July 21, 2014 • 26 mins
While the building of a population in a new colony seems like a tricky endeavor, France's King Louis XIV launched a scheme to do just that by shipping eligible ladies to New France in the 1600s. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Try and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today's
topic is one that we have had many requests for,
especially since I mentioned when we were doing our Maurice
(00:23):
to Place episode that I wanted to do more Canadian history.
And it's also one that's actually been on my list
for quite a while. But I will not tell a lie.
The thing that tipped the balance and kind of shifted
this way up was a request from one of our
youngest fans, Zell and her dad Tony, who wrote as
a very charming email, so bono that you made. Uh.
(00:44):
So this one is going to be about French Canadian
history and the colonization of New France. And while the
building of a population in a new colony seems like
a rather tricky endeavor and it is, uh, Francis King
Louis four launched this scheme to do just that by
shipping eligible ladies to do France in the sixteen hundreds
so they could be brides and helped build out this population.
(01:07):
And how did this play out? You may or may
not be surprised, but we will tell you all about
it starting now. So after Europe became aware of these
giant new continents new to their minds, the Americans, all
of that land became contentiously battled over by all the
various European power players. Spain and Portugal struggled with one another,
(01:27):
primarily to rest control of South America, while North America
became a battleground for France and England. And in sixteen
o eight Samuel de Champlain built the first domicile in Quebec,
and consequently he's sometimes referred to as the founder of
New France. And this, of course, we're giving you very
broad strokes. It's an oversimplified version of the story. But
(01:49):
I mostly just wanted to establish the official founding of
this settlement in the early sixteen hundreds. In those early years,
the primary industry of New France was the fur trade.
For the to five years after disham Plan founded the settlement,
it was run by commercial companies. The Canadian colony was
primarily run by the Compagnie de Santa Socier, which had
(02:11):
promised to develop the North American French territory in exchange
for rights to the land resources and so what started
primarily as a group of fur trappers and traders did
indeed grow, and soon there were dock workers to handle
the incoming and outgoing shipments of fur. There were shopkeepers
because they had to have some form of commerce that
(02:31):
was supporting all of these people. Uh. And there were
other workmen that came to New France, but really it
was all about supporting the fur trade uh. And most
of these were men that were on their own or
who had left their families behind. So bringing women and
children across the Atlantic to a new territory that was
still covered in wilderness wasn't generally thought of as profitable
(02:53):
by the men who were settling New France. Adding more
mouths to feed, and these were mouths that wouldn't be
able to contribute to the attom line of the fur
trade really seemed like a losing proposition on paper. From
the standpoint of a for profit business looking to stay profitable,
this was of course the wisest course of action to
you know, leave behind the women and children. But from
(03:14):
the point of view of a country that was actually
looking to colonize the land that it had claimed abroad,
this became a huge problem. After fifty five years of
letting the company to Santa Associate run the settlement effort,
less than one percent of the land that France had
claimed was actually occupied by Europeans. There were a mere
(03:34):
three thousand settlers in New France, and by comparison, British
colonists numbered in the low six figures. There were more
than thirty times as many of them as there were
French colonists. So we've talked many times before about the
lengthy and contentious history between Britain and France. Before this
vast gap in colonial development was kind of an embarrassment
(03:57):
for France's part, and seeing how poorly the corporate settlers
had managed things in terms of population growth, uh and
how the national pride had kind of been tanked by it,
King Louis and the other leaders in France made a
move to rectify the situation, so New France was then
(04:18):
placed under the rule of the monarchy. The Sun King
was extremely keene on incentivizing colonization. He really really wanted
to have an established, truly settled France presence in North America,
and what he needed to make that goal was families. Yeah,
we're not going to diverge a bunch about Louis the
(04:41):
fourteenth and the Sun King's legacy, but he really there
was some pretty explosive colonization growth for France all over
the world under his rule, So this was something he
obviously was really invested in and cared about. And since
the men who had been working the fur trade were
largely single, as we mentioned, and there were few ladies
in New France were actually eligible for courtship, the king,
(05:02):
along with the Intendant of Quebec Jean Talon, and the
King's Minister of Finance Jean Baptiste Colbert. I have no
idea if he's related to Stephen Colbert, so I can't
help you there if that just popped to your mind. Uh.
