Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

The Canadien Community

By the middle of the 18th century, New France had evolved into a vig-

orous colony with a distinctively hierarchical and Catholic society.

Already the colonists were referring to themselves as Canadiens, reﬂ ect-

ing their consciousness of an identity unique from the French in France

(Stanley 1968, 272). The French ofﬁ cer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville,

who came to Quebec in 1757, was struck by the apparent differences

between the French and the Canadiens: “We seem to belong to another,

even an enemy nation.”

More than three-quarters of the Canadien population lived in com-

pact village communities, farming their seigneurial plots along the St.

Lawrence countryside. The seigneur was the natural leader of the com-

munity, enjoying considerable respect and social prestige even though

he was not wealthy and usually had to work the land as hard as his ten-

ants did. The government attached esteem to this position because

seigneurs were so essential to colonization. The church also honored

the seigneur with a special pew as well as a privileged role in religious

processions, festivals, and other observances. Although he was not a

member of a privileged aristocracy as was the noble in France, the sei-

gneur was regarded by his tenants as a man of rank and inﬂ uence

whose advice they could readily seek.

Despite the sharp social distinction that existed between the seigneur

and his tenants, the economic gap was often modest. As an independent,

self-reliant farmer, the censitaires enjoyed a better standard of living and

much more personal freedom than did their peasant counterparts in

France (Greer 1997). They were assured of as much land as they could

cultivate in return for seigneurial dues that amounted to little more than

10 percent of their annual income from the land, and they paid no taxes

to the government. Because of the favorable position of the censitaires in

New France, it became increasingly common to refer to them as habi-

tants (inhabitants) rather than peasants, which they regarded as a

derogatory term. If the habitants were dissatisﬁ ed with their seigneurial

leadership, they could turn for support and guidance to the captain of

militia, who was chosen from among their ranks to be responsible for

the organization and training of the local militia and for supervising the

royal corvée. Indeed, the habitants’ main struggle was not against the

treatment that they received from their social “betters” but rather with

the limited amount of fertile soil and the difﬁ cult climate of New France,

which similarly challenged their seigneurial masters.

By 1760 nearly one-quarter of the population lived in the three major

centers of Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal. Quebec, the capital of

Canada and all of New France, was a political and cultural center with

a population of about 8,000. Montreal, with a population of about

4,500, was supplanting Quebec as the commercial center of the colony

by virtue of its strategic location at the hub of three major water routes

into the interior of the continent. While the commercial transactions

were made in Montreal, Quebec had become a warehouse center for the

fur trade. Trois-Rivières, with a population of about 800, had become a

farm service center for the surrounding countryside. The inhabitants of

these urban centers included government ofﬁ cials, military personnel,

merchants, fur traders, and skilled artisans such as carpenters and

bricklayers.

The most senior government and military ofﬁ cials and the wealthiest

merchants of Quebec and Montreal formed a small, powerful ruling

elite, known as the “beaver aristocracy.” The common interest of this

group with strong metropolitan connections was the wealth and con-

trol of the fur trade. In the colony, members of the “beaver aristocracy”

dominated the Sovereign Council or were closely associated with the

governor or intendant, thereby wielding considerable inﬂ uence and

power. They sought to enhance their social rankings by becoming sei-

gneurs over substantial tracts of land. Seigneurialism offered opportu-

nities for lesser nobles, successful merchants, and retired military

ofﬁ cers to enjoy the aura of nobility even though proprietorship of a

seigneury did not bestow nobility. Unlike their English bourgeois

counterparts who sought to become more economically prosperous,

the more ambitious entrepreneurial class of New France was preoccu-

pied with gaining entry into the ranks of the nobility or holding high

ofﬁ ce (Frégault 1954; Greer 1997). Bourgeois commercial values did

not prevail in New France. Wealth was sought not for reinvestment in

commercial expansion but rather to enable the leading merchants to

emulate the life of the French aristocracy. In Canada, it was much

easier than it was in France for an ambitious person to adopt the values

and attitudes of the nobility and to gain recognition as such. Indeed, a

Canadian of humble origin could make his fortune in the fur trade,

acquire a seigneury, and hope to move up the social ladder.

Living beyond the towns and countryside were a few hundred cou-

reurs de bois who readily adapted to the Canadian wilderness, trading

with the Natives and extending the frontiers of New France. The state

frowned on them for trading illegally, selling liquor to the Natives, and

generally defying authority when they visited the colony. The church

objected to their free-spirited behavior and the bad example that their

drinking, gambling, and carousing set for the impressionable youth in

ROYAL GOVERNMENT AND A DISTINCT SOCIETY

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

the settlement. These renegade fur traders invariably felt more at ease

with the way of life of the Native people, and through intermarriage

they produced the Métis nationality.

