New France in America 16th Century

New France in America 16th Century
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New France in America 16th Century
Despite the fact that France was one of the late colonizers of North America, it owned the greater part of Canada and the U.S, extending from Newfoundland to Louisiana, not excluding the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes. At the end of 1750, France was losing a considerable part of its colony to the growing British North America because of its failure to accommodate a large population (Mathieu, 2013). In 1524, Giovanni di Verrazano was ordered by King Francis I to explore routes through North America to Asia.
Still, Verrazano did not return with knowledge of the Atlantic coasts that stretched from Carolina to Nova Scotia. Ten years later, finding gold deposits and the mysterious sea route to the Orient, three voyages were directed by Jacques Cartier, a member of Verrazano’s excursion. He navigated through the St. Lawrence River, mounting a cross displaying the king’s emblem to possess a territory where present-day Montreal and Quebec are located (Mathieu, 2013). Departing in 1541, Cartier’s troop founded the small temporary protectorate of Charlesbourg-Royal, just close to Montreal, resulting in conflict with the local tribes including the Iroquois.
Their conquest was concluded because of the rough winter they are experiencing and the scurvy affecting the crew members. Interestingly, at the end of all these voyages, Cartier returned to France with only fool’s good that convinced him he found gold.

Though journeys authorized by the king ended after Cartier’s unpromising last expedition, French fishers retained a strong presence in North America like the French fur traders that exchanged with the aboriginal tribes. These opportunities rekindled the French’s interests in North America.
The Early Period of New France
Samuel de Champlain was not in the army but a cartographer employed a company involved in the fur trade. However, it was his governance skills during the revived French voyages of the 1600s that lead to him being the ‘father’ of New France and subsequently, its first administrator. Eight years later, Champlain and his crew selected a site on St. Lawrence River as their center for fur trading (Mathieu, 2013). The leader created partnerships with numerous Indian clans such as the Huron. Additionally, Champlain advocated for the existence of a more enduring French colony along St. Lawrence. Two years after his passing, Cardinal Richelieu chose Champlain as the ruler of New France.
However, the interests of the French were not limited to only colonizing and claiming Eastern Canada. The conquest of the fur traders into North America in the search for pelts and its suppliers facilitated their establishment of colonies and further journeying. In 1673, Père Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet applied the information that they obtained from the locals to find a way to the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean (Mathieu, 2013). Marquette, a missionary to the tribes inhabiting Michigan, perished after the arduous excursion on the banks of River Père Marquette. Jolliet, who had abandoned his missionary work for the fur business, later traveled through Hudson Bay and plotted the Labrador coast.
Four years later, René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de LaSalle, who had moved to New France, advanced further in France’s exploration ambitions. According to Mathieu (2013), he reached the river’s estuary in 1682 and colonized the vast Mississippi Valley calling it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV. Lasalle’s motivations which were influenced by self-indulgence and insanity did not cease. The adventurer’s dreams of conquering Spanish Mexico for his mother country were ended when his supplies were depleted and his life taken by his crew in 1687 (Mathieu, 2013). In 1701, Rising from an affluent community in Montreal, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville assumed leadership of France’s new southern colonies and struggled for 40 years to maintain safety in his small territory despite hostility from Britain, India, and Spain. Bienville headed the establishment of New Orleans in 1718 making it an executive hub.
The French did not possess an adequate population like the British in the formative years of their conquest. Moreover, they gave minimal enticement to encourage its inhabitants to persevere through the thundery Atlantic, dangerous weather conditions, and the regularly aggressive local peoples. Mathieu (2013) reveals that, initially, the limited presence of France in Canada was approximately 80% males comprised of Jesuit and Franciscan ministers, fishers, and fur dealers.
The Indians called these people the Black Robes and these priests wanted to convert them to Catholicism (Choquette, 2005). Sainte-Marie, which was an early religious group on the Wye River constructed in 1615, was chosen as the headquarter for 13 clerics by 1639. At the start of the war between the Huron and their Iroquois adversaries, the ministers torched their center in fear of its defilement. From 1627 to 1663, a central commercial enterprise initiated by Cardinal Richelieu strained to earn revenue from New France, prospering exclusively with the fur trade.
Men were delegated to safeguard the colonies and to expand French’s authority to local clans and European opponents. A crown-approved consignment of 850 potential wives called filles du roi who were intended to stabilize the settlement and guarantee the normal growth of its population. As a result, New France was populated by 19000 people by 1700 (Mathieu, 2013). Under the administration, the lands of St. Lawrence River would be reserved for armed constables and courtiers. Closely resembling a primitive structure, it was termed the seigneurial system. The occupants of New France were mostly farmers on land that was held by two hundred seigneuries appointed by the king. This leaseholder farming arrangement of rent payment and allocations endured French jurisdiction, continuing into the 19th century.
Usually, voyageurs were certified by the ruling classes: their contenders were the coureurs de bois, unlicensed merchants who determinedly reconnoitered the extreme extents of French America, incorporating New Orleans, in search of expensive furs, specifically beaver pelts, and marketplaces for their animal coatings and other merchandises.
Trials to France
Contrasted with the British and Spanish in this time, French settlers treated Native Americans with incredible regard (Salisbury, 1992). Benevolent relations with neighborhood Indian tribes were significant to French achievement in the fur exchange; colonials were likewise very much aware that their numbers were too little to prevent real assaults. From the Indian perspective, the way that Frenchmen were not coming in enormous numbers guaranteed some tribal pioneers that they could exist together with these intruders. Then again, great purposes on both sides did little to save the Indians from deadly smallpox and other European infections. Jesuit weight on Indians to receive Catholicism, alongside European apparel and conduct, despite it pulling in many proselytes, was, for the most part, met with doubt (True, 2012). There were many incidences of intermarriage, frequently between French men and Indian ladies, leading to a population called Métis.
Eastern families, the Huron, and other Great Lakes started producing solid coalitions with the French in 1615, but conflicts with the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, partners of Britain, interrupted the historical backdrop of New France. New France’s vast lands were a rope that enclosed Britain’s Atlantic Seaboard provinces, prompting several quarrels between the two European colonists, both at home and in North America (Cavanagh, 2014). The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that finished the 12-year-long battle of the Spanish Succession allowed Britain control over a huge segment of eastern French Canada comprising the productive farming grounds of Acadia and devastated a lot of France’s foreign trade. When war again happened again in 1754, the number of inhabitants in British North America was 20 times bigger than New France’s, and France’s grasp of North America was close to its end (Cavanagh, 2014). At the point when French head Napoleon I gave Louisiana to the new United States in 1803, New France was the past, in spite of the fact that its French Canadian and Cajun societies would live and prosper.

References
Cavanagh, E. (2014). Possession and dispossession in corporate New France, 1600–1663: Debunking a “juridical history” and revisiting terra nullius. Law and History Review, 32(01), 97-125. doi:10.1017/s0738248013000679
Choquette, L. (2005). Religious conversion in New France: The case of Amerindians and immigrants compared. Quebec Studies, 40, 97-110. doi:10.3828/qs.40.1.97
Mathieu, J. (2013, April 9). New France. Retrieved from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-france/
Salisbury, N. (1992). Religious encounters in a colonial context: New England and New France in the seventeenth century. American Indian Quarterly, 16(4), 501. doi:10.2307/1185295
True, M. (2012). Travel writing, ethnography, and the colony-centric voyage of the Jesuit relations from New France. American Review of Canadian Studies, 42(1), 102-116. doi:10.1080/02722011.2012.649922