These three men concocted this plan to fill the gap
in the sexes and even out the numbers. Uh. And
so when this initiative that they came up with was
(05:24):
started in sixteen sixty three, there were six men for
every woman in New France, and some most of those
women were already uh betrothed or married to men already,
so they were not available women. From sixteen sixty three
to sixteen seventy three, a program was sent into motion
and This sent marriageable ladies who came to be known
as le Fi Dui or the King's daughters to New
(05:47):
France to become brides, mothers, and really the backbone of
the settlement. In many ways, Colbert arranged the recruitment and
bon voyages of the women from France, and Tolon made
sure that they were taken care of when they reached
North America. As part of this field, the French monarchy
paid for the transit of these young women is a
government expense, and the French West India Company handled their
(06:10):
transport and it was paid quite handsomely for each each
woman that it transported. Yeah, they were basically considered very
very important cargo because the King really really wanted this
whole thing to be successful. And while there had been
women who traveled to Canada certainly prior to this initiative
to make their way and hopefully find husbands, those women
(06:32):
traveled on their own dime. It was not part of
this sort of government sanctioned effort. UH sixteen sixty three
really marks the beginning of subsidized import of potential brides
from France. The term via dou wos was first coined
by Marguerite Bourgoi, who founded the Congregation of Notre Dame
in Montreal in the sixteen fifties. Her convent was normally
(06:55):
the place where these young women would be welcomed once
they arrived in New France, and the convent would care
for them during the transition and was characterized as part
of helping with France's very important colonization mission. Yeah, they
took this responsibility very very seriously. H Before we talk
about who these young women really were, do you want
(07:17):
to have a quick word from a sponsor a thing. So,
getting back to the Fie doua, the backgrounds of these
ladies who set out for the America's as part of
this program were actually pretty diverse. Uh. There have been
times where you'll see in sort of the quick and
dirty history accounts of them like, oh they were all
you know of low birth. Oh no, they were all
(07:37):
genteel ladies. But really it really was pretty diverse. Some
were from fairly well off families, not a lot, uh,
and these women would travel with their bridal trousseau sort
of ready to start their own families with them, and
they would meet in the colony. Others had been recruited
from country areas. Some were in fact orphans from the
streets of Paris, and in the case of the very
(07:58):
poor daughters of France, the state provided an assortment of
useful household goods as their trousseau and also allotted each
woman a small dowry. And these sort of state uh
provided trousseau normally included like a ladies valies or some
sort of case for carrying a handkerchief, ribbons, a supply
of needles and white thread, scissors, hairbrush, stockings, gloves, knives, pins,
(08:22):
and a bonnet, basically like the things you would need
to set up house UH and sort of start your
life in a new place. On average, though the majority
of the women who went from France to the America's
as part of this program were from modest homes, a
handful were widows who were looking for a new life
after losing their husbands. Many of them were from Paris
(08:43):
or Rouens or the surrounding areas, but they could come
from anywhere in France, and several of them were not
even of French birth. And some of the benefit of
recruiting women from charity hospitals, which in this case we
should mention that it's hospital isn't really what we think
of that word meaning today. It's much more like an institution,
(09:04):
or kind of like a poor house in some cases,
or from very tough lives in the city streets. Was
really that these young women were accustomed to the idea
of having to work, and that was a high value
in introducing them into a New Witch settlement. At one point, however,
Jean Tellen wrote to Jean Baptiste Colbert that it would
really be best if they would send a few more
farm girls and fewer city orphans, because the latter group
(09:27):
were sometimes too sickly to take on the challenges that
awaited them in the Canadian wilderness. His letter states, it
would be good to recommend strongly that those who are
destined for this country are in no way disgraced in nature,
that they are not repulsive on the exterior, and that
they are healthy and strong for farm work or at
least have some ability for handiwork. Yeah, he wanted some
(09:50):
you know, hearty gals. Uh. And roughly two thirds of
the women making their way to New France married to
men who were living in the more rural areas of
the colony rather than the urban base, So there really
was some legitimate concern that women unsuited the country life
are really going to have a rough time of it,
And since the goal of this entire program was to
(10:11):
bolster the population and expand the settlement, it made sense
to everyone involved to try to stack the odds in
favor of making genuinely suitable matches and you know, landing
women in positions that they were going to be comfortable in,
that they could handle, that they would be able to,
you know, help provide for their family in the community.
To that end, there was also a handful of women
(10:32):
we mentioned earlier of slightly higher social standing. These women
were in the mix with the intent that they would
be potential brides were military officers and citizens of high
estate within the settlement's social structure. So reading through these details,
it starts to feel like something of a hybrid between
super efficient matchmaking and livestock wrangling. Yeah, it's uh, it's
(10:55):
one of those things where it's easy to get real
bristly and be like, wait, they were doing what, like,
it's kind of like male order bribing on a really
huge scale. Uh. And while the exact number of women
that that were part of this whole initiative is a
little tricky to pin down. Some of the women that
were involved are debated by historians as to whether they
were actually part of the King's daughter's initiative or if
(11:15):
they just kind of made their way on their own
and tried to kind of blend in with the King's
daughter's program. Others are kind of problematic to match the
numbers up because the reddor the records are either incomplete,
or they're muddled, or some part of the record has
been damaged. But it is estimated that seven d and
seventy women were sent to New France over the course
(11:36):
of a decade as the King's daughters, and this made
up about eight percent of the total immigrants to New
France during that period. And that sounds like a very
low number because it's a single digit. But if that
sounds scant to you, it's worth noting that it also
made up about fifty of all the women that we're
going to New France during these years. Most of the
people that were headed to New France from France were
(11:59):
in fact men who wanted to get in on the
fur trade and try to make their fortune. Only one
in ten of these women had a relation even a
very distant relation anywhere else in the colleague when they
traveled from France. This is a huge contrast to the
rest of the women who made the same journey before
seventeen hundred. For women who were not one of the
(12:20):
King's daughters, roughly two thirds of them had at least
one relation in New France, and most of them had
