Right from the start of hostilities, French immigrants contributed to the war effort. A bloody experience which was to help attach them permanently to their adoptive country.

In the early 18th century, the French started to immigrate to Canada. Until the British conquest in 1760, 35,000 did so. Perhaps fewer than half came to stay. Of them, about 9,000 left behind lineages that today include s...

French colonization of North America and the greater Caribbean led to the creation of new societies, born from the encounters between Europeans, Indigenous Peoples, and Africans.

  After Portugal and Great Britain, France was the third most active power involved in the transatlantic Slave Trade.

Women of all classes engaged in commercial enterprises in New France. Their activities were facilitated by the colony’s Custom of Paris, which gave them broader property rights than most other French legal codes. ...

To reinvigorate the kingdom of France which was in a poor state after the death of Louis XIV, the Scotsman John Law set up the Compagnie d’Occident, to support trade and the colonies, while ridding the state of the burden...

Beginning with the Compagnie de Saint-Christophe (1626-1635), to the final Compagnie des Indes (1785-1793), many French companies benefited from privileged access to overseas commerce during the Ancien Régime. ...

In 1683, Jacques de Meulles, the Intendant of New France, wrote: “One might say that this fishery is a Peru and if it were carried out only by the king’s subjects, this country [New France] would soon be flourishing.” ...