EC/FC Parts 1-5

Part 1: The Fall of Québec​

The year is 1628, and England and France are at war. This wasn't a rare occurrence, as England and France had been enemies for centuries by this point, and this rivalry had manifested in the New World. England has established colonies around the Chesapeake Bay and along Cape Cod, while the French were further north along the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. In this particular year, English privateer David Kirke captured the city (this is the POD, as IOTL Kirke captured it a year later after the war had ended), with the French settlers being repatriated to France. After the war ended, England acquired the French colonies of Canada and Acadia. What was the French colony of Québec was renamed to Kirkestown after the man who conquered it, with that name later evolving into Kirkeston. The new English colony of Canada was granted the St. Lawrence River valley as far west as the place the French had called Montréal. What was French Acadia was now the Scottish colony of Nova Scotia, and Scottish settlers began to arrive in the region. Settlers from the British Isles began to move into what had been French Canada, with settlements being established along the St. Lawrence River, such as Three Rivers and Mount Royal. The early settlers in Canada came primarily from England, while in Nova Scotia is was primarily Scottish settlers (duh, Nova Scotia = New Scotland). During the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s thousands of settlers from the British Isles fled to North America, with many coming to Canada and Nova Scotia. The population of Canada in 1650 was 7,250 while the population of Nova Scotia was 3,500 (all population are approximations), with a massive natural growth rate (7-9 children on average, with 4-5 surviving to adulthood) and small but steady immigration. No French presence was left in Canada due to the aforementioned repatriation, but the French would not be gone from the colonial game for long...

Part 2: French Colony​

After losing the small colonies in the north to the English, the French looked to the coastline between English Virginia and Spanish Florida to colonize. In 1631, King Louis XIII authorized a new colonial expedition to colonize this land that had previously been attempted for colonization by the French on two separate occasions. The first one was Charlesfort in 1562, which had been organized by Huguenot admiral Gaspard de Coligny and founded by Jean Ribault, but the colony was a disaster and the colonists sailed back to Europe after only a year. The second attempt was made a few years later in 1564 by Huguenot explorer René Goulaine de Laudonnière as a safe haven for French Huguenots, but he forgot not to found his colony of Fort Caroline near the Spanish, and said Spanish destroyed the colony and slaughtered the colonists. Seventy years later, and the French were looking at this area for a new colony once again, and so on the 14th of July of the year of our lord 1632, 240 Frenchmen set sail from the port of La Rochelle for the new world. After two and a half months on the high seas, they found a great spot for a new colony, with a sheltered peninsula surrounded by barrier islands and two river mouths on either side, with abundant wood and good soils, calling their new colony Rochelle after the place they had departed from months prior, and thus on October 2nd, 1632, the colony of French Florida (Florida is used for the entire Southeastern U.S. of OTL, not just the OTL State of Florida). A simple fortification was built from the local pine trees, as well as basic housing, storage, fishing boats and a small chapel. The overall terrain of the area had a resemblance to the Landes region south of Bordeaux, a mix of pine woodlands and marshes. Initally, the colonists survived off of fishing in the sheltered waters around them, plus trading with the natives (whom they had decent relations with during this time period), with experimentation of different crops in the cleared fields around them.
The summer came, and it was a HOT one. Summers in the colony of Rochelle were about 15 degrees Fahrenheit/7 degrees Celsius hotter than in La Rochelle back home, and many Frenchmen were not comfortable in such sultry conditions. Despite that, a second settler party of 180 settlers, some of whom were repatriated from Canada during the war was sent out for Floride, landing at the meeting of two rivers along the coast, adopting the native name of Chatoca for their new settlement in 1633. Farms were laid out along the river that the natives called the Neuse, and deals were made with the Tuscarora natives. Still, the biggest challenge for the French colonists weren't the natives, but the intense heat and increasingly diseases such as yellow fever that would strike and kill large numbers of settlers. A "solution" was found, but I'll get to that at a later date (hint: it's not a good thing). In the meantime, French Nobleman Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière founded a religious mission of Ville-Marie to the southwest of the two colonies in order to proselytize to the natives of the region. The settlers were getting used to their new home, and starting to build a successful settlement in the region they called Neusequia (French: La Neusequie), a name adapted from the natives (basically the eastern part of OTL North Carolina).