With the growth of settlement came the need for parish priests who

would reside in the community and minister regularly to the spiritual

and social needs of the Canadiens. But in the ﬁ rst two decades of royal

government, the Catholic Church was distracted in its mission by

clashes with civil authority and rivalry among the religious orders. The

powerful Jesuits and Bishop Laval objected to the Crown’s view that the

church was an instrument in achieving its mercantilist designs. Like the

Jesuits, Bishop Laval believed in the ultramontane perspective that the

Catholic Church was directly responsible solely to the pope in Rome.

Laval’s desire to subordinate all other groups in the colony to Jesuit

authority produced widespread friction. The other clergy resented the

Jesuits’ seemingly fanatical supervision over all social and intellectual

matters; the merchants objected to their interference with the fur trade;

civil authorities were affronted by the attempts of Laval and the Jesuits

to dictate various policies on the grounds that they affected faith and

morals. When the bishop demanded that the royal government impose

a tithe to support the church amounting to one-thirteenth of all the

produce of the land, the farmers protested so vigorously that the

amount was reduced to one-twenty-sixth of their wheat only. Conse-

quently, the Crown had to provide an annual subsidy to the clergy to

cover expenses that exceeded the amount of the tithe collected. Reﬂ ect-

ing the opposing gallican view that the church was subject to the rule

of the French Crown, Talon sought to offset the power of Laval and the

Jesuits by bringing the Recollets back to New France in 1669. They

joined the Sulpicians, who came to Montreal in 1657 and eventually

became Frontenac’s preferred religious order to neutralize Jesuit power.

After the strong-willed Laval retired in 1684, relations between the civil

and ecclesiastical powers became more tempered, and the bishops tac-

itly acquiesced to an interpretation of their spiritual authority that

avoided serious clashes between church and state.

One of Laval’s most enduring contributions to the colony was the

recruitment and fostering of a Canadien clergy in response to the colo-

ny’s chronic shortage of priests (Jaenen 1985). To train Canadiens for

the priesthood, in 1663 he founded the Grand Séminaire in Quebec,

which eventually evolved into Laval University, the ﬁ rst institution of

higher education in Canada. The seminary served as a base for the

development of a close-knit and disciplined community of parish

priests. By 1760 the colony was served by about 100 parish priests who,

with the assistance of 30 Sulpicians, 25 Jesuits, 24 Recollets, and more

than 200 nuns belonging to six religious communities, were actively

engaged in the organization and operation of schools, hospitals, and

charitable institutions. The close connection between religion and edu-

cation may account for the lack of any Canadien literary tradition. The

colony had no public library, printing press, newspaper, or other organ

of public opinion. While the church did not encourage freedom of

thought or the development of learning apart from its own teachings,

the colonists do not appear to have demanded otherwise.

Through the evolution of the parish system, the church reinforced

its position of spiritual and social leadership within the community.

The parish priest increasingly gained the respect of the habitants as a

man of Canadian background who understood their problems and who

could advise and protect them in times of need. Moreover, as settle-

ment grew, the church was able to take advantage of successive grants

of land by the Crown to supplement the shortage of income from the

collection of the tithe. By the mid-18th century, the church held over

one-quarter of the land in the colony, and more than one-third of the

population lived on church seigneuries. This substantial source of rev-

enue enabled the church to become less dependent on royal subsidies

and to carry out its social functions more effectively. In this way, the

parish church vied with the seigneurial manor as the center around

which the life of each community revolved.

The society and government of mid-18th-century New France was

characterized by a distinction between metropolitan French and Cana-

dien interests. The metropolitan group, consisting of the larger fur trad-

ers and seigneurs as well as higher civil, military, and religious ofﬁ cials,

derived its power from connections with France. This ruling elite was

committed to colonial development that enhanced their investment in

the fur trade or at least did not interfere with the progress of the colony’s

leading staple export. The Canadiens, led by successful but less afﬂ uent

seigneurs and merchants along with the parish priests, were committed

to local development of a thriving agricultural community. While the

metropolitan interests would prove to be ﬂ eeting agents of French impe-

rialism, the Canadiens would remain to perpetuate the legacy of New

France even after the impending British “conquest.”