more than one relation. You know, they were either going
to family that they knew or uh, you know, they
had multiple cousins there, or something to that effect. And
in terms of the age breakdown, about fourteen percent of
(12:41):
these women were between the ages of fourteen and eighteen,
forty four percent were between the ages of nineteen and
twenty four, twenty five percent were between ages of twenty
five to twenty nine, twelve percent we're thirty to thirty four,
three percent we're thirty five to thirty nine, and a
little under two percent were older than forty or forty
(13:02):
year older. And as you track the data upward from
the youngest to oldest, the percentage of widows in each
group unsurprisingly also goes up. There have been some accounts
through the years that most of the women in the
program were of less than Christine Virtue and there's been
an equal degree of historical testimony that this was not
the case at all. Some accounts indicate that before any
(13:25):
woman was allowed to get on a ship bound for
New France, a friend a relative had to vouch for
their virtuous and good nature beforehand. Ill behavior or debauchery
on the way could result in a woman being shipped
directly back to France, with her opportunity to start a
new life in the colony completely avoided. Uh. And before
we get onto sort of how these matches were made
(13:47):
on a more nuts and bolts sort of level. Uh,
And sort of how incentivized family making was. Do you
want to do another quick word from a sponsor, Let's
do as you might imagined in a colony that consisted
almost entirely of men, brides shipped from the homeland were
quite an exciting prospect, and most of the women that
(14:09):
came from France to North America were married in pretty
short order after arriving in New France. To further incentivize
this whole idea of making a population stronghold, the French
government also offered cash grants to men who were married,
and even larger sums to men who had children. With
their new wives. Allowances were made and tables were drawn
(14:30):
up to accommodate families as large as twelve, and they
were corresponding payment levels for all sizes. Families had a
very clear cash value. Yeah, it gives the term family
values a whole different meaning if you think about it
in this way. Uh. Men who opted not to take
a wife, however, actually found themselves penalized. Uh. Their fur
(14:52):
trading efforts would meet up with blocks, and their privileges
were regulated to the point of loss, like they would
not be legally allowed to trade, or the you know,
trade allowances were suspended after a very you know, short amount.
But men did not, I feel compelled to point out,
need to marry any of the fee douir to benefit
from these incentive programs. They could also marry natives of
(15:15):
North America, people's already living there, people that came from
other places. Just as long as they were in the
French colony marrying and making families, they could still get
benefit payments as long as they were kind of helping
populate the French colony. So some modern ears this may
seem like a pretty weird scheme that was destined for failure,
(15:36):
But it turned out that all of this incentivized family
building actually worked exactly as the King had hoped. All
but about four percent of the field DOUI were married
in New France. Yeah, this was a huge success, which
I will admit that through my modern lens and I
try and you know, to put that stuff aside, But
there's just part of me that's always like, no way
(15:58):
with this work. Oh yeah, I worked really well. Actually. Yeah.
I on the other hand, I'm like I'd sign up
for that. If I have a choice between you know,
being destitute or traveling an ocean and having a new adventure,
I might travel the ocean and have a new adventure. Yeah.
And we'll talk about this some more in just a moment.
(16:19):
But part of the success of this really does have
to be attributed to Colbert's recruitment efforts and his close
work with Talent to select the right assortment of ladies
for the Canadian colony. So when Tracy mentioned earlier that
this was sort of like really efficient matchmaking combined with
sort of like a livestock situation, it really was. They
were quite good at picking exactly the right numbers and
(16:40):
the right matches for these men in the colonies, uh
And many of these women had come from situations that
were extremely difficult for them, either due to deaths in
the family that sort of left them without anyone uh
there in New France, or just general misfortune. So there
was usually some degree of motivation and to truly make
an effort to make this new life work. And for
(17:03):
some women it was a rare opportunity at freedom. They
you know, either maybe had gotten into some trouble while
they were in France. Usually it wasn't terrible trouble if
they were allowed to be one of the king's daughters.
But basically, you know, at this point the colonies were
still sort of considered this sort of backwards, scary thing.
But when you're facing you know, definite destitution where you
(17:24):
live versus, as Tracy said, like a new adventure and
a potential to actually have a life with some social mobility,
they were willing to take the risk. So, especially compared
to life in like a charity hospital or another institution,
this looked like a way more appealing option. The setup
also gave women way more choice when it came to
(17:45):
picking a spouse than they probably would have had at
home in France. In the case of women who were
from more affluent families, their parents probably would have been
the ones making the decision for them, And in the
case of women who were from more impoverished circumstances, it
opened up the possibility of a marriage and a related
increase in social standing. And that's an opportunity that they
(18:06):
would not have had if they had stayed in Europe.
And there are some written accounts that described this whole
thing as like a meat market scenario where the male
settlers would just come in and sort of assess and
select brides like livestock. Uh, But there are a lot
of other accounts that really contradict that, and they make
it sound much more civilized. So in these versions, men
(18:29):
that were considering taking a wife would visit the king's
daughters under supervised conditions. So remember most of these ladies
stayed at a convent when they arrived in North America,
or they were placed with families of church members. Like
they weren't sort of just pushed into a room and
then og old by men. They had basically gentlemen callers
that would come and meet them, and the ladies could
(18:50):
interact with these potential suitors if they wished they didn't
have to interact with them, and they had the right
to refuse marriage proposals if they were not interested in
the man who was interested in them, So they were
not being paraded up onto a stage to be selected
from like in Our Trains episode. Right. There was also
a lot more personal freedom than a lot of women
(19:12):
were entitled to anywhere else in the world in the
late sixteen hundreds. But once a woman actually did get married,
her husband was considered to be her master and the
final word in the household. Yeah, even though getting them
to the married state was really a much more uh
you know, empowered state for them to be in in
terms of their choice, once they got married, it was
(19:34):
pretty old school and the husband ran the house and
they kind of had to been to his will. Although
it does seem like most of these matches were pretty good,
most many of them lasted decades, lots of kids. Uh.
