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Documents of Transaction: Cartography and Architectural Drawings of Trade Infrastructure in Early Modern New France

Cartographie et dessins d'architecture des infrastructures commerciales de Nouvelle France au début de l'ère moderne
Jason Nguyen

Entrées d’index

Index géographique :

Amérique du Nord, Québec, Canada

Index chronologique :

XVIIe siècle

Territoires anciens :

Nouvelle-France
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Texte intégral

  • 1 Samuel de Champlain provided a description of the fort in Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: (...)
  • 2 The definitive biography of Champlain remains Marcel Trudel, “Champlain,” in Dictionary of Canadian (...)
  • 3 In La Relation de voyage en Amérique, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles: un carrefour des genres
  • 4 A detailed description of the early colonial architecture of Québec, including the likely organizat (...)

1Samuel de Champlain’s Voyages (1613) offers the earliest known depiction of the Québec habitation, or trading fort (fig. 1).1 Published in Paris, the richly illustrated book recounted three trips made by the French navigator, cartographer, and colonist along the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries between 1604 and 1612.2 These first-hand and allegedly factual accounts of foreign travel catered to a European readership fascinated by globalism and tales of adventure.3 In the image, a series of timber-framed, gabled-roofed buildings rise from a star-shaped fortification. The complex included a dovecote (building B), artillery facilities (building C), a forge (building F), lodgings (workers in buildings C and D; artisans in building F; Champlain in building H), and a garden (marked O).4 A defensive ditch (marked M) and platforms for cannons (marked N) surround the fort, signaling the militaristic nature of the commercial enterprise. The barely discernible storehouse, marked A and located on the triangular roof on the far left, housed provisions, tools and other iron goods, and beaver pelts—the waterproof commodity whose desirability and market value in Europe fueled the corporate operation.

Figure 1 : The habitation of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain

Figure 1 : The habitation of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain

Source: Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.

2In 1608, Champlain and twenty-eight colonists established Québec on an outcropping along the St. Lawrence River to facilitate commercial trade. “I could not find any more suitable or better situated site than the point of Québecq,” he wrote.

  • 5 Samuel de ChamplainLes Voyages, op. cit. (note 1), p. 176: “[J]e n’en peu trouver de plus commode (...)

Immediately I employed some of our workers to cut down [the walnut trees] to make a dwelling there, the others to saw them by axe, and others to dig the ground and make ditches; & the others to go fetch our amenities at Tadoussac with the boat. The first thing that we made was the storehouse to keep our provisions safe from cover, which was done promptly by the diligence of each of them, & the care I had of them.5

  • 6 Champlain wrote how, following Indigenous customs, the traders used birchbark canoes to navigate th (...)

3He selected the site, named “Québecq” in reference to the Algonquin term meaning the “narrowing of the waters,” for its environmental qualities and proximity to Huron-Wendat and Algonquin territories. The headland at the river’s straits, marked A on the accompanying site plan, offered a protected harbor for the loading and unloading of shipping vessels (fig. 2). In addition to the two depictions of the Québec habitation, Champlain’s book included eighteen maps of the St. Lawrence Valley, one exterior view of the coastal fort of Port-Royal (est. 1605), and two vignettes illustrating battles between the French and the Iroquois. The forests surrounding the new habitation provided maple, oak, and birch for the construction of buildings and canoes.6 Equally if not more important was the site’s location closer to his Indigenous allies, with whom the French bartered tools, iron goods, and weaponry for pelts. By placing the depot farther inland, he aimed to cut off rival European buyers stationed on the Atlantic coast. In this regard, the “more suitable” and “better situated” site connoted Champlain’s geographic interests as well as his efforts to monopolize the demand side of the fur trade.

Figure 2: The site plan of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain.

Figure 2: The site plan of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain.

Source: Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.

  • 7 In addition to the collection at McGill University, Bourdon’s drawings are preserved at the Aix-en- (...)

