ABSTRACT
The emancipation of most of America—that is, the Western Hemisphere—may be best understood as a series of reactions by the settlers to the actions and events that occurred in their mother countries. The social and political structure, resource base, and, most of all, the timing and context of each region's emancipation affected the process and determined the future of the newly independent nations. French explorers, missionaries, traders, and settlers established themselves in North America—in Canada and the Mississippi River basin—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later in the Caribbean islands. Although the nature of representation and negotiation was much weaker in French America than in Spanish or British America, the region nonetheless offered its minority white population more of both than the people of France possessed. Spanish Americans and British Americans considered themselves either true Spaniards or true Britons, the possessors of all the rights and privileges of those people.
