Table Of Content© 2012
Daniel J. Weeks
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
QUEBEC AND NEW AMSTERDAM TO 1664:
A COMPARATIVE NETWORK ANALYSIS
By
DANIEL J. WEEKS
A Dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School—New Brunswick
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in History
Written under the direction of
Paul G.E. Clemens
And approved by
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New Brunswick, New Jersey
OCTOBER 2012
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
QUEBEC AND NEW AMSTERDAM TO 1664:
A COMPARATIVE NETWORK ANALYSIS
By
DANIEL J. WEEKS
Dissertation Director: Professor Paul G.E. Clemens
This study examines the techniques by which the French and Dutch secured
preliminary information about the New World, claimed possession of territory in North
America, and developed policies to secure possession against European competitors. It
traces the development of French and Dutch colonial networks with an eye toward
understanding the intentions of the colonizing powers. Finally, this study analyzes the
dominant and significant flows of people, ideas, and goods along the colonial networks of
the New France and New Netherland in order to map the interconnections of these
colonies with the larger world. Tracing these flows reveals that the networks to which
Quebec and New Amsterdam belonged were actually quite different, even though the
dominant outflow—furs—was the same.
The thesis of the dissertation is that for reasons related to European politics,
French and Dutch policymakers adopted the principle that settlement was the only legal
and practical means of possessing territory in the Americas and that it was the intention
of the respective metropolitan governments to create agriculturally based settlement
colonies in New France and New Netherland. Moreover, this study proposes that
because of competition from other European nations, “linear” trading-post colonies were
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too weak to survive in North America, not only because they could not defend
themselves, but also because they were not self-sustaining and did not become markets
for manufactured goods from the metropole. This dissertation also asserts that although
both New France and New Netherland made strides toward developing agriculturally
based settlement colonies, the Dutch succeeded far better than the French because, as a
node on a diffuse network, New Amsterdam was better able to attract settlers and connect
to a wider range of markets than Quebec, which was more or less a node on a specific
network. Finally, this study demonstrates that while both Quebec and New Amsterdam
began to make the transition from simple primate centers on extractive dendritic/solar
networks to gateway centers on more complex networks, New Amsterdam was far more
advanced in this process and was rapidly facilitating the production of a new network of
towns in its immediate hinterlands.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to offer my sincere and grateful thanks to Paul G.E. Clemens and Alastair
Bellany of the department of history at Rutgers University for supporting my admission
to the doctoral program as a part-time “walk-on” student. I am particularly indebted to
Paul Clemens, who became my dissertation advisor and uniformly encouraged my
scholarship, research, and writing. He proved especially patient and accommodating
when I decided to change the topic of my dissertation mid-stream, as were all of the
members of my dissertation committee—Allen M. Howard, Jan Lewis, Camilla
Townsend, and Sara Gronim. All of the committee members provided insightful
comment on my work and sage advice on how to improve it, and I thank them for it. I
owe a special debt of gratitude to Sara Gronim, who very graciously consented on rather
short notice to serve as outside reader.
This dissertation grew out of a paper I wrote for Al Howard’s Seminar in World
Comparative History. Al introduced me to network analysis and spatial theory, which
have proved so extraordinarily useful in opening new perspectives on colonial
development. He also encouraged me to present the paper on Quebec and New
Amsterdam at the World History Association conference in London in 2008, where I had
the benefit of critical comment from a number of scholars, but especially from Kevin
Reilly, the chair and discussant of the panel on which I participated. In addition, Al
helped me to secure a fellowship to finish my final semester of class work at Rutgers.
For all of his efforts on my behalf, I am keenly grateful.
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I would also like to express my appreciation to my fellow graduate students in Al
Howard’s seminar, particularly Kurt Deen, who opened some avenues of research to me
that I might not otherwise have considered. Thanks are also due to Dr. Simon Finger,
now at Reed College, who directed me to important sources and provided critical
comment.
Librarians have proved indispensable to my research, none more so than Sherri
Xie of the Interlibrary Loan Office at the Guggenheim Memorial Library at Monmouth
University, where I have been a member of the faculty since 1995. Ms. Xie patiently and
professionally filled my seemingly inexhaustible requests for books and articles, and this
dissertation could hardly have been written without her help.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues and mentors from the History
Department at Monmouth University, whose support and encouragement for my
scholarship and teaching over many years has been invaluable to me. Special thanks in
this regard go to Sallie Pisani, formerly of the department, who first encouraged me to
write about colonial history, and Ken Campbell, Tom Pearson, Rich Veit, and Brian
Greenberg, who have always been ready to lend whatever support I required. I would
also like to specially thank Fred McKitrick, the department chair, who went to some
trouble to arrange my teaching schedule in order to accommodate my classes, research,
and writing at Rutgers.