4Champlain and later colonists rebuilt and expanded the trading post during the 17th and 18th centuries, committing to Québec’s operations as the seat of French commerce, settlement, and defense in the St. Lawrence Valley. A plan drawing composed in brown ink on laid paper by the engineer Jean Bourdon illustrates the efforts to secure the site through defensive architectural measures (fig. 3). A series of star-like bastions jut into the landscape, providing the hilltop citadel with an elevated position from which to fire on attackers—an increasing priority, especially given the temporary seizure of the fort by the English colonist David Kirke in 1629 and the battles associated with the so-called Beaver Wars. Fought during the mid- and late 17th century, the conflicts consisted of a series of clashes between the Iroquois, supported by the English and Dutch, and the Huron-Wendat and Algonquin, supported by the French. With declines in the beaver population, the Iroquois sought to expand their territories to control the supply side of the trade, which prompted their adversaries to defend their lands and political allyships. Composed amid the onset of fighting, Bourdon’s survey forms part of folio of ten floor- and site-plan drawings, housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections section of McGill University library. The drawings provide a detailed account of the military architecture of New France; they include schemes to fortify trading posts, storehouses, and settlements in Québec and Montréal, the latter of which was established in 1642.7 Collectively, they showcase the engineer’s familiarity with the art of war and the tactics employed to secure the colonial spaces and economic systems of the fur trade.

Figure 3: Jean Bourdon, “Plan du fort de Quebec par le Sr. Bourdon” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.

Figure 3: Jean Bourdon, “Plan du fort de Quebec par le Sr. Bourdon” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.

Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.

  • 8 This work forms part of an ongoing line of research on the architecture of trade and exchange in th (...)
  • 9 Jan de Vries outlines the differences between “soft” and “hard” definitions of economic globalizati (...)
  • 10 William Cronon examines the ecological transformation of New England in the aftermath of European c (...)

5This essay uses Champlain’s maps and Bourdon’s drawings to think through some of the transactional spaces that supported the fur trade in early modern New France.8 It speculates that the development of the French market relied on two simultaneous spatial operations. The first, illustrated by Champlain’s maps, demonstrates the effort to penetrate the continent’s interior by mastering waterways and forging bonds with Indigenous suppliers. The second, portrayed in Bourdon’s floor—and site-plan drawings, highlights the attempt to fortify the French side of the trade by constructing militarized storehouses along the St. Lawrence River. On the one hand, the maps signal the processes of European expansion, whereby navigators employed geographic knowledge and diplomacy to access unknown territories and forge trading partnerships.9 The alliance between the French, Huron-Wendat, and Algonquin was fraught with far-reaching consequences, including the intensifying of territorial rivalries on all sides, the introduction of European diseases to the North American continent, and the ecological transformation of the St. Lawrence Valley.10 On the other hand, Bourdon’s depots demonstrate how these operations unfolded within a system protected by corporate privileges and military architecture. From Champlain’s maps and Bourdon’s drawings, this essay posits, one can tease out the political and economic efforts among the early French traders to expand their reach geographically and defend their commerce logistically.

  • 11 Emily Mann, “To Build and Fortify: Defensive Architecture in the Early Atlantic Colonies,” in Danie (...)
  • 12 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, an (...)
  • 13 Louise Dechêne published letters by Vauban concerning the defensive architectural efforts in Canada (...)
  • 14 Émilie d’Orgeix, “Quelques considérations sur les traceurs de plans dans l’Amérique coloniale aux X (...)

6Architectural historians have pointed out the militaristic nature of early modern European settlements in the Americas. Emily Mann argues that English colonists in Virginia and Bermuda fortified their claimed territories as part of their responsibility to the Virginia Company (est. 1606), the trading corporation chartered by James I to colonize the Atlantic coast.11 Printed books and maps by the explorer John Smith and the surveyor Richard Norwood depicted stone castles and forts, which circulated images of strength to assure investors of the company’s security and thwart potential attack by European enemies. In the French colonial context, Gauvin Alexander Bailey outlines the critical role played by the royal corps of engineers (known as ingéneurs du roi after 1604, génie militaire after 1743, and the corps royal du génie after 1776).12 Figures like Sébastien Le Prestre, the Marquis of Vauban, and Gaspar Chaussegros de Léry worked in professional contexts that overlapped with the state’s building works; clearly, technical expertise and government administration fueled empire building through bureaucracy, architecture, and construction.13 With a focus on the history of techniques, Émilie d’Orgeix analyzes colonial engineers' drawing practices during the 17th and 18th centuries.14 These engineers applied their proficiency to a broad spectrum of highly skilled tasks, including surveying, the drafting of maps and other plans, and the construction of fortifications, displaying a professional versatility that contrasted with the increasing specialization of the corps in the metropole. Broadly speaking, this research illustrates the confluence of imperial politics and military technology in the design and defense of European settlements in the Americas.