Part 3: Compagnie de la Floride​

With the new French colony established on the Florida Coast, the crown gave control of the region to the newly chartered Compagnie de la Floride, or Company of Florida in English in 1635. The crown had several requirements for the company, such as making the colony profitable and recruiting 5000 settlers over the next 25 years to come to La Floride, or 200 per year, of which 1/3rd have to be women. During the first trades with the natives, the natives gave the captain of the settler party a plant and told him to smoke it. When he took a puff, a funny, yet good feeling, and thus Florida's tobacco industry was born. Wealthy French merchants and seigneurs bought land in and around the Neusequia colony, but eventually looked elsewhere. South of the existing colonies, new settlements such as Port Saint-Michel, Port Armand and Nouvelle-Charlesfort were established (although Nouvelle-Charlesfort is "New" because it was established on the site of the aforementioned Charlesfort). Initially, indentured servants and convicts were brought in to work the plantations, but the subtropical climate and diseases would take a toll quickly on them, with half dying within two years, not to mention that tobacco is very labor intensive. So, a replacement was found...

Ugh, you knew it was coming

In 1641, the first shipment of 50 African slaves was made to the port of Rochelle, marking the first appearance of the peculiar institution in La Floride, but it would be entrenched from there on out. Very early on, it was noticed that Africans were less affected by diseases such as Malaria and Yellow Fever than Europeans or Amerindians, and thus were less prone to die of said diseases. While Neusequia imported some slaves but mainly remained a white farming colony, the new southern colony of Armandia (French: L'Armandie) became heavily dependent on African slaves, especially in the coastal lowlands, and soon got an African majority population. The main crops grown on the plantations were tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo and sugarcane, all of which were labor intensive crops, while white farmers grew mainly wheat and corn as well as raising animals like cattle and sheep. The border with English Virginia was drawn along the Roanoke River, with the border west of there being unclear and vague.

Part 4: Colony of Canada​

The English and Scottish colonies of Canada and Nova Scotia were thriving by the 1650’s, with thousands of settlers living there and due to unrest back home (cough cough Cromwell) thousands more were arriving. The shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was rapidly being settled with new settlements like Brellington, Wolf River, Mactan and Gaspay, settled by everyone from Anglicans to Puritans to Scotsmen to Germans. Canada’s population by 1675 had grown to 25,000, while Nova Scotia had grown to 11,500. Meanwhile, the British went out building forts around the Great Lakes region, including Fort Catarockway, Fort Odawa, Fort Toronto, Fort Niagara and Fort Stuart in order to solidify British control and make bases for the thriving fur trade. Speaking of the fur trade, most fur traders were of Scottish or Irish origin and would take canoe trips up into the Great Lakes, going as far as Lake’s End (which would evolve to Lakesend over time) to trade furs, before returning to one of the forts or the burgeoning settlement of Mount Royal. They would often marry or otherwise… umm… engage in relations with native women, forming a new racial group of mixed white-native people known as the Measca (coming from the Gaelic word for Mixed, as previously mentioned most fur traders were Irish or Scottish). Back in the settled region, the climate of Canada and Nova Scotia was ideal for growing wheat and barley, and the St. Lawrence valley quickly became one of the breadbaskets of the English Colonies (along with the Middle Colonies). On the Middle Colonies, the English still took New Amsterdam from the Dutch and still named it New York, so not much changes there. By 1675, Kirkeston had grown to 2,500 residents, being the largest city in the former French territories. 

Part 5: Emerging Classes​

Despite being a young and lightly settled colony, French Floride was already showing divisions within its society developing, namely between the rich landlords and the yeoman farmers.
The rich landowners were often of noble or aristocratic background and had lots of money upon arrival. Purchasing land along rivers on the coastal plain, they build lavish plantation houses, usually inspired by Roman Villas and various Châteaux across France, fueled by massive amounts of money from growing ca$h crops like Tobacco, Cotton, Indigo, Rice and Sugarcane. Of course with ca$h crops come slavery, and boy were the rich plantation owners into that. Early on it was figured that Africans were immune to tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever, while Europeans and Amerindians would die (the cause was unknown at the time, but the result was clear, as 1/4th of the colony died of yellow fever in 1638). We all know how awful the conditions and treatment of slaves were, so let’s skip that and get to the yeoman farmers.
Most of the (white) settlers in La Floride weren’t aristocrats or nobles, but normal farmers, craftsmen, artisans and the like. In the 1660's, hundreds of unmarried women were sent over to be wives to the male settlers, who were overrepresented in the Floridien population up to that point. French farmers often preferred to settle further inland in the Piedmont where diseases weren’t as much of a problem. With the Indigenous populations being decimated by diseases, much open and fertile land was available, and with less disease in the interior and an extremely high birth rate (7-9 children per woman), the white population of La Floride began to soar, growing from 3,629 in 1650 to 11,159 in 1670. These class divides, as well as the slavery issue would become very important in the future, but I am tired and not in a mood to talk about it now.