What if, the French settled in the future '13 colonies' before the English?

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!:D:D:D)
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 thought North Carolina was very difficult to reach by sea in this time period, and had to be colonised by land from Virginia and South Carolina. That would make the English settlements here implausible.
 

katchen

Banned
I'm inclined to agree. The British will look south of the Tropic of Capricorn for places to colonize TTL.
 
I thought North Carolina was very difficult to reach by sea in this time period, and had to be colonised by land from Virginia and South Carolina. That would make the English settlements here implausible.

The first English settlement was at Roanoke Island.
 

katchen

Banned
North America is relatively close to England but it can take three, sometimes four months of beating against the wind or sailing south. In the same amount of time, a ship can get from England to Rio de Janiero. Bahia Blanca or Rio Negro, on the clement edge of Patagonia is only a month from there. So is the Cape of Good Hope. So South Atlantic colonies are definitely feasible--especially once the colonists discover that there are vast areas of scrub land both in Patagonia and South Africa that may not be the greatest for crop growing but are excellent for grazing sheep. And especially once sailing masters discover that bales of greasy wool are compact enough that they can be shipped back to England from the South Atlantic at a tidy profit.
 
Why would they want to settle in areas that are better at growing sheep than supporting themselves?

You can't eat wool.

It doesn't do much good for it to be profitable if you're not able to survive.
 
Why would they want to settle in areas that are better at growing sheep than supporting themselves?

You can't eat wool.

It doesn't do much good for it to be profitable if you're not able to survive.
1) you can eat mutton
2) too bad Australia and New Zealand dont exist, eh?:p
 
1) you can eat mutton
2) too bad Australia and New Zealand dont exist, eh?:p

1) Can't live by mutton alone, and that cuts into the available sheep for wool.

2) I don't know what growing conditions are like there, but I'm pretty sure there's more than scrub and rock.

Being good sheep country and being only good for sheep are two different things. Why settle in the latter when you can do the former?
 
The Danish Scheme Info

I missed a few days from the list. Just getting back to those that asked about The Danish Scheme book that's now out in the 1632/Ring of Fire series. The book is currently out as an ebook on Amazon and as a POD. There are plans for an audible book soon, with ebook releases coming on Barnes and Noble and Baen. This is the first book in the series to deal with New world issues. More are planned, with a sequel for The Danish Scheme already underway. Large excerpts are available for the serialized version from Northwest Passage serialized story in the Grantville Gazette section in Baen's Bar.

Another 1632 book just came out 1635 The Devil's Opera by David Carrico. It deals with individuals during the attempted revolt when King Gustav Adolph was injured.
 
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