  • 15 Jason Moore writes how this condition presumed that, “capital is value-in-motion is value-in-nature (...)
  • 16 Pierre Dockès outlines the political and economic forces that conditioned the spaces of trade durin (...)

7Correlating Champlain’s maps with Bourdon’s architectural drawings reveals how cartography and fortification design played corresponding roles in the expansion and formalization of the fur trade in early modern New France. As illustrations, Champlain’s maps fed his readers’ imaginations, while also signaling the natural and commercial infrastructure on which the expanding market relied.15 The images came with political implications, notably asymmetrical trading relationships with the Huron-Wendat and the Algonquin and the onset of wars fought over the supply side of the market. Bourdon’s drawings anchor these transactions within the contested political terrain of colonial North America, in which the French state defended its logistical operations through corporate monopolies and fortified waterfront storehouses.16 In this regard, the militarized depots stand as monuments to an economic system built on imperial expansion and the politics of commercial and architectural control.

Trade: the St. Lawrence River and Champlain’s commercial networks

8In the Voyages, Champlain illustrated the coastlines and waterways that supported the trade between the French and their Indigenous allies. The colony supplied the luxury industries with materials to manufacture the beaver fur hats that were then fashionable among elite men. Although initially based on coastline, Champlain ultimately established the colonial and commercial seat at Québec, closer to the Huron-Wendat and Algonquin communities that supplied the valuable hides. The terms of trade relied on political alliances as well as a system of barter, whereby Europeans traded tools, weapons, and other metal goods for pelts. Declines in the beaver population pushed Indigenous hunters farther inland, which heightened tensions between the Iroquois and their adversaries. The French, meanwhile, ventured into the continental interior to protect their trading routes and partnerships. Champlain’s maps highlight how the fur market involved the mastery of environmental conditions and the forging of political alliances well beyond the confines of the settlement.

  • 17 Claude Perrault, Description anatomique d'un caméléon, d’un castor, d’un dromadaire, d’un ours et (...)
  • 18 Michael Sonenscher outlines the legal and labor regulations passed in 1658, 1666, 1667, 1673, 1699, (...)

9The demand for men’s hats fueled the North American fur market from the 17th to the mid-19th century. In Canada, early trade occurred under the umbrella of private corporations, notably the Company of One Hundred Associates (1627-1663), which held a monopoly on the industry until Louis XIV incorporated New France into a province (in doing so, he folded the enterprise into the state-sponsored French West India Company). The furs were attractive to hatters and consumers alike, because the beavers’ thick outer hairs contained faceted ends that could be pressed and interwoven to create a waterproof material—an appealing quality for elite men desiring a fashionable and functional accessory in rainy climates. The architect and anatomist Claude Perrault remarked on these qualities, writing how the otter-like creature grew multiple layers of fur to defend against its cold and wet habitats (fig. 4).17 In the illustration, a distant mountaintop fortress strikingly places the scene within the militarized environment of the St. Lawrence Valley. The government went so far as to pass a set of regulations that stipulated the use and quality of beaver fur in hat manufacturing to protect its reputation and costs (in 1675, one pound of pelt purchased for the equivalent of 67 sous 6 deniers in Canada sold for an upmarket price of 170 sous in France).18 These operations underscore the ways that resource exploitation in the Americas sustained the growth of European luxury markets.

Figure 4: Sébastien Le Clerc’s illustration of a beaver.

Figure 4: Sébastien Le Clerc’s illustration of a beaver.

Source: Claude Perrault, Description anatomique d'un caméléon, d’un castor, d’un dromadaire, d’un ours et d’une gazelle, Paris: Frederic Leonard, 1669.