Just ten years after France began systematically shipping these brides
to be to New France, the population in the French
settlement had tripled by virtue of both immigration and procreation.
(19:59):
So in addition to the fi jua sort of going
over and that's less than a thousand, but then they
started having children very quickly, and this also just helped
make the colony look like a more appealing place for
other people to go to. So it kind of helped
in a pr way as well. And of all of
these marriages that happened, so we mentioned there was only
like a four percent unsuccessful match rates, only four percent
(20:23):
of the women didn't get married. Only three percent of
all of those successful marriages didn't result in children, and
sometimes those were like usually medical issues or uh, some
other problem that came up, one of the spouses would die, etcetera.
Within twenty years of the first births to come from
these marriages, the population split between women and men was
close to equal. So those are some pretty significant strides,
(20:47):
I mean, I think in terms of data set, if
you looked at it from when uh King Louis the
fourteen concocted this plan with his advisers, and you know,
just twenty years later, they had really kind of achieved
most of what they set out to do. However, in
sixteen seventy three, after a decade of doing this, as
France became embroiled in conflict with Holland, uh the King's
(21:09):
Daughter's program was actually deemed too costly to maintain, because
remember they're still paying for these women to to travel
to have their trousseau set up there. You know, at
that point, paying the men incentives to have children that
got very expensive. They couldn't do that while they were
also paying for their military efforts. It's also worth noting
that France was not the only country using efforts like
(21:31):
this to bolster the population of a colony, although most
other countries programs were a lot more modest. Today it
said that almost any French Canadian is related to at
least one of the king's daughters, and many people that
get into genealogy are able to connect their family lines
to multiple king's daughters uh, where they can sort of
find many of the several of them on the branches
(21:53):
of their family tree. And if you can trace your
genes to a fi Duchoa, you can actually be certified
as a descendant of the king's utters so that you
will have your own sort of magical connection to this
piece of French history. Uh. And there are places still
doing the certification online. There was one big one that
was happening a push in ten as part of an
anniversary celebration of this whole event. But I think they
(22:16):
are still doing the certifications. But that is the story
of the Fiduroix, the import of brides to North America
and New France in an effort to sort of make
a population, and it was super successful, as much as
part of me has a hard time accepting that it
was very successful. Yeah, I think I'm actually in the
(22:37):
context of this story. The thing that's the bigger sticking
point for me is the greater context of what was
happening in the America's with colonialization, rather than this select
group of women, because especially in the context of the times,
it does seem like they had a lot more agency
and choice, yeah than in France. Yeah. It's one of
(22:57):
those weird things where part of it is that admittedly
this is through my lens of kind of like the
romantic of like no, you find your true love, which
is silly, uh that it's hard to think like, oh,
so these you know, government guys went out and they
found women and thought like, oh this is these numbers
are going to match up pretty well, and it worked.
I'm like, where is the true love in that? But
(23:17):
that's ridiculous and not to be applied. You can think
about it as that. Uh, with that disparity and the
people who were seeking partners, it was a lot more
likely that ladies would find somebody they were genuinely attracted
to because they had a much bigger's choose from with
less competition. That's true. And as I said, many of
(23:38):
these marriages lasted decades and we're you know, very seemingly
on paper at least successful. Uh. You know, they had
many children, they supported their farms or their fur trade,
and they, like I said, they laid the genetic groundwork
really for French Canada, so uh success. I also have
two pieces of listener mail that are from the same person,
(23:58):
but they're so lovely. We got two postcards from our
listener James, and he says, dear Holly and Tracy, greetings
from the city once known as Stalinabad, which I've probably
pronounced poorly. I've been making my way through the stuff
you missed in history class catalog since having it helped
me through a very boring job this spring, I decided
to continue while pursuing my not at all boring job
(24:20):
running summer camps for rural Tajak youth. Is this your
first Tajakhstan postcard to the best of my knowledge, the
answer is yes. Uh. And then he suggests some Central
Asian topics. Uh, because that is, of course an area
very near and dear to his heart, and one of
them in particular I'm very excited about, so it might happen. Uh.
(24:40):
And then and he sent us it's a picture of
king is simony of Tajakstan? I probably, butcher Dad, I apologize.
But then we got a second postcard, and he says,
I couldn't resist sending you guys a second postcard, both
because you've given me so many quality podcasts and because
I'm skeptical about them reaching you. Well guess what. They
both came and on the same day, So mail success.
(25:02):
And in this one he sent us a picture. It's
a Soviet claymation. Still, and I love animation, and claymation
in particular has an odd magical charm over me. So
I really really love this postcard. Uh. And he says,
after a day of teaching tasks from Villages Art and
Ultimate Frisbee, your podcasts are the perfect way to relax.
So I'm so happy because these are gorgeous postcards and
(25:24):
they're both from Tashi Stein, where I don't think we've
gotten any from before, so hooray James. Those are really cool. Uh.
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for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Try and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today's
topic is one that we have had many requests for,
especially since I mentioned when we were doing our Maurice
(00:23):
to Place episode that I wanted to do more Canadian history.
And it's also one that's actually been on my list
for quite a while. But I will not tell a lie.
