Part XIII: The population explosion, years 1680-1710.
Louis XIV was a very Catholic king who never missed a single Sunday mass in his life, and he hated Protestant heresy. In 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes by signing the Edict of Fontainebleau, thus ending religious tolerance towards the Huguenots. But the Huguenot settlers had a clear numerical majority in the French colonies of the Southern Cone, without them Antarctic France could not exist and France could not benefit from a prosperous economy thanks to colonisation... Louis XIV was therefore forced to apply his policy of repression against the Protestants only in metropolitan France and to continue the policy of tolerance in the New World. He then offered Protestants three choices: conversion to Catholicism, the torture until the heresy is absolved, or exile to Antarctic France.
Nearly 400,000 Huguenots reconverted to Catholicism and 200,000 chose the path of exile. Antarctic France was far too remote for an exile, so most of the 200,000 exiles decided to stay in Europe and go (clandestinely) to neighbouring Protestant countries such as England or Switzerland. But almost a third of the exiles still decided to go to Antarctic France...
In a few months, 70,000 Huguenots arrived in Antarctic France and the population grew from 240,000 to 310,000! During the year 1686, ships poured hundreds of Huguenot refugees into the ports of Antarctic France every day. Most of these refugees were starving and penniless, which greatly destabilised the social order and caused an outbreak of crime...
But many Huguenot businessmen and skilled craftsmen also arrived in Antarctic France to relocate their business, which was going to greatly vitalise the economy of Antarctic France and be a drain on metropolitan France... A Huguenot merchant aristocracy was thus beginning to emerge in Antarctic France, essentially composed of Protestant families from the high bourgeoisie who had taken refuge in Antarctic France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and of a few very wealthy Protestant landowning families who had arrived in the early days of colonisation and who held a monopoly on the plantations of the Southern Cone.
From the 1660s to the 1680s, the former Spanish territories annexed by Antarctic France under the Treaty of the Pyrenees were largely marginalised. The territories were neglected by French settlers and remained populated by overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking populations. Nevertheless, things changed after 1685: many Huguenot refugees feared that the policy of persecution in metropolitan France would extend to Henriville and the main colonies of Antarctic France, so they decided to flee to the outlying territories of Antarctic France. Within a few years, thousands of Huguenot settlers flocked to the
Bonaire region to live in autarkic communities in the middle of the
great fertile plain of the Southern Cone. In the 1690s, many Huguenot winegrowers also arrived in the Andean regions, such as in the vicinity of
Saint-Jacques-du-Nouveau-Monde, and Antarctic France began to produce alcohol in a significant way.
The famines of 1693-1694 and 1709 are among the greatest tragedies in French history, decimating almost 2 million French people (10% of the population of France at the time). They were caused by the Little Ice Age in Europe which had started at the end of the Middle Ages (the peak of the cold was reached in the 17th and 18th centuries). So, in addition to the 70,000 Huguenot refugees, 30,000 peasants fled the famine to Antarctic France. And at the 1714 census, Antarctic France was populated by 560,000 French colonists and 35,000 slaves, the demography had more than doubled in the space of thirty years!
Demographic distribution in the 1714 census:
Colony of Parana: 19,000 settlers, 8,000 slaves
St. Catherine's colony: 57,000 settlers, 24,000 slaves
King Henry's colony: 202,000 settlers, 3,000 slaves
Colony of Transargentine: 108,000 settlers
Colony of Bonaire: 121,000 settlers
Central Territories (capital : Assomption): 24,000 settlers
Andean Territories: 29,000 settlers
Jesuit reductions: 132,000 Amerindians