CHAPTER SIX

FRENCH PROPRIETARY COLONIES IN THE GREATER CARIBBEAN, 1620s–1670s

Philip Boucher

This essay examines the character of the corporate structure and methods of governance of French colonies in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century. It is a most unfashionable topic, having attracted barely any scholarly attention during the last half century.1 The scanty research currently in progress on the seventeenth-century French Caribbean neglects white colonizers almost completely, per- haps understandable in a post-colonial era, and even more so issues related to colonial governance.2 Our students today evince little inter- est in current, critical matters of government, so discussion of long ago issues of colonial governance tests their patience almost beyond repair. Nevertheless, a re-examination of these issues is worthwhile in the context of illustrating the variety of schemes impoverished and weak European governments undertook to establish viable colonies on this side of the Atlantic in the seventeenth century.3 The overall picture may best be characterized by words such as haphazard, ad hoc, and, to give governmental authorities the benefit of doubt, experimental.

1 I have published articles on some of these companies but they have had little impact on what is in general a very neglected field of study. See my “A Colonial Company” and “Shadows in the Past”; see also my brief history of the French in America, Les Nouvelles Frances en Amérique. These works cite much of the old litera- ture on early French chartered companies. Some examples of the latter are Bonnassieux, Les grandes companies; Chailley-Bert, Les companies de colonization. 2 Exceptions to this claim exist, see Roget, La société d’habitation á la Martinique, and Pritchard, In search of empire. Since Pritchard starts in 1670 he does not discuss in depth issues examined in this essay. The best relatively recent source on colo- nial governance in a comparative context is Davies, The North Atlantic World, pp. 197–245. 3 Recent scholarship has attacked successfully the concept of “absolutism” in rela- tion to seventeenth century France and elsewhere. Similar attacks on the concept of “empire” are currently gaining strength. See e.g. Daniels and Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires. 164 philip boucher

French colonization in the Greater Caribbean (Guiana, the Lesser and Greater Antilles) before the era of Louis XIV (1661–1715) and Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1661–83) was at most a marginal affair for seventeenth-century kings and ministers. They viewed such efforts optimally as irritants to the haughty Spaniard, and perhaps as a way to relieve (apparent) over population. The raising of tobacco on Caribbean islands or along the Guianan coast attracted some colonists of course, but smoking of the weed was not fashionable at the French court or with elites. The success of Brazilian sugar from the turn of the seventeenth century no doubt roused interest in French mer- cantile circles, but it would take a half—century more before France initiated successful production in the Lesser Antilles. Henry IV (r. 1589–1610) and Armand Cardinal de Richelieu (1624–42) were the most active officials in cross-Atlantic settlement, largely for strate- gic reasons and to contest Iberian claims to an American monop- oly. However, how could the establishment of colonies be a central interest of the court given the magnitude of problems kings and min- isters had to resolve in France and Europe? Perhaps asking the Continental Congress in 1777 to fund exploration and settlement in the trans-Appalachian west might be an analogous situation. Good idea, bad timing. The fact that French finances constantly teetered on the verge of bankruptcy meant that royal funds for such marginal enterprises were pathetically paltry. Thus the resort to chartered companies to fund these schemes surprises little, or that such companies had to be accorded serious privileges to attract investment. The Dutch and English had created such organizations and the Dutch East India Company (created 1601) spectacularly succeeded. That was not to be the case of the superficially similar French companies. The polit- ically influenced founding and organization of these companies, their colony-building responsibilities, their inability to compete with Dutch and other interlopers and the inherent difficulties of trying to gov- ern colonies across an ocean without significant royal assistance under- mined the efforts of these chartered companies. Only one lasted more than a decade, and that one barely. None matched the capital, suc- cess at attracting migrants and patience despite large losses of the Virginia Company of London.4

4 For a brief overview, see Nash, Red, White and Black, pp. 57–64.