Empire: World History - 268. Colonising Canada: Why Does Quebec Speak French? (Ep 2)

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

How did beaver fur and codfish turn a failed French attempt at colonisation into a success? What is the historical context behind Quebec as a French-speaking region of Canada? Did Indigenous leaders cleverly manipulate French settlers into fighting their tribal wars? William and Anita discuss how the trade in fur and fish supercharged the growth of New France. ----------------- Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremple. So in the last episode, we did this rather stuttering start to France's adventures in Canada. but we're going to dig into that a bit more because it's not the end of their story. And what I think is so interesting about this and I hadn't realised earlier is that this is all long before the British have got started here.

The French are way ahead of the British at this point. And the British are very much, or the English, are very much the Johnny Come Latee's to the story of the colonisation of North America. And it's a whole chapter that I was completely unaware of before this. So we talked about Cartier last time. Do you remember Cartier and his fools gold errand? I feel so sorry for Cartier. Behold my diamonds. It's quartz. Behold, my gold. No, it's not.

It's pyrite. Pyrite. So sad. And he's not the only person who gets fooled by this. People go to Canada and they expect to come back laden with chests full of basically paperweights and junk, which they're told us all a load of rubbish they've risked their lives for. But what they do have is a new driving force, which is kind of unexpected because not gold, not diamonds, not the gateway to China, which is very so. sweet cabot. I found China. You haven't. It's not there. But it's fish and fur. Fish and fur. So, you know, France felt it had burned its fingers a little bit with Cartier. Those early French attempts at colonization were pretty disastrous because, you know what? They never counted on the

weather being as cold as it was. And I was reading that the weather in Canada was colder than anywhere in Europe. So they'd never experienced anything like this on their own continent. and it all came as something of a shock. Those letters aren't there talking about seven feet of snow in their first winter and they said they've never seen anything like that? Yeah, and you know, it's just being snowbound. Your ships are frozen, so you have to find a bay that is going to stay liquid and it doesn't crush your ship's hull.

So it was really uncleament weather for them. We dwelled on the voyages last time. Cartier, who we talked about last time, Jacques Cartier, also did try and put down roots. the roots just didn't go deep enough in the frozen ground and they didn't stick. And I just wanted to talk about maybe one or two early settlements. They're both French. One is in what we know as Canada and one is in what we know as America now.

So you've got first of all, Charlesburg Royal and Fort Caroline, which I'm just not even going to try and Frenchify. These settlements were created in Cartier's time but abandoned in failure. And I'll talk about the first, first. So Cartier set up this base, something a bit more solid and a bit more permanent than sort of sheltering in a cave with a fire. And it was near present-day Quebec City. And this is the first time they try and put down some kind of permanent settlement. It's backed by King Francoir I, Jean-Françé, and it's led by another Francois, Jean-François, to give him his full name. I'm enjoying your French pronunciation.

I know. I'm enjoying it too, a bit too much, actually. Do you want to do that again? They were so good. Yeah, actually, I really, really do. Jean-Farçain de la Robeval is his name. This colony is on a rock. It's sort of wooden and on a rock.

I mean, I sent you sort of early pictures. Not just on a rock, it's on the most enormous cliff face. This colony on the rock, rocky outcrop, I'll choose to call it. Bountenous, mountainous. It faced really brutal winters. Because, you know, however high your settlement, you're still going to have to deal with the weather. And the winters were brutal.

They're scurvy and disease because, as we said before, the French, you know, this is not a place for lemon trees. And they do count on ships bringing them stuff to keep them alive. And that's not easy. They're also surrounded by, you know, the Mickmacks, the Iroquians, who are quickly getting the idea, maybe tipped off by Cartier's frequent kidnapping if they're senior staff and their senior chiefs and family,

that these people do not come entirely. in peace? Yes, there's an increasing conflict. Yeah. So, you know, you've got sort of Cartier writing bitterly about this experience. You know, the worst winter we've ever seen with snow deeper than a man is tall and he writes this back. So actually not really very surprising that the entire colony was abandoned by a 1543. But that isn't to say that the French have given up on the idea of colonisation. It is very much in their minds because you know, they realise very quickly that you can't just be a visitor here. You need to have your own resources because, you know, the tribes they think are fickle because the tribes sometimes

object to kidnap and so on. You know, they're a bit moody, so we have to have our own sort of anchored place. They do this with, you know, the Schaulbord disaster, but they also do this. And I didn't know this in America too, in Fort Caroline and Florida around about the same time, 1564. And that one would only last for a couple of years. And I like the story, and it's not strictly in our remit of Canada, but it is the French trying their best, but a different branch of French and for different reasons. So these are the Huguenots. These are the Huguenots, exactly. They turn up. Interesting, no. I didn't know this. Did you know this? I didn't know this. I didn't know any of this. Why don't you just tell people who the Huguenots were? Because, you know, we know, but not everyone will know who the Huguenots were. The Huguenots are the French Protestants, who at this period is suffering increasing persecution and to the point of being shortly after this, besie in various strongholds and driven out of the country, and many come to Britain. East end of London. East End of London was a Huguenot enclave. Exactly. But many others now setting off of the new world. And these guys go to Florida of all places.

