Abstract
This chapter provides a historical account of the grid-pattern design of the French bastide towns as the most significant model for France’s New World expansion during the seventeenth century. Endowed with both political and agricultural functions by making agricultural expansion possible through the political process of colonization, the author considers the classical roots of this urban model during the European Renaissance and then examines its use in France and New France as a military strategy of fortified urban design. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the territorial conflicts between France and England during the mid-eighteenth century, which had disastrous effects for France’s colonial settlements in North America.
This chapter was originally published as Stelter, G. (1993). “Military Considerations and Colonial Town Planning: France and New France in the Seventeenth Century.” In R. Bennett (Ed.), Settlements in the Americas: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (pp. 210–237). Copyright © 1993 by the Associated University Presses. Reproduced with permission of Associated University Presses.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Northrup Frye suggests that the Canadian tradition “might well be called a quest for the peaceable kingdom,” and historian William Kilbourn (1970) used this concept as the title of his guide to the history and culture of the country.
- 2.
Montmagny’s plan has never been found. For an excellent analysis of what it may have looked like, see Charbonneau et al. (1983).
- 3.
- 4.
For an excellent brief analysis of Colbert’s mercantilism, see Betts (1968). Betts makes the point that mercantilism was an economic policy with political objectives. It was based on the assumption that since the amount of the world’s resources was limited, any addition to a state’s economic growth required a subtraction from that of another state. Economic development was therefore a crucial aspect of an interest in political power.
- 5.
My description of Vauban’s fortified towns also depends on my study of the models of these places, which were made in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and are housed in the Musée de Plans—Reliefs, part of the Army Museum at the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, and on-site visits in May, 1985.
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Stelter, G.A. (2018). Military Considerations and Colonial Town Planning: France and New France in the Seventeenth Century. In: Rose-Redwood, R., Bigon, L. (eds) Gridded Worlds: An Urban Anthology . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76490-0_8
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