A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In the sixteenth century, while Spain and Portugal were carving out vast empires beyond the seas, the sovereigns of France and England, distracted by religious dissensions or absorbed in European politics, did little more than to send out a few privateers and explorers. But in the seventeenth century the England of the Stuarts and the France of the Bourbons found in colonies a refuge for their discontented or venturesome subjects, a source of profit for their merchants, a field for the exercise of religious zeal, or gratification for national pride. Everywhere were commerce and colonization growing apace, and especially were they beginning to play a large part in the national life of England and of France. We have already noticed how the Dutch, themselves the despoilers of Portugal [Footnote: See above, pp. 58f] in the first half of the seventeenth century, were in turn attacked by the English in a series of commercial wars [Footnote: The Dutch Wars of 1652-1654, 1665-1667, and 1672-1674. See above pp. 59, 243, 278.] during the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1688 the period of active growth was past for the colonial empires of Holland, Portugal, and Spain; but England and France, beginning to realize the possibilities for power in North America, in India, and on the high seas, were just on the verge of a world conflict, which, after raging intermittently for more than a hundred years, was to leave Great Britain the "mistress of the seas."

[Sidenote: Relative Position of the Rivals in 1688. In North America]

Before plunging into the struggle itself, let us review the position of the two rivals in 1688: first, their claims and possessions in the New World and in the Old; secondly, their comparative resources and policies. It will be remembered that the voyage of John Cabot (1497) gave England a claim to the mainland of North America. The Tudors (1485-1603), however, could not occupy so vast a territory, nor were there any fences for the exclusion of intruders. Consequently the actual English settlements in North America, made wholly under the Stuarts, [Footnote: However much modern Englishmen may condemn the efforts of the Stuart sovereigns to establish political absolutism at home, they can well afford to praise these same royal Stuarts for contributing powerfully to the foundations of England's commercial and colonial greatness abroad.] were confined to Newfoundland, to a few fur depots in the region of Hudson Bay, and to a strip of coastland from Maine to South Carolina; while the French not only had sent Verrazano (1524), who explored the coast of North America, and Cartier (1534- 1536), who sailed up the St. Lawrence, but by virtue of voyages of discovery and exploration, especially that of La Salle (1682), laid claim to the whole interior of the Continent.

Of all the North American colonies, the most populous were those which later became the United States. In the year 1688 there were ten of these colonies. The oldest one, Virginia, had been settled in 1607 by the London Company under a charter from King James I. Plymouth, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims (Separatists or Independents driven from England by the enforcement of religious conformity to the Anglican Church), was presently to be merged with the neighboring Puritan colony of Massachusetts. Near these first, New England settlements had grown up the colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire: Maine was then a part of Massachusetts. Just as New England was the Puritans' refuge, so Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore in 1632, was a haven for the persecuted Roman Catholics. A large tract south of Virginia, known as Carolina, had been granted to eight nobles in 1663; but it was prospering so poorly that its proprietors were willing to sell it to the king in 1729 for a mere £50,000. The capture of the Dutch colony of New Netherland [Footnote: Rechristened New York. It included New Jersey also.] in 1664, and the settlement of Pennsylvania (1681) by William Penn and his fellow Quakers [Footnote: The Swedish colony on the Delaware was temporarily merged with Pennsylvania.] at last filled up the gap between the North and the South.

Numerous causes had contributed to the growth of the British colonies in America. Religious intolerance had driven Puritans to New England and Roman Catholics to Maryland; the success of the Puritan Revolution had sent Cavaliers to Virginia; thousands of others had come merely to acquire wealth or to escape starvation. And America seemed a place wherein to mend broken fortunes. Upon the estates (plantations) of southern gentlemen negro slaves toiled without pay in the tobacco fields. [Footnote: Subsequently, rice and cotton became important products of Southern agriculture.] New England was less fertile, but shrewd Yankees found wealth in fish, lumber, and trade. No wonder, then, that the colonies grew in wealth and in population until in 1688 there were nearly three hundred thousand English subjects in the New World.

The French settlers were far less numerous [Footnote: Probably not more than 20,000 Frenchmen were residing in the New World in 1688. By 1750 their number had increased perhaps to 60,000.] but more widespread. From their first posts in Acadia (1604) and Quebec (1608) they had pushed on up the St. Lawrence. Jesuit and other Roman Catholic missionaries had led the way from Montreal westward to Lake Superior and southward to the Ohio River. In 1682 the Sieur de La Salle, after paddling down the Mississippi, laid claim to the whole basin of that mighty stream, and named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of France. Nominally, at least, this territory was claimed by the English, for in most of the colonial charters emanating from the English crown in the seventeenth century were clauses which granted lands "from sea to sea"—that is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The heart of "New France" remained on the St. Lawrence, but, despite English claims, French forts were commencing to mark the trails of French fur-traders down into the "Louisiana," and it was clear that whenever the English colonists should cross the Appalachian Mountains to the westward they would have to fight the French.