The thing that tipped the balance and kind of shifted
this way up was a request from one of our
youngest fans, Zell and her dad Tony, who wrote as
a very charming email, so bono that you made. Uh.
(00:44):
So this one is going to be about French Canadian
history and the colonization of New France. And while the
building of a population in a new colony seems like
a rather tricky endeavor and it is, uh, Francis King
Louis four launched this scheme to do just that by
shipping eligible ladies to do France in the sixteen hundreds
so they could be brides and helped build out this population.
(01:07):
And how did this play out? You may or may
not be surprised, but we will tell you all about
it starting now. So after Europe became aware of these
giant new continents new to their minds, the Americans, all
of that land became contentiously battled over by all the
various European power players. Spain and Portugal struggled with one another,
(01:27):
primarily to rest control of South America, while North America
became a battleground for France and England. And in sixteen
o eight Samuel de Champlain built the first domicile in Quebec,
and consequently he's sometimes referred to as the founder of
New France. And this, of course, we're giving you very
broad strokes. It's an oversimplified version of the story. But
(01:49):
I mostly just wanted to establish the official founding of
this settlement in the early sixteen hundreds. In those early years,
the primary industry of New France was the fur trade.
For the to five years after disham Plan founded the settlement,
it was run by commercial companies. The Canadian colony was
primarily run by the Compagnie de Santa Socier, which had
(02:11):
promised to develop the North American French territory in exchange
for rights to the land resources and so what started
primarily as a group of fur trappers and traders did
indeed grow, and soon there were dock workers to handle
the incoming and outgoing shipments of fur. There were shopkeepers
because they had to have some form of commerce that
(02:31):
was supporting all of these people. Uh. And there were
other workmen that came to New France, but really it
was all about supporting the fur trade uh. And most
of these were men that were on their own or
who had left their families behind. So bringing women and
children across the Atlantic to a new territory that was
still covered in wilderness wasn't generally thought of as profitable
(02:53):
by the men who were settling New France. Adding more
mouths to feed, and these were mouths that wouldn't be
able to contribute to the attom line of the fur
trade really seemed like a losing proposition on paper. From
the standpoint of a for profit business looking to stay profitable,
this was of course the wisest course of action to
you know, leave behind the women and children. But from
(03:14):
the point of view of a country that was actually
looking to colonize the land that it had claimed abroad,
this became a huge problem. After fifty five years of
letting the company to Santa Associate run the settlement effort,
less than one percent of the land that France had
claimed was actually occupied by Europeans. There were a mere
(03:34):
three thousand settlers in New France, and by comparison, British
colonists numbered in the low six figures. There were more
than thirty times as many of them as there were
French colonists. So we've talked many times before about the
lengthy and contentious history between Britain and France. Before this
vast gap in colonial development was kind of an embarrassment
(03:57):
for France's part, and seeing how poorly the corporate settlers
had managed things in terms of population growth, uh and
how the national pride had kind of been tanked by it,
King Louis and the other leaders in France made a
move to rectify the situation, so New France was then
(04:18):
placed under the rule of the monarchy. The Sun King
was extremely keene on incentivizing colonization. He really really wanted
to have an established, truly settled France presence in North America,
and what he needed to make that goal was families. Yeah,
we're not going to diverge a bunch about Louis the
(04:41):
fourteenth and the Sun King's legacy, but he really there
was some pretty explosive colonization growth for France all over
the world under his rule, So this was something he
obviously was really invested in and cared about. And since
the men who had been working the fur trade were
largely single, as we mentioned, and there were few ladies
in New France were actually eligible for courtship, the king,
(05:02):
along with the Intendant of Quebec Jean Talon, and the
King's Minister of Finance Jean Baptiste Colbert. I have no
idea if he's related to Stephen Colbert, so I can't
help you there if that just popped to your mind. Uh.