I received similar support from my colleagues at the Thomas A. Edison Papers,
where I have worked as a graduate assistant and editorial assistant since 2008. Paul
Israel, Rachel Weissenburger, and Louis Carlat not only encouraged my work on the
dissertation, but insisted that I take whatever time I needed to complete it. Their
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encouragement and, from time to time, a gentle push substantially expedited this project.
I also appreciate the moral support my colleagues Allie Rimer and Clare Hilliard
provided.
At an early stage in my research for this project the New Jersey Daughters of the
American Revolution very kindly granted me a scholarship that aided my research. To
them I offer my sincere thanks as well as to the Graduate School at Rutgers, which
provided timely funding to offset some of the costs of travel to Ottawa for research and to
London where I delivered the aforementioned paper from which this dissertation grew.
Most important of all, I would like to thank my wife, Jackie, who has been in my
corner the whole way, offering whatever support I needed when I needed it to get this
project done. I am also grateful that I have such wonderful kids, Jared and Rachel, who
never complained when their dad was lost for hours on end in reveries of the seventeenth
century.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………….ii
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….....iv
List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………viii
Introduction……………………………………………………………….….…………...1
Chapter 1: Reconnaissance and the Shaping of Colonial Policy:
Verrazzano under Francis I……………………………………..……. ……..45
Chapter 2: Reconnaissance: Cartier’s “Discoveries”……………………….…………..75
Chapter 3: First Attempt at Settlement in New France…………………….…………...105
Chapter 4: Acadian Misadventures……………………………………………………..133
Chapter 5: Building the Network: Champlain on the St. Lawrence……………............180
Chapter 6: Reconnaissance and Staking a Claim—New Netherland………………….231
Chapter 7: Building the Network—New Netherland………………………………….273
Chapter 8: The Fur Trade—the Dominant Flow?............................................................321
Chapter 9: Native-American Networks, Flows of Disease, and the Fur Trade…...........400
Chapter 10: Flows of People……………………………………………………………451
Chapter 11: Flows of Ideas…………………………………………………...………...498
Conclusion: The Diffuse and Specific Networks of New Amsterdam and Quebec……572
Bibliography...………………………………………………………………………….601
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
DRCHNY: John Romeyn Brodhead, Berthold Fernow, and E.B. O’Callaghan, eds. Documents
Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York Procured in Holland, England,
and France. 15 vols. Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1856-1887.
DRNN: Arnold J.F. van Laer, ed. Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626 in the
Henry E. Huntington Library. San Marino, Calif.: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art
Gallery, 1924.
Ecclesiastical Records: Hugh Hastings, Edward Tanjore Corwin, and James A. Holden, eds.
Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York. 7 vols. Albany: State of New York, 1901-
1916.
Jesuit Relations: Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents . . .
1610-1791. 73 vols. Cleveland, Ohio: Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901
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1
INTRODUCTION
During the seventeenth century, two fur-trading colonies were established in the
eastern part of North America, one by France along the St. Lawrence River, the other by
the Dutch Republic along the Hudson. In as much as the fur trade has been seen as the
economic backbone of each of these colonies, one would expect to find some similarities
between them. But the similarities extend well beyond the trade in beaver pelts. In each
case, the metropolitan government hoped to use its colony to challenge Spanish interests
in the Western Hemisphere. Quebec and New Amsterdam were established as imperial
outposts for expanding European powers, and in each case a private trading company
under the sanction of the metropolitan government was given the task of planting and
governing the colony for the purpose of challenging not only Spain’s economic
hegemony, but also its political and cultural domination of the Western Hemisphere. In
terms of economics, each settlement was dependent upon trade with the indigenous
population. In each case, too, the Europeans set up a provincial capital that enjoyed
seaborne communication with the metropolitan capital and served as an entrepôt for
goods flowing between the European capital and a fur-trading settlement located farther
into the hinterlands of North America.
Although there are no direct comparative studies of early Quebec and New
Amsterdam, historians who have studied these colonial towns individually have, naturally
enough, emphasized the fur trade as the raison d’être of their very existence. The lack
of any comparative study, however, leaves a key question wide open. While the French
prospered more from the fur trade than did the Dutch, New Amsterdam, during the period
Description:the New France and New Netherland in order to map the interconnections of these colonies with the for manufactured goods from the metropole.
