The French and Dutch Empires in America

Abstract

The French empire in America had certain features in common both with the Spanish and British colonial systems, forming a link between them. Like Spain and Portugal, France was an absolute monarchy: her colonies were therefore ruled as dependencies without constitutional rights or representative institutions. Like them also she was an intolerant Roman Catholic state, permitting no religious liberty in America and imposing religious tests on emigrants. But in most other ways French colonies resembled the British. Both empires were relatively late foundations, still brash and undeveloped in 1700. Both were relatively poor, for neither country had discovered precious metals and neither could use indigenous peoples as a labour force. Both possessed plantation colonies in the Caribbean on the Brazilian model and settlement colonies in continental North America. Both, finally, were rapidly expanding in the early nineteenth century.