French America

I've been reading about the French and Indian War, and Louisiana and was just pondering how different a French America would be. But I really would rather know how it got there.

The only possibilities I can think of is France winning the French and Indian War or another intersting scenario.

In 1706 a French commander named Iberville was going to lead a combined French/Spanish attack on Charleston and hopefully destroy the still small Carolina colony. However he died in Havanna from Yellow Fever and without his leadership it failed miserably. He was a great commander and had done some very Drake-ish exploits already against the English. What if France could control America?
 
Hmmm, you'd probably see more of the same of OTL New France- ie small nos. of French HABITANTS, COUREURS DE BOIS & missionaries living intimately in native American communities- commensurately also a large proportion of METIS- as opposed to the majority of the population being white Anglo as under the British colonies...
 
The best bet for a mostly French North America would be a POD in the 1650s that has Louis XIV spending less of his energy trying to conquer territory in Europe and instead investing in populating and expanding his NA realms. A Franco-Dutch alliance at this time which prevents the capture of Dutch colony in the Hudson Valley and Manhatten in 1664 would help weaken the English position by keeping separate the two main English strongholds of Massachusetts and Virginia.

The main way, though, that you'll get a French North America is by more French emigration. The main sources of this emigration OTL was Normandy, Brittany, and Poitou, regions where available farmland couldn't hope to sustain the population densities at the time. Even with that, though, in 1760 New France had about 60,000 French settlers and Louisiana had only 10-15,000, whereas the British Atlantic colonies had 1.5-2mil settlers!

Create a timeline where the French government encourages settlement in New France, Acadie, and Newfoundland in the 17th c., and then Louisiana and the Mississippi Valley in the 18th, and you'll get a lot of the way closer to your goal. France was by far the most populous country in Europe at the time, and giving the farming techniques of the time, she could live with getting rid of a few million people in those two centuries.
 
Hmmm, you'd probably see more of the same of OTL New France- ie small nos. of French HABITANTS, COUREURS DE BOIS & missionaries living intimately in native American communities- commensurately also a large proportion of METIS- as opposed to the majority of the population being white Anglo as under the British colonies...

Ha, you got your post in a few seconds before me, but yes, I agree, a French North America would definitely be a lot less white a lot less earlier. Even with the increased French settlement I suggest, the French tended to look upon the native populations with far less disdain than the British, and like the Spanish were far more willing to marry native women. Also, in a more heavily populated French Louisiana, you'd also have a much larger population of gens de couleur libres. For one, it was much easier to free slaves under the Code Noir. That same set of laws deemed that the children born by the union of a free man and a slave woman were free at birth, unlike the laws in the English colonies, and it also granted slaves the Sabbath and the right to assembly on Sundays. Otherwise, we'd have never seen the melding of European and African musical forms here in New Orleans which ultimately ended in the birth of Jazz, whose influence on the world musical scene has been instrumental in the evolution of music since the early 20th c.

One could only imagine what a greater "Franco-American" and Métis culture to the north would also have spurned...
 
PoD : A different edit de Fontainebleau.

Protestantism is still forbidden in Mainland France and Protestant are forbidden to leave for other European Countries, but they are allowed to immigrate to North America. 'Let they convert the savages to Christianisms, first, then we will convert all to proper Catholicism'.
 
The main way, though, that you'll get a French North America is by more French emigration.
If you had the french crown implementing a policy of deporting malcontents,
there could be a core of inteligentsia in the french america, with a trmendous potential for the future.
At the same time, with many of
the sowers of the ideological "
proto-seeds" of the (otl) French Revolution having been deported away, the french Revolution might never happen...
 
With a sufficiently early enough POD - basically pre 18th century, if France controlled and colonized New France, including all of OTL Louisiana-Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri River Valleys as well as Quebeq, Great Lakes, Acadia, etc. And then France kept all this territory from the British the Spanish etc, at least until the mid 19th Century, then 21st Century America would probably look alot like OTL Brazil in terms of ethnicities, etc., be primarily Catholic, and speak French.

The French people just haven't immigrated in large numbers throughout history; however, if French culture and language is established over most of North America, then those immigrants from other parts of Europe that came in such large numbers to America starting in the 1840s, would eventually adapt to a French culture and language instead of an English/American.
 
Top