At the court of Louis XIV during the first weeks of 1686, a group of very influential people were doing everything in their power to have the intendant of New France, the sieur de Meulles, recalled from his post and replaced by his predecessor, the sieur Duchesneau. [...]

The colonial contribution to the French naval shipbuilding industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, explored within the context of the forest from which the resources for the industry were taken, was a remarkably successful venture that came to an end with the onset of war. In the past, the end of the French naval shipbuilding industry in New France has been attributed to the action or inaction of France that resulted in the inefficient use of forest resources. Issues of interest in, organization or support of colonial efforts by France, however, were nevertheless, limited by the immutable realities of the colonial forest environment. This thesis argues that the success of the industry, considered within the appropriate context, is a consequence of colonial persistence in the face of constraints imposed by the colonial forest environment---despite these other significant issues. / The official correspondence, written by colonial officials in New France, record colonial efforts to supply France with timber and detail the development of a naval shipbuilding industry in the colony. These documents provide source material for a case study that demonstrates the constraints imposed by the colonial forests on the experience of colonists, timber suppliers and shipbuilders. The colonial forest was not the same as the forests in France. A simple transfer of knowledge and practice from one forest to another was insufficient to deal with the differences in climate, forest age, tree species and the extent to which human activity affected the different forests. These differences challenged the way in which colonists could use forest resources for their own needs, for export to France and for naval construction. To consider this use of resources, without considering the differences between the available materials in the colony and those available in France, is to look at the story removed from the setting in which it took place. The unique forest in the colony was the setting in which colonial shipbuilding took place. Any study of the development of this industry, or any other industry that relied on forest resources, must give consideration to the constraints and realities of that forest.

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The captivity narratives have long been recognized as an important literary source. Most recently, scholars have viewed them in terms of their ethnographic value. Few, however, have considered them within the context of the history of New France. / This study attempts to draw attention to the richness and diversity of these documents. The chapters, built upon the basis of similarities among the narratives, explore different facets of the French colony during the years 1744-1763. Specifically, they discuss techniques of military interrogation, the Quebec prison for captives (1745-1747), French-Indian relations and how the writers of these tales viewed both the war and their enemies.

This thesis considers government finances in New France during the first half of the eighteenth century. By looking directly at government accounts from Canada and l'Ile Royale, and at the administrative structures which gave rise to them, it seeks to reconcile ostensibly rival quantitative and 'administrative' approaches to the literature on France's Ancien regime finances. Evidence is found to suggest that colonial finances emerged as an integral part of French naval finances, not as a result of deliberate policy, but as a by-product of the continued presence of naval troops in the colonies and of the early failure of the Domaine d'Occident to generate net revenue flows to France. Especially in the case of Canada, the accounts of the colonial branch of the naval treasury do not yield a continuous series of figures. Nonetheless, they provide ranges for the size, distribution and changes through time of government expenditure in the colonies, as well as indications of its importance relative to the general level of economic activity, and of the net cost to France of running its North American colonies.

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Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal / Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de cette thèse ou ce mémoire a été dépouillée, le cas échéant, de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale de la thèse ou du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

The eighteenth century French explorer La Vérendrye has been commemorated in Canadian history as the “Pathfinder of the West.” Although many historians have praised La Vérendrye for his tolerance and understanding of Aboriginal culture, he was nevertheless a colonial servant, fiercely loyal to the French Crown, and tasked to carry out the imperial policies of Versailles. La Vérendrye sought to create alliances with the Indigenous peoples of the Petit Nord – Cree, Monsoni, Assiniboine, and Dakota – with the intent to bring them into a network of French-mediated alliances emanating from the Great Lakes region. The governor of New France, called Onontio by the natives, sought to ensure the symbolic subjugation of all the Indigenous nations of the Great Lakes region and the Petit Nord. In theory, the role and acknowledgement of Onontio as the Father of the Alliance would have permitted the Cree, Assiniboine, and Dakota of the Petit Nord to recognize each other as “brothers and children of the same father [frères et Enfants du même Père],” to forget their inter-village quarrels, and to forge a common identity. In reality, this was far from the case, as frequent inter-village rivalries placed French officers at the western posts in a difficult position. Unlike their Great Lakes counterparts, the Cree of the Petit Nord did not need the “glue” of French mediation to hold together their already cohesive alliance with the Assiniboine, nor did they need Onontio’s authority to protect them from their traditional enemies, the Dakota. Ultimately, the Cree, Assiniboine, and Dakota rejected Onontio as their Father, dismissed La Vérendrye as his representative, and ultimately refused French conceptions of the alliance in the Petit Nord and Northern Great Plains.

If we accept that the British empire of the later eighteenth century was a mercantilist one, that there was in general a substantive connection between political and commercial matters, and that the ultimate authority in both spheres lay in the mother country, then it becomes clear that there are at least two major omissions in what has been written about Quebec during this period. The first is that, on the whole, there has been insufficient examination of the relationship between commerce and politics in Quebec's development; and as a corollary to this there has been a tendency towards a too Canada-centred examination of her history, which ignores or skims over events in London. Among British historians the imperial standpoint has been most popular. Professor Harlow has looked at Canada's place in the empire along traditionally political, legal and constitutional lines, while Professor Graham has investigated her position within the imperial mercantile system. But there has been no attempt to relate in detail imperial political and economic ideas and events with the struggle for commercial and constitutional change in Quebec itself. Canadian historians have, on the other hand, largely ignored Quebec's wider imperial setting and concentrated on local events, treating political, legal and constitutional developments in isolation from economic matters. Symptomatic of this is the way in which general histories, such as those of Professors Burt and Neatby, while recognising the role played by merchants in Quebec politics, have avoided a detailed examination of them, and have indeed reserved separate chapters for their treatment of trade and commerce. More recently though, Fernand Ouellet has gone some way towards filling this gap with his joint study in the economic and social history of Quebec, in which he combines imperial perspectives with the local affairs which form the main body of his book.

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