jeudi 22 septembre 2022 18:00
New France
As large as it is on a map, it wasn’t as impressive as it seemed. By 1663
there are about only 3215 French people living in Montreal, Quebec and
Trois-Rivières. They’re outnumbered by the indigenous people and other
English settlers.
The reason why there were so little French people over there, taking into
consideration that France was one of the most populated countries at the
time, is because of very few immigrants between 1630 and 1663. Most
people coming over were sojourners (soldiers, contract labourers,
servants, slaves). New France wasn’t a very compelling place to
immigrate to, hence low settler numbers. The fact that they also only
wanted Catholics to move over, it considerably lowered the numbers of
people able to move since it excluded a good deal of other people (Jews,
protestants, etc).
New France didn’t project a great image either, with the cold weather,
the sickness, the conflicts. It was not appealing to the people who could
move there and didn’t have an interest in the fur trade, administrative
purposes and religious reasons. Those were male dominated professions
and so no families would want to go over there.
From 1608-1760
There were approximately 27 000 French settlers in the century between
1608 and 1708 in Canada compared to the approximate one million of