Canada Under Louis XIV 1663-1701

Volume III of the Canadian Centenary Series 

Now available as e-books for the first time, the Canadian Centenary Series is a comprehensive nineteen-volume history of the peoples and lands which form Canada. Although the series is designed as a unified whole so that no part of the story is left untold, each volume is complete in itself.

The thirty-eight years from 1663 when the French Crown assumed control of New France to 1701 when Louis xiv determined to seize the whole interior of North America are among the most colourful and exciting in Canadian history. It was a period which saw a dramatic growth in the colony from a sprinkling of settlements along the St. Lawrence River to an empire stretching far into the interior of the continent, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. With the strong backing of the King’s Minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, considerable military and economic aid was channelled to New France and administrators provided who were to leave their lasting mark on the colony--Denonville, Talon, Champigny, and many others. Although many of Colbert’s policies were doomed to failure, it was his watchful care that assured the amazing growth of New France. Out of this unleashing of human energy and out of the strife and suffering it engendered was to emerge a new nation and a distinct Canadian identity.

First published in 1964, W.J. Eccles’s important contribution to the Canadian Centenary Series is available here in e-book format for the first time.