This is before Louisiana. We're talking 1564. And these Huguenots under two men called Jean-Ruibault and René de Lordonia, I'm not going to stop, I can't. So they sort of find Florida. They're driven by this desire not to be killed by the Catholics, because that's happening a lot to the Huguenots in France. And they want to make this Protestant haven, somewhere else in the new world. They are so determined to make this work. They even go to France's arch enemy, Elizabeth I said to her, you know what, Liz, do you want to pay for this colony because it's entirely Protestant backed? I mean, I know we're French, and I know, you know, Anita pronounces our name really well in that French accent, but we're willing

to do business with you. Elizabeth I first, she's quite interesting. at the beginning. But they back away because they think, oh, she's going to make a swear allegiance to her and to the flag. And we will be dragged into a war that we can't fight. And we just got away from that. And then they end up being confronted by an entirely new Catholic enemy who are the Spanish. Tell us a bit more about that, yeah.

So a little bit later, in 1565, you've got Spanish forces under Pedro Mendez. How about that? I mean, Mark's out of ten for our listeners. Do it again. Do it again. Go on. I feel you need a run at it. Go for it. Pendle-Bel-Bel-Evendez Ended France's American dream when they massacre the settlers and actually raise the fort. And this is all again, you know, Catholic, anti-protestant savagery. They're slaughtered as heretics. Yeah, that's what one survivor says. Yeah, we thought they were our friends. We were betrayed under flag of truce. So all these inter-Christian, jagged rivalries ever since the Reformation are now

playing out in this completely new theatre in North America. And you've also got the Dutch turning up around this time too, who had an entirely new element. And you've got the Dutch founding settlements to the south of the French in New France and allying often with the enemy tribes of the tribes that the French are relying with. So there's a whole patchwork of Catholic, Protestant rivalry, playing out alongside rivalries between the indigenous tribes in this region. So it's complicated and fascinating. It's European politics being superimposed on local politics. And so you've got this swirling vat of allegiances and breakup of allegiances.

And it is really kind of shifting sand. But do you know why the French persist? The French persist, even though this is quite a hostile territory for them in what we now know as Canada, what they will very soon call New France. Well, climatically very hostile for Europeans who are not used to this level of snow and ice and so on. 100%. They're sick of dry fish. You know, it's not easy to be here.

But do you hear it? The beaver is calling. This is why they can't go away and can't let it go. Like they do in Florida. You know, the Huguenots just do it. The French can't leave the beaver. Oh, gosh. But you've got to explain to us why the French are so keen on beaver,

in case our listeners possibly get the right. Well, I don't know how they would, considering you've done such a fulsome explanation. So look, this all goes back to the fur trade in Canada, which sort of begins informally with European fishermen of the grand banks of Newfoundland. So just like, you know, we said the Vikings came over. The children of Eric the Red were making a lot of money financing their conquests of Greenland through seal and walrus pelts. And tusks, warrous tusks, which they sort of used as ivory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

But beaver is what they find in large numbers in North America. And this comes at exactly the same time as beavers are being wiped out. And all this is because of hats, isn't it? This is because everyone wants a beaver hat. Let me get to that in just a moment. But they came for the fish. They left with the pelts is the story of this. So it's sort of a cod war.

One thing that I haven't been able to work out for my reading is how is the fish preserved? If you're fishing in Canada, you just salted. Salt, yeah. And how do you serve a salted cod? What is that just like a sort of herring or something? What do I look like? Delia Bloody Smith? I don't know.

You just don't know. But fish goes off in two days. You can just pack it with salt. Yes, salted fish lasts for ages. I mean, go to any hostile climate and sorted fish will last. Pickled fish, sorted fish. I mean, I think it's salted fish at this time. Have you ever eaten salted fish?

