Beyond Borders: Mental Mapping and the French River World in North America, 1763-1805

This study begins with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The cession of French territories in North America redrew the geopolitical landscape. However, this dissertation argues that geopolitical change was not representative of, nor did it immediately alter, existing social and economic realities. The French Empire in North America had come to an end, but a sizable French-speaking population remained in both the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Valleys, and throughout the Great Lakes region. Over the next forty years, as the British, Spanish, and Americans carved up the former French territories, they were forced to confront the French-speaking population in the heart of North America. In the midst of regular geopolitical upheaval and instability, I posit that French socio-economic connections continued to tie French-speaking regions together to form a French river world. More specifically, this dissertation examines socio-economic continuity in the portion of the French river world between the St. Lawrence and middle Mississippi Valleys from 1763 to 1803. Early migration patterns saw Canadiens from the St. Lawrence Valley marry into established French-speaking families in the middle Mississippi Valley in the l740s. These migration and marriage patterns continued after 1763. They helped connect seemingly disparate French-speaking regions together and kept a broader geographical understanding of French North America at the forefront of living memory. Merchants like Gabriel Cerre traveled back and forth between the two regions, setting up extended networks of communication and exchange through strategic marriage alliances designed to facilitate trade. However, merchants did more than simply conduct trade, as they also helped people to handle their personal affairs over long distances. Nowhere was this more visible than in the frequent use of third party representation to handle family succession rights. Merchants and voyageurs became cultural conduits through which French-speaking families stayed connected. Thus, the French river world was both imagined and real, as a product of the lived experiences of merchants and voyageurs and the imaginings of those they represented. Both combined to form a socially constructed mental map, which was mutable and fluid. However, by the end of the eighteenth century, the socio-economic linkages that had helped maintain the French river world slowly began to degrade. Access to British markets and capital, which had initially helped reinforce the commercial networks of the French river world, ultimately undermined long-term social cohesion. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 ushered in a new era as waves of American migration radically changed the demographic composition of the middle Mississippi Valley. Yet, even as French bourgeois in places like St. Louis shifted their attention towards the construction of mid-America the networks of the French river world were slow to fade. The American Fur Company hired over one thousand Canadien voyageurs out of Montreal for voyages to St. Louis and the limits of Missouri fur trade, keeping elements of the French river world afloat until the 1830s.

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