ROYAL GOVERNMENT AND A DISTINCT SOCIETY

CLASHING EMPIRES AND

FRONTIERS (1663–1760)

he advent of royal government in 1663 not only gave rise to agri-

cultural settlement along the St. Lawrence but also revived the

sagging fortunes of the fur trade and promoted its transcontinental

expansion. For nearly a century thereafter, a small contingent of adven-

turous fur traders, explorers, and missionaries carved a vast empire

out of the North American wilderness. By the late 17th century, the

westward expansion of the French fur-trading frontier led to military

confrontation with the English empire. So long as the battle for control

of the North American frontier was primarily a clash of rival fur-trading

enterprises, then the French, with their strategic advantage of the St.

Lawrence–Great Lakes transport system, could defend their empire. But

by the mid-18th century, the French fur-trading frontier was on a colli-

sion course with the American settlement frontier, with the result that

the clash of empires would not be settled on the battleﬁ eld so much

as on the balance sheet. In the ﬁ nal showdown, the willingness of the

British taxpayer to protect the valuable thirteen colonies exceeded the

desire of the French taxpayer to support what the philosopher Voltaire

referred to as “quelques arpents de neige” (“a few acres of snow”).

The Expanding Fur Trade Frontier

In 1663 Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers

were forced to surrender three-ﬁ fths of their fur cargo for the previous

two years in lieu of ﬁ ne and dues to the Company of New France for

trading illegally in the country north of Lake Superior. Furious at this

miscarriage of French justice, Radisson and Groseilliers offered their

services to the English Crown and secured ﬁ nancial backing for a voy-

age that eventually landed in James Bay in 1669. The abundant furs

yielded by the expedition convinced a group of London-based investors

to form the chartered Company of Adventurers of England trading into

Hudson’s Bay, better known as the Hudson’s Bay Company, on May 2,

1670. The French government would have much reason to regret the

establishment of such an enduring and formidable adversary to the

north of New France. Already in 1664, New Amsterdam had been cap-

tured from the Dutch, and now New York was added to New England,

Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas to represent the English chal-

lenge to the south.

Although Colbert aimed to transform New France into a compact,

settled colony, he also realized that France had to respond by outﬂ ank-

ing the English challengers. Therefore, the intervention of royal gov-

ernment gave impetus to the expansion of the fur trade by subduing the

Iroquois threat on the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes frontier and by

encouraging exploration deeper into the interior of the continent. Col-

bert supported French expansion to the West in order to forestall

En glish traders from interfering with the fur trade and to discover a

western route to an ice-free winter port to serve Canada (Eccles 1964).

In 1671 Jean Talon sent Jean-Baptiste Saint-Lusson to the Jesuit mis-

sion at Sault Ste. Marie to lay formal claim to the western lands of the

Ottawas. In the following year, Jesuit Father Charles Albanel traveled

from Tadoussac along the Saguenay River, portaged to the Rupert

River, and reached James Bay in order to verify rumors about the

English-sponsored exploits of Radisson and Groseilliers.

French expansion westward became even more aggressive after

Governor Comte de Frontenac arrived in 1672. Immediately, he sent

Louis Joliet, the Canadian-born explorer, and Father Jacques Mar-

quette to locate the Mississippi River and to discover where it led. In

1673 Joliet and Marquette made their way from Lake Michigan to the

Mississippi and followed its southward course for 600 miles until they

reached the Arkansas River, far enough to determine that the mighty

river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico rather than the Atlantic or

Paciﬁ c Oceans. Adamant that the agricultural colony in the St. Law-

rence Valley existed merely as a base to serve the fur trade, Frontenac

acted in deﬁ ance of Colbert’s orders by building Fort Frontenac (now

Kingston) at the eastern end of Lake Ontario in 1673. With this trad-

ing post in the heart of Iroquois country, Frontenac was boldly send-

ing a message that the French fur-trading empire would not be

conﬁ ned to the now-exhausted St. Lawrence region. The Iroquois,

already preoccupied with their war with the neighboring Andastes and

Mohegan peoples, realized the wisdom of not challenging the French

at this time. Frontenac’s main opposition came from the Montreal

CLASHING EMPIRES AND FRONTIERS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

merchants who feared that the new post would drain business away

from their emerging commercial center.