  • 19 The fur trade developed out of the partnerships between European fishermen and coastal Indigenous c (...)
  • 20 Margaret Wickens Pearce engaged Champlain’s travelog to develop a cartographic mode that gives voic (...)
  • 21 This approach, which exaggerated geography at the poles (given that due north and south were evenly (...)
  • 22 Conrad E. Heidenreich and Edward H. Dahl outline the significance of Champlain’s cartography in “Sa (...)

10Champlain’s travelog stressed the natural riches and environmental systems of North America. He opened the book with an elaborate double-page, fold-out chart of the North Atlantic coastline (fig. 5). The map’s horizontal orientation reinforced the connection between the St. Lawrence River, which cuts across the top of the composition, and the Atlantic Ocean, which he populated with fantastical images of marine life and five cargo ships.19 Champlain and his colleagues gained geographic knowledge through first-hand experiences and the accounts of allied Huron-Wendat, Innu, and Algonquin leaders. On the map, they are depicted as allegorical figures in the frame on the lower left.20 The illustration includes two rhumbline networks, shown by the rays emanating from the compass roses. When incorporated in maps in Mercator Projection, these lines allowed mariners to chart a path of constant bearing that appeared graphically straight (on a globe, these lines curved toward the poles, which limited their utility).21 Champlain confirmed his practical orientation in the notes in the upper left and right, which explained that he had not corrected the map to account for magnetic declination (he knew that many navigators lacked the skills to calculate the difference between true north and magnetic north).22 The map, replete with marvelous and Edenic imagery, rehearsed the early modern trope of American abundance, advertising the natural riches to be gained through acts of navigation, settlement, and trade.

Figure 5: “Geographiqve de la Novvelle Franse faicte par le Sieur de Champlain.”

Figure 5: “Geographiqve de la Novvelle Franse faicte par le Sieur de Champlain.”

Source: Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.

  • 23 Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History, New Edition(...)
  • 24 The Huron-Wendat, the Algonquin, and allied middlemen transported the hides toward European trading (...)
  • 25 Among the French, corporate monopolies regulated the terms of trade, which eliminated competition. (...)

11As a commercial enterprise, the fur trade relied on Canada’s environmental assets and the partnerships forged between European and Indigenous communities. This exploitation of natural resources, wrote Harold A. Innis, gave early and enduring shape to Canada’s extractive economy.23 The market initially developed from informal trading relations between coastal Indigenous tribes and European fishermen during the 16th and early 17th centuries, hence the prominence of marine life on the previous map. Champlain formalized his alliance with the Huron-Wendat and Algonquin by establishing Québec along their primary trading route: the St. Lawrence River. Indigenous hunters destroyed the dams to flush out and then capture their quarry.24 For the skins, Europeans bartered with tools, weapons, and other metal objects that were previously unknown to their allies. The utilitarian allure of metal goods and munitions, Innis argued, generated an asymmetrical relationship, whereby Indigenous hunters exchanged fur for lower and lower prices.25 Beaver depopulation forced hunters farther north and west, which sparked wars by the Iroquois against their adversaries over territorial rights and control over the supply end of the market. These factors, along with the broader erosion of native customs, illustrate how the intrusion of European commerce transformed political, cultural, and economic relations among Indigenous communities.

  • 26 Champlain learned about the existence of the Hudson Bay from maps and publications by the Dutch car (...)
  • 27 Heidenreich and Dahl downplay the map’s cartographic importance, noting the many errors stemming fr (...)
  • 28 Later, these figures would be known as coureurs de bois, or “runners of the woods,” signaling their (...)
  • 29 Ibid., p. 28-32.
  • 30 Ibid., p. 36-39.

12The watershed’s vast network of rivers, lakes, and creeks formed part of the natural infrastructure that led French traders to their Indigenous suppliers farther inland. For the Voyages de la Nouvelle-France (1632), Champlain composed a new map emphasizing the waterways leading to the Huron-Wendat and Algonquin communities north of the St. Lawrence River (fig. 6). The map incorporated new geographic information: the Ottawa River, the Hudson Bay, and—though depicted incorrectly—the rivers leading to Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.26 Champlain received information from reports by Étienne Brûlé and Jean Nicolet, among others.27 These men were among the earliest truchements, or interpreters, who traveled beyond the St. Lawrence River to live and trade with the Indigenous communities.28 Brûlé left Québec as an adolescent to learn the language and trading customs of the Huron-Wendat communities near Lake Huron, labeled “Mer Douce,” or Freshwater Sea, on the map.29 Nicolet worked for the short-lived Company of Merchants of Rouen and St. Malo, for which he embarked on a career as a translator with the Algonquin along the Ottawa River.30 These efforts, as suggested by Champlain’s map from 1632, outline the natural and political infrastructure on which the French built and expanded their trade.

