The French Regime (1608–1760): Foundations, Mercantilism, Seigneuries and Royal Administration
The French Regime section covers 1608–1760: how New France was founded, settled, governed and tied to the metropolitan economy. Expect questions on the mercantilist logic behind the colony, the seigneurial system's landholding rules, royal administration after 1663, and the alliance networks and conflicts that shaped relations with Indigenous nations.
Foundations and governance
- 1608: Champlain founds Québec; fur-trade monopolies are granted to companies (Company of One Hundred Associates, 1627).
- 1663: Louis XIV makes New France a royal province. Power is shared: the governor (war and diplomacy with Indigenous nations), the intendant (justice, police, finance; Jean Talon from 1665), the bishop (church, education, hospitals) and the Sovereign Council (advisory and judicial).
- Talon's policies - immigration, the king's daughters, incentives for large families - raise the population to roughly 55,000 by 1760, but the colony remains overwhelmingly rural.
Mercantilism
The colony exists to supply the metropolis with raw materials (furs, fish, timber) and to buy its manufactured goods. Trade monopolies, the exclusif, export duties and navigation rules serve the mother country, not the settler, who resents the shortage and cost of imported goods.
The seigneurial system
The Crown grants large tracts to seigneurs, who owe fealty and aveu et dénombrement. Censitaires receive long, narrow lots along the river (rangs) and owe cens et rentes, the corvée, lods et ventes on sale, and use of the moulin banal for a fee. It organizes settlement, rank and land use, but it is not private property in the modern sense.
Relations with Indigenous peoples
Alliances were essential to the fur trade: Huron-Wendat and Algonquin partners, coureurs des bois and voyageurs travelling inland, Jesuit missions - but also epidemics, the Iroquois wars and the Great Peace of Montreal (1701). The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceded Acadia, Newfoundland and Hudson Bay.
Worked example
A concession contract states that the censitaire must grind wheat at the seigneur's mill and pay one-fourteenth on sale. Reasoning: the mill clause (banalité) shows economic control; the sale fee (lods et ventes) shows the land is held, not owned; both point to a hierarchical society organized by seigneurial tenure rather than a market in land. Answer in the chain obligation → hierarchy → settlement pattern.
Traps
- Confusing governor and intendant.
- Dating royal government to 1608 rather than 1663.
- Claiming mercantilism enriched colonists.
- Treating Indigenous peoples as passive subjects rather than as treaty partners and military powers.