New France 1701-1744

Volume IV 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.

Bracketed by wars between the empires of France and Britain, the history of the by now well-developed colonies of New France covered by New France, 1701-1744: A Supplement to Europe witnessed a “golden age” of peace and unprecedented economic growth. Comprising the area colonized by France in North America between 1534 and 1763, at its peak in 1712, the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico and covered an area of some 8 million square kilometres. Describing the political, social, and economic events surrounding the shift in importance from fur traders and adventurers to farmers, craftsmen, and fishermen, Dale Miquelon demonstrates that the texture of everyday life in Île-Royale (present day Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia) and the settlements of the St. Lawrence River was greatly influenced by the dictates of French foreign policy and the vagaries of the economic boom and bust cycles that affected the entire empire.

First published in 1987, Dale Miquelon’s important contribution to the Canadian Centenary Series is available here as an e-book for the first time.