French Colonial Policy and the Education of Women and Minorities: Louisiana in the Early Eighteenth Century

Abstract

In speaking of the settlement of America, Lawrence Cremin observed that is [the] fact of empire that holds the key to the dynamics of early American education.' This was as true of French colonial efforts in the New World as it was those of the English, though French colonial motivation was tempered by the vague notion of for the glory of the King, which revolved around defensive military needs while giving lesser consideration to economic imperialism. And with the French, as the English, education played a significant and necessary role in colonial policy which attempted to achieve social and cultural dominance. Within a scant decade of the establishment of New Orleans as a permanent settlement in the Louisiana Territory in 1718, provisions were made the education of the females of the area-white and minority. While meager efforts had been made to provide education the male youth, those efforts were not well received by the small local population and ultimately were short lived. Consequently, the first lasting element of institutionalized education in French colonial Louisiana, the Ursuline school and convent, put a unique emphasis on female and minority education. How this unusual development merged with, and reflected, colonial political goals is the central concern of this essay. Contrasting the efforts of the French in colonizing America and the role of education in those efforts with the better-known English patterns not only reinforces elements of accepted interpretations of English success in these efforts (for example, those of Cremin), but, more importantly, identifies the reasoning behind French colonial political policy and at the same time contributes to an understanding of why the French failed in the end. That ultimate failure to achieve social and cultural dominance