I've never eaten salted fish. I mean, an anchovy is the salted fish. If you think today you have pickled herring and stuff, but they're not pickling it. Salting it. I mean, I'm saying, I'm shouting anchovy at you, but it will be your idea in about 30. seconds. Antchavis. See? Antibus salt a fish. Jesus Christ. It's so wearing. It's so tiring. But look, they came for the fish and the French fishermen who are coming to Newfoundland where the stocks are plentiful and the fish are humongous, they're from either France or the Basque

region. And what they learn really early on, so this is before New France, is even an idea. This is early in the 1500s. That if they trade metal goods and cloth, particularly, with the Mick-Mak and Innu peoples, they will get animal pelts, especially this beaver. And let me tell you about hats now. Now I want to, I just want to tell you about fish and then hats. Fur and the kind of pelts that come back are highly prized in Europe because they are the absolute bedrock of making felt hats. So first of all, you'll see, if you go and look on de Google, you'll see fashions

that go back to, I mean, maybe not the 1500s, but they're making them. but certainly the end of the 1500s and the 1600s. So there is this huge fashion right from the mid to late 1500s, and it will go on for 200, 300 years of making the finest hats from these pelts. Now, Paris, of course, they have the best furriers in Europe, and they go crazy for this type of high quality, very warm, very easy to manipulate beaver pelt. And so suddenly these fishermen have gone over to bring fish stocks back in whichever sorted,

stroke, preserved form that they do manage to. They realise they could make so much more money by bringing back pelts. And the more they bring back, the more the craze for these beaver wool, they end up calling this, this process by which they make these sort of felt it hurts, from the 1530s becomes a mad thing. So Parisian and London merchants just can't get enough of these things. also is why you get shortly after this the founding of the Muscovy Company, which is trading exactly the same products with Moscow. The beginning of Western trade with that whole region begins at this point. And it's this that provokes the very first chartered company.

The Muscovy Company is the one that inspires the Avant Company, which in turn inspires the East India Company. And so for all that we've been joking about it, it's actually an incredibly important driver of economic change and the fur trade and the need to get these high-fashioned items, these high-cost items to Western Europe, drives an entire economy. Just like we've seen how, what you might have thought was a sort of fairly ephemeral thing, a little sugar in your tea, creates an entire slave economy. This fashion for felt hats, which starts in France, but spreads to Holland and England and the rest of Europe and becomes part of the making of a gentleman and the perception of a gentleman in Western Europe at the

this time. You can't go in the streets without a hat. And in fact, when Europeans go outside Europe to places like India, they are known as hat wearers, Toopiwales. Yes, Topiwales, exactly that. But also biodiversity collapse, because what they've done, first of all, Willie, is that there were beavers around, you know, Scandinavia and indeed around Scotland and Britain, you know, and there is such a craze for this that they completely deplete the sources of beaver populations around the British Shiles and Scandinavia. And so you've got, I mean, there's a historian called Harold Innes, who writes all about the fair trade in Canada.

So it's an old book in 1930, but back then he was considering how much you would make a single beaver pelt from the New World, he wrote, could fetch up to 20 times its weight in manufactured goods. So, you know, this is, this was if you had a ship and you wanted to fill the cargo with stuff that's going to make you rich, forget about the iron pie, right, which would mean nothing. Even forget about fish, which is limited, you know, sort of profit return and do fur.

And had there not been this fashion trend, as you say, the Muscovy Company wouldn't have happened. And the French crown would not have invested seriously in this thing called New France. Because they see, they see, by the early 1600s, fur has overtaken fish as the dominant export from New France. So there is money. It's extraordinary how these utterly ephemeral things like sugar and fur hats shape entire geopolitics and lead to the extinction of whole Aboriginal tribes.

A reshaping of continents. Reshaping entire continents on the basis of a whim of fashion. Indeed. The more you look at this history, the weirder and more shockingly sort of random it is. No weirder than sugar in your tea and tea for opium. I mean, it's just, you know, these are tiny dominoes that lead to enormous cultural and... Suffering and massive cultural waves. Yeah, collapse.

But in steps, this man who is going to formalise the presence of France, New France, in Canada. We've got another French name for you here. I'm revving for it. Samuel de Champlain is his name. So he's important for many reasons, interesting for many reasons, because he's one of those people who sort of comes up from nowhere. He's not landed gentry. He's not, you know, someone who has even a drop of blue blood in his veins. He was a French explorer. You might, I mean, if you've heard of him, you'll know him as an explorer, navigator, cartographer, soldier, geographer.

But he was also an ethnologist because he took copious notes of the people that he met. Some of the first contact stuff that he writes down and sends back as absolutely invaluable to historians. He's also a diplomat. So let me tell you his foundation story, shall I? This man, Des Chauplan, makes between 21 and 29 trips across the Atlantic. ocean. And he's partly, the reason he's able to do this is because he crawls into the ear of one Cardinal de Richelieu. I mean, we say Richelieu, if we watch the movies of the Three Musketeers, I'm sorry, but you're not going to do that. And I'll do that. Rish Loo, Cardinal de Rishlu.

