Champlain founds Quebec and New France
- Date
- 3 July 1608
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- North America (Canada / St Lawrence valley)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
On 3 July 1608 Samuel de Champlain led some 32 colonists to a narrowing of the St Lawrence River and built a fortified trading post, the 'Habitation', that grew into Quebec City, the first permanent French settlement in what is now Canada.
Quebec became the administrative heart of New France, a colony oriented less to plantation farming than to the lucrative fur trade. Champlain, later called the Father of New France, cultivated alliances with the Huron-Wendat, Algonquin and Montagnais peoples, ties that shaped indigenous-European relations and drew the French into long-running rivalry with the Iroquois confederacy. Despite harsh winters and scurvy that nearly destroyed the early settlement, Quebec endured and anchored a French presence that would extend along the St Lawrence and into the Great Lakes and Mississippi valley, defining the contest among France, Britain and indigenous nations for the interior of North America.
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Empires active in 3 July 1608
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE to 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE to 1974 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE to 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE to 1999 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE to 1644 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE to 1976 CE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America14 May 1607
- Torres Navigates the Strait Between New Guinea and AustraliaOctober 1606
- The Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower CompactNovember 1620
- Abel Tasman's Voyage: First European Contact with New Zealand, Tonga and FijiDecember 1642 to February 1643
- Spanish Conquest of the Philippines and Founding of Colonial Manila24 June 1571
- Cook's First Voyage Charts New Zealand and Eastern Australia1769-1770
Essential reading
- Founding of the Bank of Amsterdam (Wisselbank)31 January 1609
- Shah Abbas I and the golden age of Safavid Isfahan1598 (capital moved to Isfahan)
- Bayinnaung forges the largest empire in Southeast Asian history1565
- Cocoliztli Epidemic of 1545 to 15481545 to 1548
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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