The face of today's France does not resemble its forebear of a quarter century ago; it is more like its European neighbors. Searching for the New France provides an in-depth, historical account of the changes that have swept France over the past three decades and explores the political challenges that confront the country today. An array of distinguished international scholars examine changes in French politics, society, and the economy. The compilation is both comprehensive and topical in its coverage, and is unique in the broad-based, historical, and interpretive nature of its essays. The study will be invaluable to a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences

This book surveys the social history of New France. For more than a century, until the British conquest of 1759-60, France held sway over a major portion of the North American continent. In this vast territory several unique colonial societies emerged, societies which in many respects mirrored ancien regime France, but which also incorporated a major Aboriginal component. Whereas earlier works in this field presented pre-conquest Canada as completely white and Catholic, The People of New France looks closely at other members of society as well: black slaves, English captives and Christian Iroquois of the mission villages near Montreal. The artisans and soldiers, the merchants, nobles, and priests who congregated in the towns of Montreal and Quebec are the subject of one chapter. Another chapter examines the special situation of French regime women under a legal system that recognized wives as equal owners of all family property. The author extends his analysis to French settlements around the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley, and to Acadia and Ile Royale. Greer's book, addressed to undergraduate students and general readers, provides a deeper understanding of how people lived their lives in these vanished Old-Regime societies.

Elusive Empire is the first full account of how during 1670 and 1730 French settlers came to the Americas. It examines how they and thousands of African slaves together with Amerindians constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much new evidence, the author explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies, without precedent in France, interacted with the growing international violence in the Atlantic world in order to present a fresh perspective of the multifarious French colonizing experience in the Americas.

Though the French and British colonies in North America began on a 'level playing field', French political conservatism and limited investment allowed the British colonies to forge ahead, pushing into territories that the French had explored deeply but failed to exploit. The subsequent survival of 'New France' can largely be attributed to an intelligent doctrine of raiding warfare developed by imaginative French officers through close contact with Indian tribes and Canadian settlers. The ground-breaking new research explored in this study indicates that, far from the ad hoc opportunism these raids seemed to represent, they were in fact the result of a deliberate plan to overcome numerical weakness by exploiting the potential of mixed parties of French soldiers, Canadian backwoodsmen and allied Indian warriors. Supported by contemporary accounts from period documents and newly explored historical records, this study explores the 'hit-and-run' raids which kept New Englanders tied to a defensive position and ensured the continued existence of the French colonies until their eventual cession in 1763.

The face of today's France does not resemble its forebear of a quarter century ago; it is more like its European neighbors. Searching for the New France provides an in-depth, historical account of the changes that have swept France over the past three decades and explores the political challenges that confront the country today. An array of distinguished international scholars examine changes in French politics, society, and the economy. The compilation is both comprehensive and topical in its coverage, and is unique in the broad-based, historical, and interpretive nature of its essays. The study will be invaluable to a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences