ABSTRACT
In striking contrast to the achievements of Catholic Iberia and Protestant Holland was the failure of the early colonial ventures of Catholic France and Protestant England. Yet both were countries with lengthy traditions of conquest and crusade, and both were amongst the pioneers of Europe’s overseas expansion. France in the early sixteenth century was a considerable maritime power. Its regular naval forces were admittedly of little consequence before the late 1600s, but its real strength lay, as did that of Spain, in the resources of a number of widely dispersed ports. The ensuing civil war certainly diverted France from any coherent imperial policy. To the Huguenots, however, it demonstrated the strategic value of colonies and their merits as havens for the True Faith. Nevertheless, whatever its ambitions to emulate the Dutch, aristocratic France produced a colonial society much like those produced by the equally aristocratic Spain and Portugal.