So he has sort of crawled into the Cardinal's ear and he said, look, I've made so many voyages. There is so much money to be made. And Rishu, who's kind of the foreign secretary of France at that time, wants to make money. And he sees that the British is spreading their tentacles across the globe and he does not want France to get left behind. And so he gets into the year of the king. And that's why a lot of these things are funded and he's able to do what? Cabot couldn't. You know, in order, Cartier couldn't. People who come back on sort of perceived, yes, you did very well, but you've not made as money missions. They don't get funded for 29 trips across the Atlantic Ocean. Just to make this clear, this is before the founding of the Virginia Company.

This is before the British have landed with their serious settlements on the East Coast of America. So the French are well in there. I hadn't realised the chronology. I mean, they're not far behind the Spanish and the Portuguese. The French are in there pretty quick in the 16th century. And that is part of national pride. And that's why Richelieu takes it very seriously and puts money into these campaigns. But you've got Deschampsenaire who found their...

Quebec City and New France on the 3rd of July 16-0A. And not so far from the last failed French colony. Yes, which was just a mess. Cartier's abandoned colonies not far away. Yeah, so I mean, just a little bit more about this man who is interesting and a pioneer. So he sort of grew up around, surrounded by the sea. He was born in 1567 in a place called Brouage. It's a small French seaport on the Bay of Biscay.

And if you listen to Radio 4's shipping announcements, you'll be familiar. He develops this passion for navigation. And it's influenced by his father, who is a captain, and his uncle, who has spent a life on the oceans. And though these men are of little means, you know, they are his heroes. And he learns through them seamanship, navigation, and crucially mapmaking. Map making at this early period of time, you know, when this is all virgin territory, is absolutely invaluable. where, you know, people who've come before are absolutely convinced that China is through the waterfall. His mapmaking is going to transform the way people look at this area of the world.

So in 1599, he sails with the Spanish fleet and sees their holdings in the Americas. And just again, for those who don't know this history, at this point, the Spanish have not only captured Mexico and great chunks of Latin America, but they have really got the mines going. And there is now a flood at the end of the 16th century of gold and silver coming across Atlantic every single year. So much so that the price of gold bottoms because there's now, for the first time in European history, massive amounts of gold everywhere. And a lot of this gold is making it through to the Ottoman Empire and to Goa and the moguls.

this is a complete revolution in the world economy. There's never been so much gold and precious metals in Europe ever before. And this is what the British sitting on their island looking jealously at the incredible wealth of the Spanish and the Portuguese are raiding. And remember that whole world that we talked about when we were discussing the founding of the East India Company, when Drake and Raleigh are what the British politely called privateers, but which the Spanish rightly call themselves pirates. They're licensed pirates and they're raiding at every opportunity, this enormous quantities of gold and silver crossing from the mines of Latin America.

And so this is what Champlain is seeing. He's seeing, I mean, it's like, you know, someone today visiting Silicon Valley and seeing all the wealth of that area of California. This is the biggest honeypot in the world at this time. Well, and because he's not a blue blood, he's not immediately put at the top of the triangle to come and make this happen for France. Another man is given a fur-trading monopoly in the region. But, you know, he is given carte blanche to go and explore the St. Lawrence River for the first time.

He comes back to New France and he goes out and he's being funded again and he goes further afield. And what's interesting about him is that he starts forming relationships with the local tribes. So he makes friends with the Inou and the Wednesday. that, the Huron people of the region. And what he says is that, you know, look, I search for a place suitable for our abode. I found none more convenient or better situated than the point of Quebec. And what he realizes is that he's not going to make Quebec last. He's seen the other places rise and fall. And he knows how hard it's going to be. He needs these tribes. So he tries to make sort of relationships with. Rather than kidnapping them, throwing them on board or locking them

in a brig, he starts to make these treaties with them. Historians from Europe have often viewed this entirely from the European point of view. But there's quite an interesting new generation of historians in North America who are of indigenous descent and who are rewriting history, very interestingly, from the point of view of the indigenous. And as they see it, the tribes here are finding the French useful allies. It's not a one-way thing. It isn't just that the French are coming in. They're not passive. No, they're not passive. These guys are choosing to make the French settle here because it's in their interest because they see the French weaponry. They see these guys who at this stage are turning up still with suits of armor,

those heavy late 16th century sort of conquistador Poldrons and so on, which are very effective against the weaponry of tribes. There is an argument that these guys are manipulating the French and taking the French, offering the French what they want in order to manipulate them and drag them into their own wars and their own very hot conflicts with neighbouring tribes. So you're absolutely spot on, and this is crucial, because as he's sort of founding his Quebec city, he's doing it on Innu land, and he's only allowed to do it because the Innu leaders invite him to come and stay. They invite him. That's the key point. He doesn't expect to get this invitation, and having struggled over the ocean and everything and expecting a hostile land. They are invited in at this point.

