French colonization of the Americas
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French colonization of the Americas began in the 16th century, and continued as France established a colonial empire in the 17th century. Major French colonies were located in Canada and the Mississippi River Valley, along the Gulf coast in what is today Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, on the Caribbean islands of Hispaniola, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucie, and at French Guiana in South America. Most colonies were developed to export products such as fish, sugar, and furs.
As they colonized the New World, the French founded cities such as Quebec and Montreal in Canada, and Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, Mobile, Alabama, Biloxi, Mississippi, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and New Orleans, Louisiana in the United States.
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[edit] Canada and the Great Lakes
The French colonies at Acadia and in what would become Canada were initially based around fishing in the Grand Banks. Soon however, the French became very interested in the fur trade, and this led them to push their colonies further inland to better trade with American Indian tribes. French interest in the area begin with the founding of Tadoussac in 1599. In 1603, Samuel de Champlain made his first trip to North America on a fur trading expedition. Champlain would prove instrumental in expanding New France. In 1608, he created a fur trading post that would grow into the city of Quebec, a settlement that later became the capital of French North America. At Quebec, Champlain forged alliances between France and the Huron and Ottawa against their traditional enemies, the Iroquois. Champlain and other French traders then continued exploring North America, using the birch bark canoe to move quickly across the Great Lakes and their tributary rivers. By 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet had pushed as far west as present day Wisconsin.
Although the French gained a large territory throughout Canada and the Great Lakes region, settlement in the area was sparse. New France had just 2,500 settlers by 1666. The colony grew slowly at first because France only took interest in fur trade and not colonizing. In 1663, this strategy changed with the arrival of Louis XIV upon the throne of France. He immediately sent ships containing 775 women (“les filles du roy") for the mostly male populated French Canadian demography serving in the fur trade posts. In only ten years, the population tripled to 7,000 inhabitants, reaching 15,000 in 1689, and 85,000 by 1754.
In the wake of the French traders and voyageurs came several French Jesuits who attempted to Christianize many native groups through the establishment of missions, such as Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. In the meantime, French Huguenots established self-governing colonies beyond the control of the French state: for example, Huguenot refugees founded New Paltz, New York in the 1660s, part of a large Huguenot migration to the nominally Dutch New Netherland. These Huguenots, led by Louis Dubois, formed an early self-governing unit called the duzine, made treaties with the local Native Americans to purchase land from the Hudson River to the mountains, and otherwise prospered even after the English took control of the Hudson River and New York. (The village today boasts the oldest street in the United States with the original stone houses).
[edit] Louisiana
New France began to grow south and west of the Great Lakes after 1673, when Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet canoed across present day Wisconsin via the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway to discover the Mississippi River. From here, they followed the river south to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Afraid that they were drawing too near to areas of Spanish influence, the explorers turned north in Arkansas and returning to the Great Lakes, this time via the Illinois and Chicago rivers through present day Chicago.
Following the journey of Marquette and Jolliet, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle traveled the Mississippi to its delta, claiming the river's entire watershed for France in 1682 and naming the territory Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of France. This gave France control of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Plains in addition to their holdings in the Great Lakes and Canada, and soon Frenchmen such as Nicholas Perrot were establishing trading posts and forts in the new territory.
In 1684, La Salle attempted to solidify French control over the Mississippi Valley by establishing a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. La Salle left France with 4 ships and 300 colonists, but the expedition was plagued by pirates, defensive Indians and poor navigation. They set up Fort Saint Louis, near Victoria, Texas. The colony lasted only until 1688, when local Indians overpowered the 20 remaining adults, and took 5 children as captives. The colony of Louisiana was ultimately founded in 1699 and its capital, New Orleans, in 1718. France soon came into conflict with Great Britain, whose colonies bordered French colonies in several places. This led to the French and Indian Wars (the name given to the American phase of the Seven Years' War).
[edit] Decline of the French in North America
Following the French defeat in the Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Paris of February 10, 1763, divided French territory on the North American continent between the British and the Spanish. The sole exception was the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the Canadian coast, retained as a fishing outpost. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are France's only remaining possessions north of the Caribbean.
The French were able to briefly regain some of their former possessions in North America from the Spanish in 1800, during the Napoleonic Era, under the Treaty of San Ildefonso. In 1803 Napoleon began planning the invasion of England and sold colonial Louisiana to the United States, a sale referred to as the Louisiana Purchase. The purchase opened the way for 19th century American settlers.
[edit] West Indies
The French were also responsible for the settlement of the nation of Haiti, the nation which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, as well as the islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucie and St. Martin (which is now shared with the Netherlands Antilles) and their immediate areas. The western one-third of the Hispaniola was ceded to the French, by the Spanish crown in 1697 and the French gained more land in 1795, which established a legitimate French colony on the island. After the French were driven out by a slave revolt in 1804 (the first and only successful revolution by Africans in the New World), Haiti gained independence. In Martinique throughout the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, slavery was never abolished. However, Guadeloupe is unique in these French colonies because slaves gained independence for a brief period from 1795 (due to pressures by the French Revolution, the convention in Paris performed this task and sent Victor Hugues to implement the new law) to the reinstatement of the institution of slavery by Bonaparte in 1802.
[edit] South America
French Guiana was first settled by the French in 1604. It remains an overseas department of France. From 1555 to 1567, French Huguenots, under the leadership of vice-admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, made an attempt to establish the France Antarctique in Brazil, but were expelled. From 1612 to 1615, a new failed attempt was made in São Luís, Brazil.
[edit] See also
- Atlantic world
- French and Indian Wars
- French colonial empire
- New France
- French in Canada
- French in the United States
- Illinois Country
- Haiti
[edit] References
- The French Founders of North America and Their Heritage, Sabra Holbrook, Atheneum, New York, 1976, hardback, ISBN 0-689-30490-0
Note: As the French and Indian War started two years earlier and ran until the peace treaty, the Seven Years War is more properly the European phase of the French and Indian War.