These three men concocted this plan to fill the gap
in the sexes and even out the numbers. Uh. And
so when this initiative that they came up with was
(05:24):
started in sixteen sixty three, there were six men for
every woman in New France, and some most of those
women were already uh betrothed or married to men already,
so they were not available women. From sixteen sixty three
to sixteen seventy three, a program was sent into motion
and This sent marriageable ladies who came to be known
as le Fi Dui or the King's daughters to New
(05:47):
France to become brides, mothers, and really the backbone of
the settlement. In many ways, Colbert arranged the recruitment and
bon voyages of the women from France, and Tolon made
sure that they were taken care of when they reached
North America. As part of this field, the French monarchy
paid for the transit of these young women is a
government expense, and the French West India Company handled their
(06:10):
transport and it was paid quite handsomely for each each
woman that it transported. Yeah, they were basically considered very
very important cargo because the King really really wanted this
whole thing to be successful. And while there had been
women who traveled to Canada certainly prior to this initiative
to make their way and hopefully find husbands, those women
(06:32):
traveled on their own dime. It was not part of
this sort of government sanctioned effort. UH sixteen sixty three
really marks the beginning of subsidized import of potential brides
from France. The term via dou wos was first coined
by Marguerite Bourgoi, who founded the Congregation of Notre Dame
in Montreal in the sixteen fifties. Her convent was normally
(06:55):
the place where these young women would be welcomed once
they arrived in New France, and the convent would care
for them during the transition and was characterized as part
of helping with France's very important colonization mission. Yeah, they
took this responsibility very very seriously. H Before we talk
about who these young women really were, do you want
(07:17):
to have a quick word from a sponsor a thing. So,
getting back to the Fie doua, the backgrounds of these
ladies who set out for the America's as part of
this program were actually pretty diverse. Uh. There have been
times where you'll see in sort of the quick and
dirty history accounts of them like, oh they were all
you know of low birth. Oh no, they were all
(07:37):
genteel ladies. But really it really was pretty diverse. Some
were from fairly well off families, not a lot, uh,
and these women would travel with their bridal trousseau sort
of ready to start their own families with them, and
they would meet in the colony. Others had been recruited
from country areas. Some were in fact orphans from the
streets of Paris, and in the case of the very
(07:58):
poor daughters of France, the state provided an assortment of
useful household goods as their trousseau and also allotted each
woman a small dowry. And these sort of state uh
provided trousseau normally included like a ladies valies or some
sort of case for carrying a handkerchief, ribbons, a supply
of needles and white thread, scissors, hairbrush, stockings, gloves, knives, pins,
(08:22):
and a bonnet, basically like the things you would need
to set up house UH and sort of start your
life in a new place. On average, though the majority
of the women who went from France to the America's
as part of this program were from modest homes, a
handful were widows who were looking for a new life
after losing their husbands. Many of them were from Paris
(08:43):
or Rouens or the surrounding areas, but they could come
from anywhere in France, and several of them were not
even of French birth. And some of the benefit of
recruiting women from charity hospitals, which in this case we
should mention that it's hospital isn't really what we think
of that word meaning today. It's much more like an institution,
(09:04):
or kind of like a poor house in some cases,
or from very tough lives in the city streets. Was
really that these young women were accustomed to the idea
of having to work, and that was a high value
in introducing them into a New Witch settlement. At one point, however,
Jean Tellen wrote to Jean Baptiste Colbert that it would
really be best if they would send a few more
farm girls and fewer city orphans, because the latter group
(09:27):
were sometimes too sickly to take on the challenges that
awaited them in the Canadian wilderness. His letter states, it
would be good to recommend strongly that those who are
destined for this country are in no way disgraced in nature,
that they are not repulsive on the exterior, and that
they are healthy and strong for farm work or at
least have some ability for handiwork. Yeah, he wanted some
(09:50):
you know, hearty gals. Uh. And roughly two thirds of
the women making their way to New France married to
men who were living in the more rural areas of
the colony rather than the urban base, So there really
was some legitimate concern that women unsuited the country life
are really going to have a rough time of it,
And since the goal of this entire program was to
(10:11):
bolster the population and expand the settlement, it made sense
to everyone involved to try to stack the odds in
favor of making genuinely suitable matches and you know, landing
women in positions that they were going to be comfortable in,
that they could handle, that they would be able to,
you know, help provide for their family in the community.
To that end, there was also a handful of women
(10:32):
we mentioned earlier of slightly higher social standing. These women
were in the mix with the intent that they would
be potential brides were military officers and citizens of high
estate within the settlement's social structure. So reading through these details,
it starts to feel like something of a hybrid between
super efficient matchmaking and livestock wrangling. Yeah, it's uh, it's
(10:55):
one of those things where it's easy to get real
bristly and be like, wait, they were doing what, like,
it's kind of like male order bribing on a really
huge scale. Uh. And while the exact number of women
that that were part of this whole initiative is a
little tricky to pin down. Some of the women that
were involved are debated by historians as to whether they
were actually part of the King's daughter's initiative or if
(11:15):
they just kind of made their way on their own
and tried to kind of blend in with the King's
daughter's program. Others are kind of problematic to match the
numbers up because the reddor the records are either incomplete,
or they're muddled, or some part of the record has
been damaged. But it is estimated that seven d and
seventy women were sent to New France over the course
(11:36):
of a decade as the King's daughters, and this made
up about eight percent of the total immigrants to New
France during that period. And that sounds like a very
low number because it's a single digit. But if that
sounds scant to you, it's worth noting that it also
made up about fifty of all the women that we're
going to New France during these years. Most of the
people that were headed to New France from France were
(11:59):
in fact men who wanted to get in on the
fur trade and try to make their fortune. Only one
in ten of these women had a relation even a
very distant relation anywhere else in the colleague when they
traveled from France. This is a huge contrast to the
rest of the women who made the same journey before
seventeen hundred. For women who were not one of the
(12:20):
King's daughters, roughly two thirds of them had at least
one relation in New France, and most of them had
more than one relation. You know, they were either going
to family that they knew or uh, you know, they
had multiple cousins there, or something to that effect. And
in terms of the age breakdown, about fourteen percent of
(12:41):
these women were between the ages of fourteen and eighteen,
forty four percent were between the ages of nineteen and
twenty four, twenty five percent were between ages of twenty
five to twenty nine, twelve percent we're thirty to thirty four,
three percent we're thirty five to thirty nine, and a
little under two percent were older than forty or forty
(13:02):
year older. And as you track the data upward from
the youngest to oldest, the percentage of widows in each
group unsurprisingly also goes up. There have been some accounts
through the years that most of the women in the
program were of less than Christine Virtue and there's been
an equal degree of historical testimony that this was not
the case at all. Some accounts indicate that before any
(13:25):
woman was allowed to get on a ship bound for
New France, a friend a relative had to vouch for
their virtuous and good nature beforehand. Ill behavior or debauchery
on the way could result in a woman being shipped
directly back to France, with her opportunity to start a
new life in the colony completely avoided. Uh. And before
we get onto sort of how these matches were made
(13:47):
on a more nuts and bolts sort of level. Uh,
And sort of how incentivized family making was. Do you
want to do another quick word from a sponsor, Let's
do as you might imagined in a colony that consisted
almost entirely of men, brides shipped from the homeland were
quite an exciting prospect, and most of the women that
(14:09):
came from France to North America were married in pretty
short order after arriving in New France. To further incentivize
this whole idea of making a population stronghold, the French
government also offered cash grants to men who were married,
and even larger sums to men who had children. With
their new wives. Allowances were made and tables were drawn
(14:30):
up to accommodate families as large as twelve, and they
were corresponding payment levels for all sizes. Families had a
very clear cash value. Yeah, it gives the term family
values a whole different meaning if you think about it
in this way. Uh. Men who opted not to take
a wife, however, actually found themselves penalized. Uh. Their fur
(14:52):
trading efforts would meet up with blocks, and their privileges
were regulated to the point of loss, like they would
not be legally allowed to trade, or the you know,
trade allowances were suspended after a very you know, short amount.