They are. But, you know, as you say, this is a quid pro quo at this point. So they're not passive, you know, natives who are just kind of being swept along. What they say is, you know what, if you're coming on board, you fight our fights. So fight the Mohawks. And if you fight with them, we will bring you the beaver pelts, but you've got to give us some good stuff and fight with us, because we need to defeat those people, because they are our enemies and have been for years. And so he gets pulled into these conflicts, you know. He said, you know, the Inu Algonquin, Wendat delegation explained that they were wanting vengeance against the Mohawks.

and the Hordner Shawnee, who they'd fought for a long time because of the many cruelties they have committed. And so they say to Champlain, you know, if you want to stay here, if you want a foothold here, and if you want those beaver peltz, fine. But we go to war together. So it is, he's pulled into native politics. Because I certainly always read this as the sort of, you know, Europeans coming in and having their way and choosing to do basically what they want. But you can read this in a completely different way, whereby their pawns, in a very complicated chess game that's already going on in this area. So you've got them on one side, but then the Dutch say, okay, if that's the way you want to play,

the Dutch say, okay, we can be friends with the Mohawks then. Let's see. And then again, you've got this sort of drawing of lines that exist in Europe, but are also sort of superimposed on lines of enmity, which already exist in Canada. And again, for those who don't know this history, the Dutch are in what will become New York, which is then called Manhattan. and that entire area of the Hudson River. And so you've got a rival Protestant settlement just to the south of where these Frenchmen are setting up.

So it's like three-dimensional chess. You've not only got all the different European rivalries between different nations, who are arranged in a sense in two different sides of the board as Protestant and Catholic, but you've also got this very complicated chess board of enemies, enemies, between the Innu, the Algonquin, the Wendats, the Mohawks,

and you pronounce it rather than me because I'll make a mess of it. Holden Ashorni. Haudenashone. Haudenishon. Beautifully done. I mean, I hope so. But, you know, bit by bit, through this diplomacy, native diplomacy, as they called it, then, Champlain starts to establish his total authority, at least at Quebec.

And he's able to explore, he's able to map, and all of this stuff is fantastic, except he's really into the exploring and making first contacts. And it is in 1620, the king says, could you stop the exploring now and concentrate on the administrative tasks because we need to get some money out of here. It's all very well. You're going up and down and shaking hands with people and making people, what does it mean if we're not getting any kind of wealth? I mean, what you see early on in this establishment of New France is one man saying, you know what, we'll create a new kind of people. There'll be a mixed pot of races as one.

And this, it's important to say, is very different from the English perspective at this point. You do get a great deal of English interaction and into marriage in the 18th century, but you're not getting that in India in the very early 17th century. Because racial miscegenation is the worst thing you can do, is it? It's not quite as that, but I think it's more of a, I think I suspect it's more a religious thing for the, for the Jacobians in that very early period. But this is not the case for some reason in North America. And you do get this astonishingly integrated, open into marriage,

because one of the things that the French are doing is that they're converting the Mohawks and the Iroquois and all the tribes are coming into contact with to Catholicism and certainly trying to. There's a huge Jesuit presence and there's Jesuit settlements very soon after the royal settlements. And so once the indigenous peoples have been converted to Catholicism, there's no ban on intermarriage in the franchise. I think that's what's going on. Right. And so you've got sort of New France, which is built on this idea of collaboration, with trading partners, military allies and kin over the course of the 17th century. Just to round up Deschamplean's life and we're going to a break. He, during his life, creates the first accurate coastal map of Canada. His explorations have founded and discovered tribes. He's got various colonial settlements and agreements. He's the first European to describe the Great Lakes and publish maps of his journeys

and accounts of what he learned from natives and French living among the natives. He is also, I love this, a bit of a self-publicist. There is one likeness of him, which is him very heroically holding a musket, I guess, very smartly dressed. In sort of wonderful conquistador pardrons and wonderful metal helmet. And that very sort of particular Jacobian armour, I didn't know what the French equivalent would be, but it's a terrific little woodcut that we have. Do you know what? He did it himself. He drew himself.

So I kind of love that about him. So let me just tell you how he dies, because he's one of this new breed, if you like, a French explorer who chooses not to go back and live a high life in France. Instead, he dies in Quebec itself on the 25th of December, Christmas Day, 1635. Quebec, to him, is home. France no longer is. And what's his legacy, would you say? Well, he's founded Quebec, which is obviously now one of the main cities in

in Canada. But there's another legacy which is going to play out into the next century. And this is important. Through his alliances with Indigenous Tribes that he's been invited in

and allowed to found Quebec, but it is also through those alliances that he finds himself in a century-long conflict that will completely change the history and the politics for the next 100 years. In 1609, he joins his

indigenous allies in a raid against the Iroquois Confederacy using firearms in battle. That's a crucial new development. And the French find themselves caught in over a century of conflict between the French and Iroquois. And that will shape everything that comes. So he's not only the founder, he's left this legacy of intertribal conflict into which the French have been pulled and there's no escaping. Right.

