Huguenots and Nouvelle France: Tracing the Impact of the French Protestant Minority on Colonial Development in Canada

Abstract

The economic, population, and infrastructure development of the French colony of Nouvelle France was impacted by the participation of France’s Protestant minority, the Huguenots. Huguenots were concentrated in the upper-middle merchant class and lived predominantly in the provinces and cities on or near France’s north-west Atlantic coast. Between the 1560s and their expulsion from France and her colonies in 1685, Huguenots helped fund, construct, develop, and populate Nouvelle France. During that same period, successive French monarchs eroded the rights and privileges afforded Huguenots by l’Edit de Nantes, the document which signaled the end of the French religious wars of the 16th century. The erosion of l’Edit de Nantes culminated in the promulgation of l’Edit de Fontainebleau (1685), which revoked all rights afforded Huguenots as citizens of France, thus ending direct Huguenot involvement in the development of Nouvelle France.