[Sidenote: In West Indies]

French and English were neighbors also in the West Indies. Martinique and Guadeloupe acknowledged French sovereignty, while Jamaica, Barbados, and the Bahamas were English.[Footnote: The following West Indies were also English: Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Honduras, St. Lucia, Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. St. Kitts was divided between England and France; and the western part of Haiti, already visited by French buccaneers, was definitely annexed to France in 1697. The Bermudas, lying outside the "West Indies," were already English.] These holdings in the West Indies were valuable not only for their sugar plantations, but for their convenience as stations for trade with Mexico and South America.

[Sidenote: In Africa]

In Africa the French had made settlements in Madagascar, at Gorée, and at the mouth of the Senegal River, and the English had established themselves in Gambia and on the Gold Coast, but as yet the African posts were mere stations for trade in gold-dust,[Footnote: Gold coins are still often called "guineas" in England, from the fact that a good deal of gold used to come from the Guinea coast of Africa. ] ivory, wax, or slaves. The real struggle for Africa was not to come until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[Sidenote: In India]

Of far greater importance was Asiatic India, which, unlike America or even Africa, offered a field favorable for commerce rather than for conquest or for colonization. For it happened that the fertility and extent of India—its area was half as large as that of Europe—were taxed to their uttermost to support a population of probably two hundred millions; and all, therefore, which Europeans desired was an opportunity to buy Indian products, such as cotton, indigo, Spices, dyes, drugs, silk, precious stones, and peculiar manufactures.

In the seventeenth century India was ruled by a dynasty of Mohammedan emperors called Moguls,[Footnote: So called because racially they were falsely supposed to be Mongols or Moguls.] who had entered the peninsula as conquerors in the previous century and had established a splendid court in the city of Delhi on a branch of the Ganges. The bulk of the people, however, maintained their ancient "Hindu" religion with their social ranks or "castes" and preserved their distinctive speech and customs. Over a country like India, broken up into many sections by physical features, climate, industries, and language, the Mohammedan conquerors,—the "Great Mogul" and his viceroys, called nawabs, [Footnote: More popularly "nabobs.">[—found it impossible to establish more than a loose sovereignty, many of the native princes or "rajas" still being allowed to rule with considerable independence, and the millions of Hindus feeling little love or loyalty for their emperor. It was this fatal weakness of the Great Mogul which enabled the European traders, who in the seventeenth century besought his favor and protection, to set themselves up in the eighteenth as his masters.

It will be remembered that after the voyage of Vasco da Gama the Portuguese had monopolized the trade with India and the East until they had been attacked by the Dutch toward the close of the sixteenth century. This was the very time when the English were making their first voyages [Footnote: Actually the first English voyage to the East Indies was made between 1591 and 1594, almost a century after the first Portuguese voyage.] to the East and were taking advantage of their own war with Philip II to attack his Portuguese possessions. The first English trading stations were opened at Masulipatam (1611) and at Surat (1612). In the latter year and again in 1615 Portuguese fleets were defeated, and in 1622 the Portuguese were driven out of the important Persian city of Ormuz. By 1688 the English had acquired three important points in India, (1) Calcutta in the delta of the Ganges had been occupied in 1686, but it was yet uncertain whether the English could hold it against the will of the Mogul emperor. (2) At Madras, further south, Sir Francis Day had built Fort St. George (1640). (3) On the western coast, the trading station of Surat was now surpassed in value by Bombay, the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess, who had married King Charles II (1662).

The first French Company for Eastern trade had been formed only four years [Footnote: Charters to French companies had been granted in 1604 and in 1615. The Compagnie des Indes was formed in 1642, and reconstructed in 1664.] after the English East India Company, but the first French factory in India—at Surat—was not established until 1668 and the French did not seriously compete with the English and Dutch in India until the close of the seventeenth century. However, their post at Chandarnagar (1672), in dangerous proximity to Calcutta, and their thriving station at Pondicherry (1674), within a hundred miles of Madras, augured ill for the future harmony of French and English in India.

