Mississippi Company and the concessioners about this class of French immigrants, the French government prohibited such deportations. However, there was a third shipment of prisoners in 1721.[25]

The Mississippi Company arranged for hundreds of German immigrants to move to Louisiana by ships in 1721. Charles Frederick d'Arensbourg was a leader of the settlement called the German Coast. By the end of 1720, the Mississippi Company failed. Later, more Germans immigrated to Louisiana during the 1750s and 1770s.^[26]

Dissolution

The last French and Indian War resulted in the dissolution of New France, with Canada going to Great Britain and Louisiana going to Spain, although mainly absent. French colonists descendants or "Canadiens" that had settled in the Valley of Ohio, migrated into the Spanish territory West of the Mississippi and were instrumental in pushing further West toward the Pacific through their longer experience of the new continent and its native inhabitants. Only the islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon are still in French hands.

In 1802 Spain returned Louisiana to France, but

original heartlands.

West Indies

A major French settlement lay on the island of Hispaniola, where France established the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island^[27] in 1664. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles", Saint-Domingue became the richest colony in the Caribbean due to slave plantation production of sugar cane. It had the highest slave mortality rate in the western hemisphere.^[28] A 1791 slave revolt, the only ever successful slave revolt, began the Haitian Revolution, led to freedom for the colony's slaves in 1794 and, a decade later, complete independence for the country, which renamed itself Haiti. France briefly also ruled the eastern portion of the island, which is now the Dominican Republic.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, France ruled much of the

of France in 2007.

South America

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1. Brazil

France Antarctique (formerly also spelled France antartique) was a French colony south of the Equator, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which existed between 1555 and 1567, and had control over the coast from Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio. The colony quickly became a haven for the Huguenots, and was ultimately destroyed by the Portuguese in 1567.

1555 First settlement

On November 1, 1555, French vice-admiral

(then a Catholic statesman, who about a year later would become a Huguenot), an admiral who supported the expedition and would use the colony in order to protect his fellow believers. To the still largely undeveloped mainland village, Villegaignon gave the name of Henriville, in honour of Indians of the region, who were fighting the Portuguese.

1557 Calvinist arrival

Unchallenged by the Portuguese, who initially took little notice of his landing, Villegaignon endeavoured to expand the colony by calling for more colonists in 1556. He sent one of his ships, the Grande Roberge, to Honfleur, entrusted with letters to King Henry II, Gaspard de Coligny and according to some accounts, the Protestant leader John Calvin.

After one ship was sent to France to ask for additional support, three ships were financed and prepared by the king of France and put under the command of Sieur De Bois le Comte, a nephew of Villegagnon. They were joined by 14 Calvinists from Geneva, led by Philippe de Corguilleray, including theologians Pierre Richier and Guillaume Chartrier. The new colonists, numbering around 300, included 5 young women to be wed, 10 boys to be trained as translators, as well as 14 Calvinists sent by Calvin, and also Jean de Léry, who would later write an account of the colony. They arrived in March 1557. The relief fleet was composed of:

1. The Petite Roberge, with 80 soldiers and sailors was led by Vice Admiral Sieur De Bois le Comte.
2. The Grande Roberge, with about 120 on board, captained by Sieur de Sainte-Marie dit l'Espine.
3. The Rosée, with about 90 people, led by Captain Rosée.

Doctrinal disputes arose between Villegagnon and the Calvinists, especially in relation to the Eucharist, and in October 1557 the Calvinists were banished from Coligny island as a result. They settled among the Tupinamba until January 1558, when some of them managed to return to France by ship together with Jean de Léry, and five others chose to return to Coligny island where three of them were drowned by Villegagnon for refusing to recant.

Portuguese intervention

In 1560 Mem de Sá, the new Governor-General of Brazil, received from the Portuguese government the command to expel the French. With a fleet of 26 warships and 2,000 soldiers, on 15 March 1560, he attacked and destroyed Fort Coligny within three days, but was unable to drive off their inhabitants and defenders, because they escaped to the mainland with the help of the Native Brazilians, where they continued to live and to work. Admiral Villegaignon had returned to France in 1558, disgusted with the religious tension that existed between French Protestants and Catholics, who had come also with the second group (see French Wars of Religion).
Urged by two influential Jesuit priests who had come to Brazil with Mem de Sá, named

on the French forces and decisively expelled them from Brazil, but died a month later from wounds inflicted in the battle. Coligny's and Villegaignon's dream had lasted a mere 12 years.

