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The French colonial nobility was a combination of old, generally minor, noble military families and civilian officials whose rank came about through administrative service to the crown. Barred from working in France, nobles who settled in the colonies were granted special permission by the king to engage in commercial trade. In Canada, some established trading posts, while others in the Caribbean developed habitations or plantations; the latter often aimed to make a fortune sufficient to return to France. In an effort to stimulate commercial growth and upon the recommendation of both intendant Jean Talon and the powerful minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV offered noble status to commoners who showed economic resourcefulness and whose finances allowed them to live "nobly." No more than twelve Canadian families were ennobled this way (the last in 1716), and as many as sixty in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue were awarded letters of nobility before 1789. Most French nobles who arrived in the New World were second sons serving as Marine officers, in command of an army regiment, or as part of a military engineer corps; many of their descendants continued the tradition of military service or assumed prominent positions in the Church. Other colonial noblemen and women included royal officials, their families, and various administrative figures, who came and went according to royal favor and machinations at Versailles. Nobility was jealously guarded, to the point that celibacy and religious vows were used to keep existing noble families and family fortunes noble. A hereditary condition that passed through the male line, nobility stood apart from the acquired wealth and status that was the hallmark of the bourgeoisie. All in all, nobles never accounted for more than about 4% of the population of New France at any one time. Measures against venality, or the sale of public office that offered nobility, in colonies such as Louisiana were designed to reduce the influence of the non-noble merchant and professional class. |
Claims of nobility were often tenuous, and many self-styled colonial "noblemen" were in fact members of a non-noble elite comprised of bourgeois merchants, legal officials, doctors, and other professionals. Although most positions in colonial government, including seats on the Sovereign Council in Québec, were reserved for noblemen appointed by the king, some were eventually held by non-noble candidates. Some roturiers, or commoners, were also able to secure military positions originally reserved for noblemen, a testament to a changing social mobility in both France and New France that ascribed importance to merit in addition to lineage.
Many bourgeois made fortunes through trade and business, sometimes surpassing their noble superiors in terms of material wealth and lifestyle. Merchants in Montréal were key players in fur trade, while others in Québec were involved in the importation of metropolitan goods and the exportation of natural resources such as timber. In Louisbourg, wealth was made exploiting the natural resources of the North Atlantic, namely fish, and participation in trade between France, Canada, and the Caribbean. Some bourgeois built elegant urban residences, and in Canada it was possible for them to purchase seigneuries, becoming seigneurs, or lords, of quasi-feudal manors in their own right without actually acquiring coveted letters of nobility. Others established plantations in the Antilles and Louisiana. Competent colonial businessmen maintained close relations with the metropole, facilitating economic ties between French colonies and metropolitan port towns such as Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Nantes, and Rochefort. Although some bourgeois married into the nobility, others consolidated their social prestige, power, and fortunes in the colonies by marrying within the merchant class. |