[Sidenote: Comparative Resources of France and England]

From the foregoing brief review of the respective colonial possessions of Great Britain and France in the year 1688, it must now be clear that although France had entered the colonial competition tardily, she had succeeded remarkably well in becoming a formidable rival of the English. The great struggle for supremacy was to be decided, nevertheless, not by priority of settlement or validity of claim, but by the fighting power of the contestants. Strange as it may seem, France, a larger, more populous, and richer country than England, able then single-handed to keep the rest of Europe at bay, was to prove the weaker of the two in the struggle for world empire.

In the first place, England's maritime power was increasing more irresistibly than that of France. Although Richelieu (1624-1642) had recognized the need for a French navy and had given a great impetus to ship-building, France had become inextricably entangled in European politics, and the navy was half forgotten in the ambitious land wars of Louis XIV. The English, on the other hand, were predisposed to the sea by the very fact of their insularity, and since the days of the great Armada, their most patriotic boast had been of the deeds of mariners. In the commercial wars with Holland, the first great English admiral— Robert Blake—had won glorious victories.

Then, too, the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660), by excluding foreign ships from trade between Great Britain and the colonies, may have lessened the volume of trade, but they resulted in undoubted prosperity for English shippers. English shipbuilders, encouraged by bounties, learned to build stronger and more powerful vessels than those of other nations. Whether capturing galleons on the "Spanish main" or defeating Portuguese fleets in the Far East, English pirates, slavers, and merchantmen were not to be encountered without fear or envy. English commerce and industry, springing up under the protection and encouragement of the Tudors, had given birth, as we have seen, to a middle class powerful enough to secure special rights and privileges through Parliament.

The French, on the other hand, labored under most serious commercial handicaps. Local tolls and internal customs-duties hindered traffic; and the medieval gild system had retained in France its power to hamper industry with absurd regulations. The long civil and religious wars, which called workmen from their benches and endangered the property and lives of merchants, had resulted in reducing French commerce to a shadow before 1600. Under Henry IV prosperity revived, but the growth of royal power made it impossible for the Huguenot merchants in France to achieve political power comparable with that which the Puritans won in England. Consequently the mercantile classes were quite unable to prevent Louis XIV from ruining his country by foreign war,—they could not vote themselves privileges and bounties as in England, nor could they declare war on commercial rivals. True, Colbert (1662-1683), the great "mercantilist" minister, did his best to encourage new industries, such as silk production, to make rules for the better conduct of old industries, and to lay taxes on such imported goods as might compete with home products, but French industry could not be made to thrive like that of England. It is often said that Colbert's careful regulations did much harm by stifling the spirit of free enterprise; but far more destructive were the wars and taxes [Footnote: In order to obtain money for his court, diplomacy, and wars, Louis XIV not only increased taxes but debased the coinage. Particularly unfortunate, economically, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), as a result of which some 50,000 of the most industrious and thrifty citizens of France fled to increase the industry of England, Holland, and Brandenburg (Prussia).] of the Grand Monarch. The only wonder is that France bore the drain of men and money so well.

The English, then, had a more promising navy and a more prosperous trade than the French, and were therefore able to gain control of the seas and to bear the expense of war.

[Sidenote: Comparative Colonial Policies of France and England]

In general colonial policy France seemed decidedly superior. Louis XIV had taken over the whole of "New France" as a royal province, and the French could present a united front against the divided and discordant English colonies. Under Colbert the number of French colonists in America increased 300 per cent in twenty years. Moreover the French, both in India and in America, were almost uniformly successful in gaining the friendship and trust of the natives, whereas, at least with most of the redmen, the English were constantly at war.

The English, however, had a great advantage in the number of colonists. The population of France, held in check by wars, did not naturally overflow to America; and the Huguenots, persecuted in the mother country, were not allowed to emigrate to New France, lest their presence might impede the missionary labors of the Jesuits among the Indians. [Footnote: The statement is frequently made that the "paternalism" or fatherly care with which Richelieu and Colbert made regulations for the colonies was responsible for the paucity of colonists and the discouragement of colonial industry. This, however, will be taken with considerable reservation when it is remembered that England attempted to prevent the growth of such industries in her colonies as might compete with those at home.] England was more fortunate in that her Puritan, Quaker, and Catholic exiles went to her colonies rather than to foreign lands. The English colonists, less under the direct protection of the mother country, learned to defend themselves against the Indians, and were better able to help the mother country against their common foe, the French.

Taken all in all, the situation was favorable to Great Britain. As long as French monarchs wasted the resources of France in Europe, they could scarcely hope to cope with the superior navy, the thriving commerce, and the more populous colonies, of their ancient enemies.