2. Equinoctial France

Equinoctial France was the contemporary name given to the colonization efforts of France in the 17th century in South America, around the line of Equator, before "tropical" had fully gained its modern meaning: Equinoctial means in Latin "of equal nights", i.e., on the Equator, where the duration of days and nights is nearly the same year round.
The French colonial empire in the New World also included

.

History of France équinoxiale

France équinoxiale started in 1612, when a French expedition departed from Cancale, Brittany, France, under the command of Daniel de la Touche, Seigneur de la Ravardière, and François de Razilly, admiral. Carrying 500 colonists, it arrived in the Northern coast of what is today the Brazilian state of Maranhão. De la Ravardière had discovered the region in 1604 but the death of the king postponed his plans to start its colonization.
The colonists soon founded a village, which was named "Saint-Louis", in honor of the French king

prayed the first mass, and the soldiers started building a fortress. An important difference in relation to France Antarctique is that this new colony was not motivated by escape from religious persecutions to Protestants (see French Wars of Religion).
The colony did not last long. A Portuguese army assembled in the Captaincy of Pernambuco, under the command of Alexandre de Moura, was able to mount a military expedition, which defeated and expelled the French colonists in 1615, less than four years after their arrival in the land. Thus, it repeated the disaster spelt for the colonists of France Antarctique, in 1567. A few years later, in 1620, Portuguese and Brazilian colonists arrived in number and São Luís started to develop, with an economy based mostly in sugar cane and slavery.

French traders and colonists tried again to settle a France Équinoxiale further North, in what is today French Guiana, in 1626, 1635 (when the capital, Cayenne, was founded) and 1643. Twice a Compagnie de la France équinoxiale was founded, in 1643 and 1645, but both foundered as a result of misfortune and mismanagement. It was only after 1674, when the colony came under the direct control of the French crown and a competent Governor took office, that France Équinoxiale became a reality. To this day, French Guiana is a department of France.^[30]

See also

Notes

References

Further information: Bibliography of Canadian history § Prior to 1763

• Brecher, Frank W. Losing a Continent: France's North American Policy, 1753-1763 (1998)
• Dechêne, Louise Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal (2003)
• Eccles, W. J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1983)
• Eccles, W. J. Essays on New France (1988)
• Eccles, W.J. The French in North America, 1500-1783 (Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1998.), a standard scholarly survey
• Havard, Gilles, and Cécile Vidal, "Making New France New Again: French historians rediscover their American past," Common-Place (July 2007) v 7
• ISBN 978-0-271-08007-9
• Holbrook, Sabra (1976), The French Founders of North America and Their Heritage, New York: Atheneum,
  ISBN 978-0-689-30490-3
• Katz, Ron. French America: French Architecture from Colonialization to the Birth of a Nation. Editions Didier Millet, 2004.
• McDermott, John Francis. The French in the Mississippi Valley (University of Illinois Press, 1965)
• McDermott, John F., ed. Frenchmen and French ways in the Mississippi Valley (1969)
• Marshall, Bill,ed. France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (3 Vol 2005)
• Moogk, Peter N. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada -A Cultural History (2000). 340 pp.
• Trudel, Marcel. The Beginnings of New France 1524-1663 (1973)
• White, Sophie. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

In French

• Balvay, Arnaud. L'épée et la plume: Amérindiens et soldats des troupes de la marine en Louisiane et au Pays d'en Haut (1683-1763) (Presses Université Laval, 2006)
• Balvay, Arnaud. La Révolte des Natchez (Editions du Félin, 2008)
• Halford, Peter Wallace, and Pierre-Philippe Potier. Le français des Canadiens à la veille de la conquête: témoignage du père Pierre Philippe Potier, SJ. (Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1994)
• Moussette, Marcel & Waselkov, Gregory A.: Archéologie de l'Amérique coloniale française. Lévesque éditeur, Montréal 2014.
  ISBN 978-2-924186-39-8
  (eBook)