But men did not, I feel compelled to point out,
need to marry any of the fee douir to benefit
from these incentive programs. They could also marry natives of
(15:15):
North America, people's already living there, people that came from
other places. Just as long as they were in the
French colony marrying and making families, they could still get
benefit payments as long as they were kind of helping
populate the French colony. So some modern ears this may
seem like a pretty weird scheme that was destined for failure,
(15:36):
But it turned out that all of this incentivized family
building actually worked exactly as the King had hoped. All
but about four percent of the field DOUI were married
in New France. Yeah, this was a huge success, which
I will admit that through my modern lens and I
try and you know, to put that stuff aside, But
there's just part of me that's always like, no way
(15:58):
with this work. Oh yeah, I worked really well. Actually. Yeah.
I on the other hand, I'm like I'd sign up
for that. If I have a choice between you know,
being destitute or traveling an ocean and having a new adventure,
I might travel the ocean and have a new adventure. Yeah.
And we'll talk about this some more in just a moment.
(16:19):
But part of the success of this really does have
to be attributed to Colbert's recruitment efforts and his close
work with Talent to select the right assortment of ladies
for the Canadian colony. So when Tracy mentioned earlier that
this was sort of like really efficient matchmaking combined with
sort of like a livestock situation, it really was. They
were quite good at picking exactly the right numbers and
(16:40):
the right matches for these men in the colonies, uh
And many of these women had come from situations that
were extremely difficult for them, either due to deaths in
the family that sort of left them without anyone uh
there in New France, or just general misfortune. So there
was usually some degree of motivation and to truly make
an effort to make this new life work. And for
(17:03):
some women it was a rare opportunity at freedom. They
you know, either maybe had gotten into some trouble while
they were in France. Usually it wasn't terrible trouble if
they were allowed to be one of the king's daughters.
But basically, you know, at this point the colonies were
still sort of considered this sort of backwards, scary thing.
But when you're facing you know, definite destitution where you
(17:24):
live versus, as Tracy said, like a new adventure and
a potential to actually have a life with some social mobility,
they were willing to take the risk. So, especially compared
to life in like a charity hospital or another institution,
this looked like a way more appealing option. The setup
also gave women way more choice when it came to
(17:45):
picking a spouse than they probably would have had at
home in France. In the case of women who were
from more affluent families, their parents probably would have been
the ones making the decision for them, And in the
case of women who were from more impoverished circumstances, it
opened up the possibility of a marriage and a related
increase in social standing. And that's an opportunity that they
(18:06):
would not have had if they had stayed in Europe.
And there are some written accounts that described this whole
thing as like a meat market scenario where the male
settlers would just come in and sort of assess and
select brides like livestock. Uh, But there are a lot
of other accounts that really contradict that, and they make
it sound much more civilized. So in these versions, men
(18:29):
that were considering taking a wife would visit the king's
daughters under supervised conditions. So remember most of these ladies
stayed at a convent when they arrived in North America,
or they were placed with families of church members. Like
they weren't sort of just pushed into a room and
then og old by men. They had basically gentlemen callers
that would come and meet them, and the ladies could
(18:50):
interact with these potential suitors if they wished they didn't
have to interact with them, and they had the right
to refuse marriage proposals if they were not interested in
the man who was interested in them, So they were
not being paraded up onto a stage to be selected
from like in Our Trains episode. Right. There was also
a lot more personal freedom than a lot of women
(19:12):
were entitled to anywhere else in the world in the
late sixteen hundreds. But once a woman actually did get married,
her husband was considered to be her master and the
final word in the household. Yeah, even though getting them
to the married state was really a much more uh
you know, empowered state for them to be in in
terms of their choice, once they got married, it was
(19:34):
pretty old school and the husband ran the house and
they kind of had to been to his will. Although
it does seem like most of these matches were pretty good,
most many of them lasted decades, lots of kids. Uh.
Just ten years after France began systematically shipping these brides
to be to New France, the population in the French
settlement had tripled by virtue of both immigration and procreation.
