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Ellie Kona's avatar

French colonials versus English colonials, each recruiting Indigenous allies in quest of supremacy over the revenue-producing resources of the land (e.g. beaver skins, tobacco) for profits of the corporate investors on behalf of the sovereigns of France and England.

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Stuart Attewell (Paris, Fr)'s avatar

Yes but the French wanted to work with the locals through "comptoirs" and create trade whilst the English were there to stay "en masse" and eliminate the middlemen.

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Ellie Kona's avatar

Yes, the French went for assimilate, the English more for annihilate, or at least for apartheid. A coureur des bois ("runner of the woods") was a French-Canadian trapper and/or trader with First Nations peoples. Some married Indigenous women and made M├йtis families and communities in the outback. So the practices vis-├а-vis the middlewomen were very different, though M├йtis were subjected to racist persecution. Oh right, the English won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and turned New France into Canada!

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