Frontenac then manipulated Colbert into allowing the construction

of Fort Niagara at the western end of Lake Ontario in 1676 and a chain

of posts at the foot of Lake Michigan and on the Illinois and Mississippi

Rivers by 1680. Two years later, Frontenac’s chief trading associate,

René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Mississippi

River, which he claimed for France. Frontenac and La Salle looked for-

ward to the possibility of shipping furs to France by way of the Gulf of

Mexico, thereby opening up a western commercial empire independent

of New France. However, La Salle’s effort to start a colony at the mouth

of the Mississippi River failed and resulted in his murder at the hands

of a mutinous crew in 1687.

While Frontenac was preoccupied with southwest expansion, the

Montreal merchants were proceeding northwest in the mid-1670s with

the building of Fort Michilimackinac at the junction of Lakes Michigan

and Huron, which became a launching point for the fur trade along the

upper Mississippi and beyond Lake Superior. By 1684 Daniel Greyso-

lon, Sieur du Lhut, had established posts at Kaministiquia (Fort Wil-

liam) and Lake Nipigon, north of Lake Superior. Five years later,

Jacques de Noyon reached Lake of the Woods, west of Lake Superior.

To the north, the French Compagnie de la Baie du Nord was formed in

1682 to wage war against the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Military raids led by Charles de Troyes and Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville

wreaked havoc on the English posts from 1686 to 1697, but the Hud-

son’s Bay Company tenaciously resisted. Thus, by pushing north, west,

and south, establishing key posts where possible, France appeared

committed to an imperialist struggle for the control of the continent.

The Iroquois and their English allies could no longer afford to

respond passively to French imperialist design (Trigger 1985, 1989). In

1680 the Iroquois renewed their bid to gain control of the western fur

trade by launching an assault on the Illinois country, and the French

were once more confronted with the need to support their Native allies.

When the Iroquois entered into a formal alliance with the English at

Albany, New York, in 1684, it was clear that Native warfare would

henceforth involve rival European powers in hostilities. French mili-

tary invasions of Iroquois country in 1684 and 1687 led to an English-

aided retaliatory attack on the French settlement at Lachine (above

Montreal) in 1689. Frontenac strengthened the garrisons of the posts

before launching a massive military campaign against the Iroquois that

culminated in their defeat in 1696. By the end of the century, prolonged

warfare and disease had taken their toll on the Iroquois, and they made

peace with the French and 13 western tribes in 1701. This peace treaty

secured Iroquois neutrality in any future colonial war between France

and England and marked the end of the great Iroquois resistance to

French westward expansion. With a signiﬁ cant French presence in the

American West, the two imperial powers would ﬁ nd themselves locked

into a clash of expansionist ambitions to supplement traditional differ-

ences in Europe.

Colonial Frontier Rivalries

Friction between New France and the thirteen colonies was primarily

the outcome of trade competition on the American frontier. The out-

break of war between Catholic, feudal France and Protestant, demo-

cratic England, the leading imperial powers in Europe, merely offered

their North American colonial communities opportunities to renew

locally based hostilities. Throughout the 17th century, French and

English entrepreneurs and administrators struggled to control the

extensive North Atlantic ﬁ sheries and the lucrative fur trade. The fur

trade, in particular, entangled its European participants in traditional

Native conﬂ icts as they sought to gain the upper hand in the competi-

tion between the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes and the Hudson-Mohawk

commercial arteries. In the 18th century, however, the thirteen colo-

nies, emerging from their conﬁ ned area along the Atlantic seaboard,

collided with the forces of French expansionism that were determined

to preserve the western frontier for the fur trade.

The outcome of any conﬂ ict between the French and English colo-

nies in North America should have been a foregone conclusion, judging

by surface comparisons. The population of the thirteen colonies was 25

times larger than that of New France. The English colonies together

had a diversiﬁ ed economy built on a solid agricultural base and supple-

mented by commerce, shipping, and an embryonic manufacturing sec-

tor. The French colonies still relied upon the fur trade as agriculture

did not allow more than a subsistence living. The compact English

colonies hugging the Atlantic seaboard were more readily defensible

than was the far-ﬂ ung French empire with frontiers extending upwards

of 2,000 miles into the continental interior and nearly the same dis-

tance from north to south (Steele 1994).

That the French empire in North America survived for over a cen-

tury and a half in the shadow of a mightier English colonial presence to

the south and a resourceful corporate competitor to the north can be

CLASHING EMPIRES AND FRONTIERS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

attributed primarily to divisiveness among the Anglo-American colo-

nies arising from differences in origin, religion, or economic interests.