(19:59):
So in addition to the fi jua sort of going
over and that's less than a thousand, but then they
started having children very quickly, and this also just helped
make the colony look like a more appealing place for
other people to go to. So it kind of helped
in a pr way as well. And of all of
these marriages that happened, so we mentioned there was only
like a four percent unsuccessful match rates, only four percent
(20:23):
of the women didn't get married. Only three percent of
all of those successful marriages didn't result in children, and
sometimes those were like usually medical issues or uh, some
other problem that came up, one of the spouses would die, etcetera.
Within twenty years of the first births to come from
these marriages, the population split between women and men was
close to equal. So those are some pretty significant strides,
(20:47):
I mean, I think in terms of data set, if
you looked at it from when uh King Louis the
fourteen concocted this plan with his advisers, and you know,
just twenty years later, they had really kind of achieved
most of what they set out to do. However, in
sixteen seventy three, after a decade of doing this, as
France became embroiled in conflict with Holland, uh the King's
(21:09):
Daughter's program was actually deemed too costly to maintain, because
remember they're still paying for these women to to travel
to have their trousseau set up there. You know, at
that point, paying the men incentives to have children that
got very expensive. They couldn't do that while they were
also paying for their military efforts. It's also worth noting
that France was not the only country using efforts like
(21:31):
this to bolster the population of a colony, although most
other countries programs were a lot more modest. Today it
said that almost any French Canadian is related to at
least one of the king's daughters, and many people that
get into genealogy are able to connect their family lines
to multiple king's daughters uh, where they can sort of
find many of the several of them on the branches
(21:53):
of their family tree. And if you can trace your
genes to a fi Duchoa, you can actually be certified
as a descendant of the king's utters so that you
will have your own sort of magical connection to this
piece of French history. Uh. And there are places still
doing the certification online. There was one big one that
was happening a push in ten as part of an
anniversary celebration of this whole event. But I think they
(22:16):
are still doing the certifications. But that is the story
of the Fiduroix, the import of brides to North America
and New France in an effort to sort of make
a population, and it was super successful, as much as
part of me has a hard time accepting that it
was very successful. Yeah, I think I'm actually in the
(22:37):
context of this story. The thing that's the bigger sticking
point for me is the greater context of what was
happening in the America's with colonialization, rather than this select
group of women, because especially in the context of the times,
it does seem like they had a lot more agency
and choice, yeah than in France. Yeah. It's one of
(22:57):
those weird things where part of it is that admittedly
this is through my lens of kind of like the
romantic of like no, you find your true love, which
is silly, uh that it's hard to think like, oh,
so these you know, government guys went out and they
found women and thought like, oh this is these numbers
are going to match up pretty well, and it worked.
I'm like, where is the true love in that? But
(23:17):
that's ridiculous and not to be applied. You can think
about it as that. Uh, with that disparity and the
people who were seeking partners, it was a lot more
likely that ladies would find somebody they were genuinely attracted
to because they had a much bigger's choose from with
less competition. That's true. And as I said, many of
(23:38):
these marriages lasted decades and we're you know, very seemingly
on paper at least successful. Uh. You know, they had
many children, they supported their farms or their fur trade,
and they, like I said, they laid the genetic groundwork
really for French Canada, so uh success. I also have
two pieces of listener mail that are from the same person,
(23:58):
but they're so lovely. We got two postcards from our
listener James, and he says, dear Holly and Tracy, greetings
from the city once known as Stalinabad, which I've probably
pronounced poorly. I've been making my way through the stuff
you missed in history class catalog since having it helped
me through a very boring job this spring, I decided
to continue while pursuing my not at all boring job
(24:20):
running summer camps for rural Tajak youth. Is this your
first Tajakhstan postcard to the best of my knowledge, the
answer is yes. Uh. And then he suggests some Central
Asian topics. Uh, because that is, of course an area
very near and dear to his heart, and one of
them in particular I'm very excited about, so it might happen. Uh.
(24:40):
And then and he sent us it's a picture of
king is simony of Tajakstan? I probably, butcher Dad, I apologize.
But then we got a second postcard, and he says,
I couldn't resist sending you guys a second postcard, both
because you've given me so many quality podcasts and because
I'm skeptical about them reaching you. Well guess what. They
both came and on the same day, So mail success.
(25:02):
And in this one he sent us a picture. It's
a Soviet claymation. Still, and I love animation, and claymation
in particular has an odd magical charm over me. So
I really really love this postcard. Uh. And he says,
after a day of teaching tasks from Villages Art and
Ultimate Frisbee, your podcasts are the perfect way to relax.
So I'm so happy because these are gorgeous postcards and
(25:24):
they're both from Tashi Stein, where I don't think we've
gotten any from before, so hooray James. Those are really cool. Uh.
If you would like to write us, you can do
so at via email at History podcast at house dog
works dot com. You can connect with us on Facebook
dot com slash missed in History, on Twitter at misst
in history at missed in History dot combler dot com,
(25:46):
and on Pinterest at pinterries dot com slash missed in History.
You can also visit us on our own website, which
is missed in History dot com, and there you'll find
the episodes as well as show notes. Uh. And if
he would like to visit our parents site, which is
how to Works, you can go there. You can look
(26:07):
up something related to what we talked about today by
typing in immigration in the search bar, and you will
get how immigration works. And you can also if you
would like to send us a postcard like James did, uh,
you can go to the contact us at the bottom
of any of those pages on how to works dot
com and you'll find our snail mail address. So we
hope you do that. At how stuff works dot com
(26:30):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com,
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