Quebec and the fur trade
An empire built on rivers and alliances, not on fields
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New France was the French colonial domain in North America, with Quebec on the St Lawrence as its seat from 1608. The difference is structural and explains much of the continent's later map. English colonisation required land and displaced those living on it; the French fur trade required partners and entered marriages and alliances with them. That gave France enormous geographical reach with a few thousand people, and lasting alliances — but also a thin population that could not hold the territory when war came in 1754.
For children
The French founded Quebec on the St Lawrence and built a trading network that followed the rivers all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. They were few, and they depended on cooperation with Indigenous nations who supplied the furs. New France therefore looked nothing like the English colonies.
Sources
- White, The Middle Ground (1991)
- Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec: Nouvelle-France
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