Okay. After the break, we are going to talk about a man who I also find fascinating and who happens. to be Deschampalant's prodigy, a man called Etienne Broulet. He is a really interesting story who makes a lot of money from this craze for fur that carries on in France. Join us then. Welcome back. So I promised you a story of an interesting man and that man is Etienne Broulet, the first Courier-de-Bois, the wild man of New France. It's a lovely, lovely idea.

This is all, for those who like their movies, this is all, it's a different. Geography, and it's a little bit earlier, but it's the same world of fur trappers that you got in that movie The Revenant, where all these guys are going up river to trade beaver furs and running into tribes and going to completely new areas they haven't seen before. And it's a very, very exciting and wonderful world. Well, Etienne-Bour-de-Bois, means literally the runners of the wood. And these were very, very early revenant examples. And you can see, actually, there's a really lovely plaque dedicated to him in Toronto. And you see him Davy Crockett style motioning towards, you know, whatever, this new land that he's going to explore with almost his back turned and his sort of three-quarter-faced round. He was such a success that he ended up being actually a fabulous businessman in the end. So who is he? He is the protege of Deschamps, who finds him as this sort of lanky.

teenager, very, very young, who wants to make a life. And he says, you know, okay, you could make a good life, the Champlain says. If you, for me, go and live with the Huron, Wendat, Algonquins, learn their languages and their customs, because what I really need is translators. And I need translators I can trust because there is, and there wasn't Cartier's time as well, this distrust that what you're being told is the truth, because all of their rivalries are brought into negotiations. Do you remember, the sons would not take voyages up to meet other tribes because they were their enemies and they didn't want any trade to go on with their enemies. So at first, he introduces them to emissaries from these tribes and the tribes want nothing to do with this

kid because they think, my God, if he dies in our care, the French are going to come back and shoot us all. But Deschample has this rather hilarious thing. He says, if he dies, he dies. This is a direct quote, accidents could happen. So they take this youth. estimated to be about 17 years old at the time, and they decide to teach him their ways. And he's with the Algonquins at this time, and he's entirely dependent on their goodwill. And he's a liability to them, you know, like this hapless piece of baggage on their canoes, who could bring them trouble. On the move during the warmer weather, his companions travel naked,

they're only in loincloths, they endure hunger, and they're tough, tough men, insect bites, physical hardships that would have killed most Frenchmen. but this very young man manages to survive all of this. You know, your inner canoe, if you're doing long stretches, using your wooden food balls as chamber pots in the boat because you don't stop, because you've got somewhere to be. So your sickness is no stranger on these things. So he's really hardened.

He's exposed to all of these illnesses and he doesn't die, and he doesn't get shot or stabbed either. I've got a very interesting scoop that I got literally last night at dinner. I am staying with my friend Mark Horton and archaeologist, who's just been digging early English colonies in the American coast. And this sort of thing has always been traditionally written up as something the French did that the British didn't do. Can you remember last year when we were doing the American series, we talked about almost at the same period when the English are arriving at Roanoke

and they're dropped off. Walter Raleigh founds the colony. And then they come back and they find there's no one there. Except one sign. And there's one sign, Croaton. on the tree, exactly that. American historians have always believed that those people were massacred and disappeared from history. So my host, where I'm saying at the moment, Mark Horton, who's this amazing archaeologist who is a specialist in the early imperial archaeology of this

time, recently dug around Roanoke Island at the place where the sign was pointing towards Croaton. And he dug the middens of the indigenous settlements there and found, There were European goods and European items there, implying that the British had left Roanoke and gone to live with the Indigenous and intermixed with them. Oh, really? So at the same time as this guy is running around using chamberpots and canoes and getting heavily involved in the trapping and the capture of beaver and so on, the similar things going on. And we haven't realised this on the British settlements in Virginia. And it's not that they're wiped out. It's just that they become...

They get absorbed. They get absorbed. That's really interesting. And no one had ever known. This is his big scoop this year. He literally has been digging it this summer. That's fascinating. And we do know about Broulete because, you know, again, there has been stuff written by him and about him.

But he's so successful in his first winter with the Algonquins. And, you know, they start to respect him. You know, he's the only white man who has gone into some of the areas and the places that they are taking him. And when the winter's over, he comes down the Ottawa River to St. Lawrence with 200 Indians to meet with the French. I mean, can you imagine? They sort of arrive in this huge mass, you know, of canoes to meet the French. It's been such a successful thing. And they begin, thanks to him, an annual trading fair, which will bring beaver pelts. And, you know, the wealth comes to the French. Beaver pelts for knives and kettles and hatchets. and he has learned enough of the language now to serve as an interpreter for Chief Iroquette,

who is a man who shows complete trust in this strange white boy who has come and is keen to learn and live with them and who is strong enough to do it. So at the close of the trading season, when he could go back, he says, no, I'm going to actually, what I would like to do, if you don't mind, is go and spend the year with the Huron who live near what is now known as Lake Huron's Georgian Bay. And Deschamlant is delighted because this is exactly what he wanted. He wanted these first contacts with somebody who could speak the language and faithfully tell him what they're actually saying, whether they will actually want to have some kind of deal with him or do some kind of trade without actually lying about it saying, no, they hate you, they want to kill you because they happen to be tribal enemies. So he says, yes, sure, go.

