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The historiography on the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France (CNF) focuses primarily on its role in the colonization of New France. By examining its form, I resituate the CNF in the larger history of European experimentations with the joint-stock company. The liquidation of the company’s debts in the 1630s and 1640s forced associates, directors, and jurists to articulate their understanding of who was liable for the enterprise’s financial health. Evaluating the legal and moral arguments of the parties concerned, I argue that the complexity of the liability of associates and directors resulted from the intersection of corporate, monarchical and commercial worlds.
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This article takes the Company of New France or CNF (1627-1663) as a case study to consider the legal dimensions of early modern chartered companies – how they established themselves, how they dealt with disputes, and how they exercised the regal powers delegated to them. Drawing on recent literature that challenges the entrenched notion of companies as exclusively economic entities, it considers the Company of New France as an experimentation with new tools of capital formation and governance. The article puts the CNF in comparison with other corporations and commercial associations in France as well as contemporary chartered companies in the Atlantic. While the company shared certain characteristics with other French corporations, notably a separate legal personality, responsibility for internal governance, and a contractual relationship with the king, as an overseas commercial and colonizing enterprise, the nature of its privileges, functions, and obligations were distinct. The paper’s final section considers challenges faced by the CNF in the execution of its mandate, particularly with the establishment of a new, ostensibly subordinate corporation, the Communauté des Habitants in 1645. The frictions between these two bodies underscore the inextricable ties between trade and effective governance in the colony.
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"From the early sixteenth century, thousands of fishermen-traders from Basque, Breton, and Norman ports crossed the Atlantic each year to engage in fishing, whaling, and fur trading, which they regarded as their customary right. In the seventeenth century these rights were challenged as France sought to establish an imperial presence in North America, granting trading privileges to certain individuals and companies to enforce its territorial and maritime claims. Bitter conflicts ensued, precipitating more than two dozen lawsuits in French courts over powers and privileges in New France. In Disputing New France Helen Dewar demonstrates that empire formation in New France and state formation in France were mutually constitutive. Through its exploration of legal suits among privileged trading companies, independent traders, viceroys, and missionaries, this book foregrounds the integral role of French courts in the historical construction of authority in New France and the fluid nature of legal, political, and commercial authority in France itself. State and empire formation converged in the struggle over sea power: control over New France was a means to consolidate maritime authority at home and supervise major Atlantic trade routes. The colony also became part of international experimentations with the chartered company, an innovative Dutch and English instrument adapted by the French to realize particular strategic, political, and maritime objectives. Tracing the developing tools of governance, privilege granting, and capital formation in New France, Disputing New France offers a novel conception of empire--one that is messy and contingent, responding to pressures from within and without, and deeply rooted in metropolitan affairs."-- Provided by publisher.
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The historiography on the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France (CNF) focuses primarily on its role in the colonization of New France. By examining its form, this article resituates the CNF in the larger history of European experimentations with the joint-stock company. The liquidation of the company’s debts in the 1630s and 1640s forced associates, directors, and jurists to articulate their understanding of who was liable for the enterprise’s financial health. Evaluating the legal and moral arguments of the parties concerned, this article argues that the complexity of the liability of associates and directors resulted from the intersection of the corporate, monarchical and commercial worlds.
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This article explores the ways in which historians of New France are engaging with Atlantic, imperial, and comparative frameworks, as well as theoretical literature to better understand big historical processes such as state and empire formation and sovereignty. It also shows how traditional categories separating political, economic, social, and religious phenomena are breaking down, allowing for a deeper understanding of the ways in which their interactions shaped French imperial expansion. Empire formation depended on both agents and institutions. Going beyond the traditionally narrow conceptions of each, the article examines the widening range of actors who are now considered agents of empire as well as the recent move beyond Church and state to consider other institutions, notably the understudied chartered company. The latter is particularly fruitful for rethinking the relationship among traditionally separate groups of actors and institutions. Resituating the Company of New France in Atlantic, imperial, and comparative frameworks highlights the complex intertwining of religious, political, economic, and social phenomena that was at the heart of French imperialism. The article closes with a brief discussion of the parallels to nineteenth-century railroad corporations and their relationship with the state to highlight the evolving dynamic between states and corporations in a broader chronology. Finally, a number of avenues are proposed for future research into that relationship, for which New France and the French empire are particularly rich sites of inquiry.