New France

From the early sixteenth century, thousands of fishermen-traders from Basque, Breton, and Norman ports crossed the Atlantic each year to engage in fishing, whaling, and fur trading, which they regarded as their customary right. In the seventeenth century these rights were challenged as France sought to establish an imperial presence in North America, granting trading privileges to certain individuals and companies to enforce its territorial and maritime claims. Bitter conflicts ensued, precipitating more than two dozen lawsuits in French courts over powers and privileges in New France. In Disputing New France Helen Dewar demonstrates that empire formation in New France and state formation in France were mutually constitutive. Through its exploration of legal suits among privileged trading companies, independent traders, viceroys, and missionaries, this book foregrounds the integral role of French courts in the historical construction of authority in New France and the fluid nature of legal, political, and commercial authority in France itself. State and empire formation converged in the struggle over sea power: control over New France was a means to consolidate maritime authority at home and supervise major Atlantic trade routes. The colony also became part of international experimentations with the chartered company, an innovative Dutch and English instrument adapted by the French to realize particular strategic, political, and maritime objectives. Tracing the developing tools of governance, privilege granting, and capital formation in New France, Disputing New France offers a novel conception of empire – one that is messy and contingent, responding to pressures from within and without, and deeply rooted in metropolitan affairs.

This book surveys the social history of New France. For more than a century, until the British conquest of 1759-60, France held sway over a major portion of the North American continent. In this vast territory several unique colonial societies emerged, societies which in many respects mirrored ancien regime France, but which also incorporated a major Aboriginal component. Whereas earlier works in this field presented pre-conquest Canada as completely white and Catholic, The People of New France looks closely at other members of society as well: black slaves, English captives and Christian Iroquois of the mission villages near Montreal. The artisans and soldiers, the merchants, nobles, and priests who congregated in the towns of Montreal and Quebec are the subject of one chapter. Another chapter examines the special situation of French regime women under a legal system that recognized wives as equal owners of all family property. The author extends his analysis to French settlements around the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley, and to Acadia and Ile Royale. Greer's book, addressed to undergraduate students and general readers, provides a deeper understanding of how people lived their lives in these vanished Old-Regime societies.

Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. She dreams with her best friend, Madeleine, of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman. But in 1669, Laure is sent across the Atlantic to New France with Madeleine as filles du roi. The girls know little of the place they are being sent to, except for stories of ferocious winters and Indians who eat the hearts of French priests. To be banished to Canada is a punishment worse than death. Bride of New France explores the challenges Laure faces coming into womanhood in a brutal time and place. From the moment she arrives in Ville-Marie (Montreal) she is expected to marry and produce children with a brutish French soldier who himself can barely survive the harsh conditions of his forest cabin. But through her clandestine relationship with Deskaheh, an allied Iroquois, Laure finds a sense of the possibilities in this New World. What happens to a woman who attempts to make her own life choices in such authoritative times?

This comprehensive wine atlas leaves no centimeter of terroir unexplored. After a thorough introduction to France, French winemaking and the concept of terroir, Jefford (Wine Tastes Wine Styles) gets to the heart of the matter with lengthy chapters on each of France's 14 regions. Each of these consists of an overview of the region and its history, profiles of the area's major winemakers, a description of the land and listings and descriptions of the local wineries. Some of the latter are lengthy, while others are brief, but all include an address and phone number, making this book useful as a guidebook as well. Jefford is refreshingly opinionated: the Loire Valley is in the throes of a "long and refined stone age," while Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace is the domain "most emblematic of the New France as a whole." The effort here is encyclopedic, but the writing rises above the usual dry discussion, comparing the quest to understand Burgundy to doing crossword puzzles. Even the most matter-of-fact information is presented with a certain flair: in a description of the Rhone Valley, Jefford explains that the area's mistral wind is both destructive and useful, in that it blows away "fugs and fungal diseases." Numerous maps and photographs-including portraits of the winemakers profiled-and a full list of vintages round out this entertaining addition to its field.

The individual and cultural upheavals of early colonial New France were experienced differently by French explorers and settlers, and by Native traditionalists and Catholic converts. However, European invaders and indigenous people alike learned to negotiate the complexities of cross-cultural encounters by reimagining the meaning of kinship. Part micro-history, part biography, Religion, Gender, and Kinship in Colonial New France explores the lives of Etienne Brulé, Joseph Chihoatenhwa, Thérèse Oionhaton, and Marie Rollet Hébert as they created new religious orientations in order to survive the challenges of early seventeenth-century New France. Poirier examines how each successfully adapted their religious and cultural identities to their surroundings, enabling them to develop crucial relationships and build communities. Through the lens of these men and women, both Native and French, Poirier illuminates the historical process and powerfully illustrates the religious creativity inherent in relationship-building.

Though the French and British colonies in North America began on a 'level playing field', French political conservatism and limited investment allowed the British colonies to forge ahead, pushing into territories that the French had explored deeply but failed to exploit. The subsequent survival of 'New France' can largely be attributed to an intelligent doctrine of raiding warfare developed by imaginative French officers through close contact with Indian tribes and Canadian settlers. The ground-breaking new research explored in this study indicates that, far from the ad hoc opportunism these raids seemed to represent, they were in fact the result of a deliberate plan to overcome numerical weakness by exploiting the potential of mixed parties of French soldiers, Canadian backwoodsmen and allied Indian warriors. Supported by contemporary accounts from period documents and newly explored historical records, this study explores the 'hit-and-run' raids which kept New Englanders tied to a defensive position and ensured the continued existence of the French colonies until their eventual cession in 1763.

The face of today's France does not resemble its forebear of a quarter century ago; it is more like its European neighbors. Searching for the New France provides an in-depth, historical account of the changes that have swept France over the past three decades and explores the political challenges that confront the country today. An array of distinguished international scholars examine changes in French politics, society, and the economy. The compilation is both comprehensive and topical in its coverage, and is unique in the broad-based, historical, and interpretive nature of its essays. The study will be invaluable to a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences

The first priority of French missionaries was the conversion of the native population. Education was an important tool in the evangelization campaign because they believed that conversion was best secured when preceded and underscored by religious instruction. As Canada evolved into a French colony the religious orders increasingly turned their attention to the education of the children of French settlers. The period saw the establishment of a number of petites écoles (elementary schools), a Jesuit college for boys, and several trade schools. As Magnuson demonstrates, provision for education in the colony declined during the eighteenth century. First, membership in religious orders dwindled, reducing their capacity to serve the educational needs of an expanding population. Second, as the population of the colony grew, with more inhabitants born in Canada than in France, different values and priorities developed. The written word, notes Magnuson, held less attraction for the Canadian, who preferred the active life of the frontier.