I don't have an interpreter of the Hurons. They are powerful, they are wealthy, so go, so he goes. And while acting for his boss and doing this sort of map drawing and interpreting and making, you know, this first contact and saying, you know, my people would like to trade with you, he also develops his own lucrative side hustle. He becomes one of the first courier de bois, these runners of the wood, unlicensed fur traders. So, you know, like the monopoly is kind of given to one man who's running New France at the time. But he, you know, you can do this little thing on the side and make your own money. and he goes deeper and deeper into the interior. Possibly, people think, reaching Lake Superior years before any European will ever see it.

He dresses in native clothes. He marries into Indigenous communities. He trades directly the pelts that he brings back. Married into Indigenous communities, plural. He has many different wives. Yeah, apparently so. So, I mean, this kind of really plunging yourself into the life makes him rich. But he has absolutely no interest in going back to France.

to live the life of a gentleman and said he just lives his life among the tribes of Canada. And there's a big question mark. There's a big thing about, you know, how did he die? So for years, people said he was murdered. Some people say he was eaten. Eaton, exactly. They're really lurid, florid descriptions of how he was dismembered and eaten by the Wendat. Some say, you know, he was assassinated because they didn't like him trading with others behind their back.

The Wendat didn't like him talking to the Seneca, Iroquite Indians, for example, all those sort of enmities. Again, this thing that when you're part of this new world, you have to operate according to the new world morality, the new world taboos. You could very easily as a European, without realizing it, completely break the tribal taboos between trading with enemies and so on.

Yeah, I mean, whatever happened, I sort of, you know, it's a mystery, but I'd like to think he lived happily ever after because he seems like quite an interesting folk. He has a fascinating character, isn't he? I'm glad you think so. pleased to be introduced to him. But by the time he dies, the tribes are getting wise to the power they have in the deal, because, you know, the French appetite for these beaver peltz is growing.

So they say, look, firearms, enough of your hatchets and kettles. I don't need those anymore. But what I'd really like is guns, because we have serious enemies that we have to fight. And yes, you're going to fight with us, but we also need to have our own guns. And this leads to a shifting power balance, particularly between the Huron-Wendat and the Hardinoshone, the Iroquois Confederacy. And what you have is one Jesuit missionary writing a report in the early 1600s saying, the Peltary of Canada is now turned to powder and shot.

So a warning, you know, that you are arming people and it's going to be disastrous. And I think we just stumbled there onto something that's very important that can't be emphasized enough, which is the power of the Jesuits at this time. This is the height of the counter-reformation. And the Jesuits are this incredible multinational force. They are the main backers of Goa on the Indian end of things. They are all over Latin America at this point, founding missionary settlements and providing a counterbalance to the more exploitative elements in the sort of conquisted all world. The Jesuits are there in large numbers now, and they're making a lot of conversions, and you're getting these very interesting societies developing which the

indigenous tribes are converted to Catholicism, they're turning up at church, there's a great deal into marriage, and there is an extraordinary closeness. And do you remember last year we did that whole story of the raid on Deerfield? It is Deerfield, I think. Yes. That's, again, this sort of period, when you have very much mixed and intermarried French Catholic and French Indian forces fighting white Puritan English. This is all going on at the same time. So, look, we've talked about fur, but we haven't talked about fish. Fish that plays a part in the whole colonisation rush. So during the 17th century, the cod fishery in Newfoundland, becomes increasingly important to European fishing.

France was one of several European countries competing for a share in fishing. And in 1662, so I mean, again, this is sort of early on. The French established a garrison town at a place called Pleasantence, which is on the western side of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. And the French want to secure the merchant fishing's fleet access to the fishery and their share of European cod, because it is, again, cod are big in these waters and they make money. Have you ever read that book by Mark Kalanski called Cod, the biography of a fish that changed the world? It was one of the first of those...

Oh, like nutmeg, go like a thing. Exactly. About 20 years ago, it was a huge, huge bestseller, and it rewrote the history of the world around Cod. Anyway, this is very much this territory, the degree to which Cod forms one of the main product of this early colonisation in North America. Yeah, well, I mean, Pleasant, so is placed next to rich fishing waters. It's relatively ice-free as a harbour, so you can get your ships in and out. And Pleasants, you see Pleasant's growing as well. It's like popcorn. You know, these places that are there for utility suddenly grow into kernels that will become a colony.

