France Finds a Foothold in Canada
France was another latecomer in the scramble for New World real estate, like England and Holland, and for basically the same reasons.
A new era dawned in 1598 when the Edict of Nantes, issued by the Crown, was granted to allow limited toleration to the French Protestants. Religious wars ceased, and in the 1600s France blossomed into the mightiest and most-feared nation in Europe.
Even earlier, while the religious wars were still raging in the mid-1500s, the French had planted a few colonial seedlings. Noteworthy were the short-lived Catholic settlements on the St. Lawrence River, and the havens which the harassed Huguenots strove to create in Brazil, Florida, and South Carolina.
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