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In Louis XIV’s New France, colonial authorities attempted to reproduce French regal authority in novel ways, often by performing typical metropolitan political rituals. When these practices were transposed into the St Lawrence Valley settlements, where a small French population lived alongside a substantial Indigenous presence, they took on new meanings.
The colony of Canada replicated many features of the developing French absolutist state. Yet while the king likely knew more about his colony than he did about most parts of metropolitan France, this transatlantic setting imposed new constraints on absolutist authority, from the challenges of distance to an Indigenous population that largely lived outside European norms. Political Culture in Louis XIV’s Canada examines royal power as it was represented in ritual (ceremonial entrances, Te Deums, processions), in rhetoric (political disputes over cabals and factions), and in objects (portraits, royal busts, currency, buildings, maps, and censuses). Colin Coates describes the successes and failures the French authorities experienced in exporting their political practices. He reveals how those authorities’ understandings of Indigenous political culture shaped ideas of the proper relation between rulers and the ruled.
This book traces the establishment of a colonial political culture that continued to shape the lives of the French in Canada long after the Sun King’s death in 1715.
"Political Culture in Louis XIV’s Canada is an evocative exploration of the outsized if flickering shadow that the Bourbon monarchy cast across the Atlantic from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries." Literary Review of Canada
"Coates' Political Culture in Louis XIV's Canada contributes greatly to the conversation on French absolutism, New France's cultural history, French Indigenous history, and state formation under Louis XIV in the wider French Atlantic world." Canadian Historical Review
« [L’auteur se base] sur une variété impressionnante de sources (y compris l’architecture, la peinture, la sculpture, la monnaie, les médailles et les cartes géographiques) pour montrer que la monarchie est parvenue à ses fins grâce à l’émergence d’une culture politique coloniale distincte. » jury du Prix de l’Assemblée nationale de l'IHAF
“This book is based on extensive and deep research reflecting a long career of thinking about New France and its political and cultural character. [Its] strengths lie in its nuanced understanding of the connections between politics and culture, the distinctiveness of early Canada in comparison to France and its other overseas colonies, the application of anthropological tools in studying French colonial power, and its sensitivity to Indigenous perspectives. The book makes a significant contribution to New France political, social, and cultural history by teaching us how French colonial officials employed cultural tropes to establish and legitimize political authority based on the absolute power of the French king.” American Historical Review