So it's got military fortifications. It's got a base for the French Atlantic cod ships to come over. So the fishery is trying to succeed. And there are some amazing images of this first on stilts staging post at Pleasant's from the 1660s. It's sort of wooden stilts. And you've got people in dust. with great barrels. There's your salted fish barrels. Look at them. I can see in the picture. It's wonderful. Now we know. There we are. But what is the problem with this is that

they rely on the merchant fleet to bring laborers, food, manufactured goods and to ship their dry catch back to Europe to be sold. But when you have war going on, and I think you're going to sort of pick up on this in a moment, those deliveries are things that you need. They just stop. They dry up. And so this is. a really precarious existence for fishing. Just before you get into this, can I just give a little bit of background to why this war that you're going to tell us about is going to happen? It's a story of two tax dodgers. So this is in the 1660s. These two men, Medard, Chouard de Grosse Lear, and Pierre Esprit Ré de Saint, they flee to New England because they are sick and tired

at the high cost of bringing back their halls to Quebec and the heavy tax that they're suffering on fur pelts. So what they do is they go to England and they persuade a group of London merchants to attempt to take over the fur trade and just give them a tax break. And they say, look, there's this place called the Hudson Bay. You might like it. And this is how the Hudson Bay Company is born. Which is the only one of these Elizabethan or Jacobian chartered companies, which still survives. It's there now. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. These two French who go across to the English for tax break reasons. They go in 1668 to London and they finally get the charter to found the Hudson Bay Company in May 1670. And it was to seek its shareholders' fortune in the

northern interior of North America, not via the St. Lawrence or the Hudson, but through the discovery of this interior sea, the Hudson Bay. Hudson by the stage had long died, but his bay lingers on in the cartography. And Charles II obligingly claims this for England. And this, of course, is something which is going to change the history of this entire region, because this is the first time that the English are coming this far north and establishing a foothold. They're claiming the watershed of the Hudson Bay, which they don't know how large it is, but of course, in reality, it's a vast piece of real estate stretching as far as the Rockies in the West and covering most of what would become the Canadian prairies. So this is now,

the English landing on the borders of French territory. And this is, of course, in time the period just before we enter that century when the English and the French are struggling in every theatre of the world for global domination. And this is something which is going to dominate the whole of the 18th century and not finally resolve itself until Waterloo in 1815. And it is another 100-year war. It isn't a constant war, and it has lots of different names like the wars of Spanish succession and the seven-year war, but it is this extraordinary struggle between these two European powers, which rolls out. At the end of this period, now this is going to lead us up to our next episode, because we're going to jump now to the 21st of May, 1752,

when we get the first beginnings of this, what will become this cataclysmic battle between, the English and the French for the control of the north of North America. And the opening shots happen when, on the 21st of June, 1752, a party of French Indians led by a French adventure who's a similar figure to Etienne de Broulet, another runner of the woods. And his name is Charles Laglad. And he has a her own wife, as so many the French at this period now do. through his language skills and through his intermarriage and his knowledge of this world, he's extremely influential among the Seneca, the Iroquois and the McNag. So he's a kind of extraordinary pan-tribal figure who can unite these different tribes.

And he leads a war party of 240 warriors down to Lake Huron across Lake Erie and into the newly farmed English settlements of British Oh Ohio. Tomahawks at the ready, they fall on the British settlement of Piccar Willani, achieving complete surprise. And only 20 British settlers managed to muster to the stuccade. Of those, one was later sculpted and another ceremonially boiled and the most delicious parts of his body are eaten. Now, this extraordinary raid spreads a sense of instability and fear, even terror, among the British traders and settlers as far away as New York and Virginia. and within months, regular French troops supported by Indigenous Guides,

exiliaries, large numbers of Indian warriors are moving in large numbers into the headwaters at the Ohio Valley. And on the 1st of November, the governor of Virginia sends a 21-year-old militia volunteer North to investigate. And who is he? He is George Washington, only 21 years old. And so begins the first act of what the Americans still call the French and Indian Wars, which is known in the rest of the world as the seven-year war. And this is going to be a total war

and properly gobble, fault on multiple continents and in ruthless advancement of both British and French imperial interests. It'll carry European arms and warfare from the Ohio to the Philippines, from Cuba to Nigeria, from Plessy, which we've dealt with at the very first episode of this podcast, to the Heights, Abraham outside Quebec. Well, you've built it up and so it's an exciting couple of episodes waiting for you. We're going to be joined by the fabulous Maya Jasinov. Till the next time we meet then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnond. And goodbye from me, William Duremberg.