For example, Massachusetts and Virginia were long-time economic

rivals, as were most of the New England colonies with New York and

Pennsylvania. Some of the colonies were thoroughly indifferent to the

issues that sustained the imperial conﬂ ict. The people of Pennsylvania,

Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas believed that the Appalachian

Mountain ranges to the west shielded them from French attack. Only

the fur traders of New York with eyes on the St. Lawrence trading net-

work and the Massachusetts merchant ﬂ eets interested in expanding

their North Atlantic shipping prospects actively participated in the

colonial struggle against the French. Even in New York, which bor-

dered on New France, descendants of the original Dutch settlers living

in the northern part of the colony had little inclination to support a

struggle that they saw as beneﬁ cial only to the Albany merchants or the

king of England. In the ﬁ nal analysis, whereas the fur trade was the

backbone of the Canadian economy and well worth ﬁ ghting for, it was,

on the whole, a relatively marginal enterprise in the Anglo-American

colonies, generally not worth risking one’s life or property in its defense

(Eccles 1964).

Furthermore, the St. Lawrence colony was naturally well-situated to

ward off an English intrusion. The wisdom of Champlain’s selection of

Quebec as an effective military base for garrisoning and defending the

St. Lawrence colony from an attack by sea was proven on several occa-

sions. Upstream, a network of forts on the Richelieu River and the

southern end of Lake Champlain blocked English access to the St. Law-

rence via the Hudson-Mohawk waterway. Even the American frontier

itself worked in favor of the French colony as the heavily forested

Appalachian Mountain chain offered additional protection from a

direct assault from the south. Forest warfare tended to favor the French

who were more skillful at guerrilla tactics derived from decades of

ﬁ ghting the Iroquois. French forces were bolstered by adventurous

coureurs de bois and their Algonquian allies were particularly adept at

hit-and-run border raids against English settlements. In their attempts

at retaliation, the English beneﬁ ted from Iroquois support in the 1680s

and 1690s. But after the peace treaty of 1701, most tribes remained

neutral or began to view the encroaching American settler as the chief

threat to their traditional way of life.

When roused to action, English colonial forces tended to rely on

their maritime strength to strike at the military heart of New France. In

1690, the year after the outbreak of King William’s War in Europe, a

New England naval expedition led by Sir William Phips set out to cap-

ture both Port Royal and Quebec. Although Port Royal had scarcely

1,000 settlers who were more concerned with tilling their farms than

with expansionist designs, the English saw Acadia as a base from which

France might seek to control the north Atlantic ﬁ sheries and to develop

a competing trade with the West Indies. Port Royal was also a haven

from which privateers operated in times of war to prey on New England

shipping. When the French recruited the Abenaki, Malecite, and Mic-

mac for frontier raids on New England settlements, the necessity to

remove the Acadian threat became more imperative. An invasion force

of 700 New Englanders easily overpowered a garrison of about 100

French troops and destroyed Port Royal. Launching an attack on Que-

bec, the Phips’ expedition arrived too late in the season and had to cut

short its massive assault to avoid the risk of entrapment in the St. Law-

rence ice. Further plans to attack Quebec fell through for lack of help

from England, and Port Royal was returned to France by the Treaty of

Ryswick in 1697.

By the end of King William’s War, France was already in the process

of revising its strategic interests in its North American empire. The

huge glut of furs in the warehouses of France had dramatically reduced

the economic beneﬁ t of the Canadian beaver trade. But rather than

retreat from the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley, as some French

government ofﬁ cials were urging, King Louis XIV and his minister of

marine Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain decided to maintain the

western posts for political reasons. Henceforth, the western posts

became necessary to keep the Natives within the French alliance, which

was in turn vital for preventing Anglo-American expansion into the

West. Accordingly, d’Iberville was instructed to establish a colony,

which he called Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River in

1699. The establishment of New Orleans as their main base in Louisi-

ana in 1718 was designed to consolidate French control over the lower

Mississippi Valley and thereby halt the advance of the English into the

southwest. To maintain French control of the upper Great Lakes region

and thus block English access to the northwest, Antoine de la Mothe de

Cadillac fulﬁ lled royal orders to build a new settlement, known as

Détroit (the straits), at the narrows between Lakes Erie and Huron in

1701. The existing French fur-trading posts in the Mississippi Valley

and the Great Lakes basin would be fortiﬁ ed, and where required, new

ones would be constructed. From Acadia on the north Atlantic coast,

up the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes, and down the Mis-

sissippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, a cordon was to be drawn at the

CLASHING EMPIRES AND FRONTIERS