From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Immigration Policy/Harold Troper
The French and British imperial authorities initially responsible for colonizing northeastern North America did not differ markedly in their approach: they sought to promote permanent settlement as quickly as possible without draining the human and financial resources of the home country. The creation in 1627 of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés by Louis XIII’s first minister, Cardinal Richelieu, marks an initial attempt in this regard. Richelieu himself headed the company, choosing his business partners from among royal officials, noblemen, and merchants, who were each required to invest equal sums in the venture. In exchange for a monopoly of trade over the colony, the company agreed to establish 4,000 settlers, all Catholics and preferably soldiers or artisans, over the next fifteen years.
The arrangement reflected a number of the cardinal’s hopes and concerns. He believed that colonization was too important to be left to merchants whose main interest was personal gain. Richelieu also anticipated that the First Nations allied to the French would convert en masse to Catholicism, become fully sedentary, and mix with the European settlers, thus giving the colony a solid population base without jeopardizing France’s own vital demographic growth. Native converts would therefore be granted all the rights and privileges of the king’s subjects. If Richelieu insisted on religious homogeneity, it was not only to protect the colony against the sectarian strife that had devastated France, but also to ensure the rapid assimilation of the First Nations. He anticipated that New France would eventually become a landed society in which a privileged class would live off the toil of the peasantry. It would be a largely self-sufficient entity in matters of defence and labour. The English occupation of the colony from 1629 to 1632, however, proved ruinous to the Compagnie des Cent-Associés and dashed Richelieu’s ambitious plans. What immigration occurred in the next thirty years was due to the initiatives of religious communities and private patrons, who sponsored male and female indentured labourers for land clearance and domestic service.
A second attempt at state-sponsored immigration was made in the first decade after Louis XIV’s accession to the throne in 1663. The military and economic power of the Iroquois was seriously menacing France’s hold on North America. Colbert, the man who soon became the king’s chief minister, met this threat with decisive action that resulted in the settlement of some 2,000 more immigrants, almost as many as the total population in 1663. Most were single young adults without skills or kinship ties in their land of adoption. Two-thirds of the 1,100 male immigrants were soldiers sent to quell the Iroquois. Following their discharge, the king granted them land according to their rank, as well as money and materials to assist them in settling. The others were indentured labourers who signed three-year contracts to work in New France, primarily to clear the land for agriculture. They were recruited in the homeland by merchants and ships’ captains whose zeal was excited by the fact that the Crown paid their passage and guaranteed their placement in the colony. Finally, to redress the gender imbalance – men between the ages of twenty and forty-five outnumbered women by a factor of two or three – the king agreed to transport about 800 filles du roi and provide them with a dowry. Many of these women were orphans from diverse social backgrounds living in institutions and sure to face a life of misery if they remained in France. Except for disbanded soldiers, who continued to receive generous inducements to settle in the colony, the Crown’s involvement in immigration stopped abruptly in 1673 when Louis XIV’s priorities shifted decisively towards French expansionism in Europe. He and his policy makers still expected that French colonists would mix with the native peoples, thus creating a strong, stable, and hierarchical population living off the land.
Coming at such a critical time in New France’s history, state-sponsored immigration undoubtedly gave the colony a much needed boost. However, the significance of the Crown’s involvement should not be exaggerated since about half the 5,000 people who settled in New France in the seventeenth century came through private, rather than state, sponsorship. Factors such as proximity to a port of embarkation and the presence of a relative in the colony were just as likely to spur immigration. And for every settler who struck root, two more returned home in spite of state policy discouraging repatriation. They were drawn back to France by the frequent warfare and the dearth of marriageable women in the colony, as well as by the more stable family environment at home.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the British conquest of 1759 almost as many people crossed the Atlantic to try their fortune in New France, but even fewer – perhaps 3,500 – decided to stay, despite an end to the Iroquois wars and the achievement of gender balance in the population of French origin. Still committed in principle to fostering modest levels of immigration, the Crown now required that a fixed number of places on ships bound for New France be reserved for indentured labourers. This regulation threatened the profits of ships’ captains and was therefore disregarded by them, apparently with the connivance of state officials. The Crown had to issue a new directive that allowed for the replacement of indentured labourers by soldiers. In any event, the majority of settlers were unwitting immigrants. More than half were disbanded soldiers, while the rest were scandal-tainted young men from good families or prisoners – mainly poachers and smugglers – whose transportation was paid by their colonial employers. Once again, the bulk of these settlers were young, unskilled, and unattached. Had it not been for the Crown’s intervention in the eighteenth century, one wonders whether any new immigration would have occurred in this period.
In any assessment of population movements from the homeland to New France over 150 years, comparisons are inevitably drawn with the English colonies. After all, immigration largely explains the disparity in their populations at the time of the conquest: 70,000 against 1.5 million inhabitants. This difference reflected the constraints on New France’s economy, which provided limited work opportunities. Subsistence agriculture relied essentially on family production, and the task of clearing new land was often performed by soldiers. The fur trade, on the other hand, was a staple with virtually no other economic spin-offs, largely dependent on the First Nations for its supply of labour. Is it any wonder that, with such limited prospects in the colony, five times more indentured labourers from France headed for the Caribbean?
