katchen
Banned
Excellent point, Flubber!
I have some ideas on the difference between France and England on mass settlement.
The Lords of England were in the process of transitioning from feudal lords to landlords and rentiers. It was a slow transition and was literally greased by lanolin, the grease from the wool of sheep.
Those listmembers who have read novels such as Rutherford's "Sarum" or "Pillars of The Earth" or E.P. Thompson's "The Creation of the English Working Class" will be familiar with the way that English wool and woolens basically took Europe by storm. Even during the High Middle Ages, English woolens were a major export item to the continent. So it became profitable for English lords to "enclose" or take over manorial common lands and turn them into pasture, turning out a certain amount of the peasantry to make their own way. This trend accelerated markedly during and after the Black Death when labor was short, the population was down and the demand for food was lower. (And let's face it: The cold of the Little Ice Age meant that all over Europe, people needed more and warmer clothing!

)
By Elizabethan and Jacobean times the Pestilence was largely past and population was starting to grow again, but the demand for woolens was high and farmers were being evicted from their land. And England being an island, there was no place for vagrants to go but overseas or to the cities. So mass migration to colonies made good economic and political sense for England. And so England actively encouraged it. That's why I say that if the French had occupied the Atlantic Coast, looking no doubt for an expanded fur trade (and finding it), the English would have taken the line of least resistance and colonized someplace else, even if that someplace else turned out to be Southmost Africa or Southmost South America or both. Colonies in climates that could grow crops most English farmers knew how to cultivate were a neccesity for England at that time and England was going to found them someplace.
France, on the other hand was quite literally the food basket of Europe. And the French aristocracy appears to have been quite afraid of running short of labor on the land. French agriculture is both quite diverse and quite labor intensive. Maybe some of our French listmembers can shed more light on the subject but I suspect that France suffered a lot more economically from the Black Death and it's depopulation than England did. After all, England won the wars during that period and France lost them.
So in contrast to the English, the French appear to have done everything possible to keep everyone they could tied to the land. They divide land among heirs equally even when that fragments landholdings. They retain serfdom longer than England does, I believe. They severely limit the number of people who can travel to the New World colonies and keep emigration to the New World to a bare minimum. They even prefer to keep convicted criminals in prisons and rowing galleys until the mid 19th Century rather than productively building a penal colony into something France can find useful.
So yes, for France to be engaging in mass settlement ITTL, something fundamental has to change. And whatever that something fundamental is will also affect France's prospects for industrialization later as well.
I have some ideas on the difference between France and England on mass settlement.
The Lords of England were in the process of transitioning from feudal lords to landlords and rentiers. It was a slow transition and was literally greased by lanolin, the grease from the wool of sheep.
Those listmembers who have read novels such as Rutherford's "Sarum" or "Pillars of The Earth" or E.P. Thompson's "The Creation of the English Working Class" will be familiar with the way that English wool and woolens basically took Europe by storm. Even during the High Middle Ages, English woolens were a major export item to the continent. So it became profitable for English lords to "enclose" or take over manorial common lands and turn them into pasture, turning out a certain amount of the peasantry to make their own way. This trend accelerated markedly during and after the Black Death when labor was short, the population was down and the demand for food was lower. (And let's face it: The cold of the Little Ice Age meant that all over Europe, people needed more and warmer clothing!
By Elizabethan and Jacobean times the Pestilence was largely past and population was starting to grow again, but the demand for woolens was high and farmers were being evicted from their land. And England being an island, there was no place for vagrants to go but overseas or to the cities. So mass migration to colonies made good economic and political sense for England. And so England actively encouraged it. That's why I say that if the French had occupied the Atlantic Coast, looking no doubt for an expanded fur trade (and finding it), the English would have taken the line of least resistance and colonized someplace else, even if that someplace else turned out to be Southmost Africa or Southmost South America or both. Colonies in climates that could grow crops most English farmers knew how to cultivate were a neccesity for England at that time and England was going to found them someplace.
France, on the other hand was quite literally the food basket of Europe. And the French aristocracy appears to have been quite afraid of running short of labor on the land. French agriculture is both quite diverse and quite labor intensive. Maybe some of our French listmembers can shed more light on the subject but I suspect that France suffered a lot more economically from the Black Death and it's depopulation than England did. After all, England won the wars during that period and France lost them.
So in contrast to the English, the French appear to have done everything possible to keep everyone they could tied to the land. They divide land among heirs equally even when that fragments landholdings. They retain serfdom longer than England does, I believe. They severely limit the number of people who can travel to the New World colonies and keep emigration to the New World to a bare minimum. They even prefer to keep convicted criminals in prisons and rowing galleys until the mid 19th Century rather than productively building a penal colony into something France can find useful.
So yes, for France to be engaging in mass settlement ITTL, something fundamental has to change. And whatever that something fundamental is will also affect France's prospects for industrialization later as well.