Similarities Between England And France

The quest for wealth between England and France were met with great exploitation and had lasting impact on their inhabitants. In this paper I will seek to explain how both England and France show differences and similarities in their quest. Both France and England wanted gain economic wealth and power and made every attempt to do so by any means necessary.
The English colonization looked very different from the French; during the period 1536-1691 “the English used a model of forcible segregation with the Irish that would mirror their future relationships with Native Americans.” Rather than integrating with the Natives, England acquired lands by using violent force that caused them to disperse the areas where they once occupied and leaves

them with no other choice to move to areas that in most cases weren’t suitable for survival. In many cases most cases of them died. The French on the other hand sought to foster a more cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with the Native Americans; their preference was for trade and not permanent settlement. Additionally, during the 16th century France didn’t have the problem of over population as England did and seek to establish a sense of superiority while the French embraced the natives.
England and France both look at different ways and means of boosting their economic wealth.

The French became interesting in fishing and then turn to the fur trade, which were mostly beaver belts and required collaboration and alliances with native people who often did the hunting. “French fur traders placed a higher value on establishing a successful French Colonial footprint and the French empire expanded south and west with settlements and trading post along the Mississippi.” “They then began to put pressure on the Spanish and British empires. England on the other hand, depends on a robust navy for trade and territorial expansion. Hakluyt suggested, England could find plentiful materials to outfit a world-class navy.” He also stated that, the new world could provide an escape for England’s vast armies of landless “vagabonds.” Expanded trade, he argued, would not only bring profit, but also provide work for England’s jobless poor. Additionally, despite the lack of resources, they had new plans to build great economic wealth. They collaborated with new government-sponsored trading monopolies and employed financial innovations such as a joint stock companies as they sought to improve on the Dutch economy. However, drastic social and economic changes caused the English population to be unsettled. The increase of the population during the seventeenth century coincided with the declined in the farming income where the cost of living increased and wages basically remained the

same, This caused at least half of the population to live below the poverty line.
The French and English encounters with the native populations were very different. Maybe in an effort to expose the anti-Catholic foundations of ‘the black Legend”, the French worked to foster teamwork with Indians. “Jesuits missionaries for instance, adopted different conversion strategies than the Spanish Franciscans.” The Spanish missionaries brought the Indians into more surrounded missions where they were not expose, whereas Jesuits more often intermingled with or alongside Indian groups. To further strengthened the point that French encounters was more tolerable with the natives, we see the intermarrying of French fur traders with Indian women. Unlike the French the English encounter was less cooperative and was met with more violence, rather than integrating and intermingling with the natives and converting them to Protestantism.
Through the quest for wealth we see entire communities totally wiped out.

The Huron people for instance, who developed a close relationship with the French were totally wiped out, ravaged by diseases and Entanglement in French and Dutch conflicts that proved to be disastrous. Despite this, some native peoples maintained distant alliances with the French. In the case of Roanoke, it was totally abandoned. Historians presume the colonist, short of food, may have fled for the nearby island and its settled native population. Others offer violence as a possible explanation. These impacts are deemed lasting, as some societies no longer exist for a reasons stated in the preluding paragraphs. The quest for wealth and economic exchanges also led to new cultural systems and new

identities.

Work Cited
The American Yawp.