elmonoenano t1_ja03uay wrote on February 25, 2023 at 9:04 PM

Reply to comment by Forsaken_Champion722 in Weekly History Questions Thread. by AutoModerator

In the US the narrative of colonization for religious reasons gets over played b/c it's a nice story. But what really drives colonies are institutions, usually financial. England was set up to make more money off of colonies b/c it's institutions, like corporations, banks, credit systems, shipping, etc. were set up to exploit those opportunities. The French just weren't at the same scale.

GSilky t1_ja4crgb wrote on February 26, 2023 at 7:22 PM

The French were much larger scale than the British. The British won the seven years war and got Canada out of the deal. We have French colonial hand downs in Colorado to give you an idea of the scale of French involvement in the Americas. The key is that they didn't necessarily have organized colonisation as an impetus, they were fine with trading and not investing. This worked for a very long time across a large portion of the continent.