Figure 6: “Carte de la nouvelle France, augmentée depuis la dernière.”

Figure 6: “Carte de la nouvelle France, augmentée depuis la dernière.”

Source: Samuel de Champlain, Voyages de la Nouvelle-France, Paris: Claude Collet, 1632.

13Champlain’s cartography shows how French colonists used geographical knowledge to penetrate the continent’s interior for economic gain. These efforts, which supplied natural resources to the luxury trades in Europe, relied on navigational skills, local ecologies, and diplomacy. Overhunting diminished beaver populations, forcing Huron-Wendat and Algonquin hunters farther inland. At the same time, the French and their allies fought battles against adversarial forces over control of the region’s lands and waterways. These moves highlight how the trade and its expansion contributed to the ecological and geopolitical transformation of the St. Lawrence Valley.

Storage: Corporate privileges and Bourdon’s militarized depots

  • 31 Champlain signaled the need to fortify the storehouse, complaining about the metropolitan investors (...)

14Drawings by the engineer Jean Bourdon illustrate the effort to protect New France’s commercial hub through defensive architectural measures. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French state dispatched military technicians to its colonial territories to survey and fortify existing settlements and infrastructure. For the Company of One Hundred Associates, a well-fortified magasin conveyed a sense of strength and security, which carried increased importance following Québec’s temporary seizure during the Anglo-French War (1627-1629).31 Upon his arrival, Bourdon illustrated the newly rebuilt storehouse, which included bastions, ditches, palisades, redoubts, and other protective features. He helped to develop a network of waterfront militarized depots, including the main entrepot in Québec and auxiliary branches in Trois-Rivières and Montréal. Bourdon’s drawings highlight how the company aimed to fortify commerce through monopoly control and a sequence of spatial enclosures and militarized defenses.

  • 32 Émilie d’Orgeix offers an overview of military engineering in the French colonial context in the Am (...)
  • 33 Françoise Thésée, “L'ingénieur du roi François Blondel (1618-1686): sa mission aux Isles d’Amér (...)
  • 34 André Charbonneau, Yvon Desloges and Marc Lafrance note the similarities between Québec and New Ams (...)

15Bourdon served as the First Engineer and Land Surveyor of New France, where he lived and worked from 1634 until his death in 1668. His appointment formed a part of the state’s broader effort to dispatch corps of engineers to its perimeter and overseas territories to design and build fortifications.32 For instance, François Blondel, the eventual director of the Académie Royale d’Architecture, traveled to Guadeloupe and Martinique to survey the islands and their defensive architectural systems.33 On assignment, Bourdon arrived in New France shortly after England’s return of Québec to the Company of One Hundred Associates. Champlain and his followers rebuilt the storehouse, expanded the settlement into a city, and established an auxiliary trading post and depot at Trois-Rivières. Bourdon laid out Québec’s radial expansion, which he enclosed in a semi-circular wall comprising three entrances and five evenly spaced bastions. The approach suggests Dutch influences, noting the similarity in the size and shape of Bourdon’s bastions and those at New Amsterdam, built in 1633.34 This and other projects at Montréal and Trois-Rivières, where Bourdon served as Intermediate Governor from 1645 onward, illustrate a desire to align urban planning, commerce, and the principles of military design and defense.

  • 35 Marcel Trudel analyzed early 17th-century trading operations in New France, debating whether the Qu (...)
  • 36 Helen Dewar outlines the wider culture of privileges (and the bitter conflicts between private trad (...)
  • 37 Françoise Niellon and Marcel Moussette outline the chronology of construction, including archeologi (...)
  • 38 Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3. La Seigneurie des Cent-Associés, 1627-1663, Montr (...)
  • 39 Trudel outlined the wider system of barter within New France in Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3, (...)

16New France’s economy hinged on the secure and logistical operations of the Québec magasin, which functioned as a fur storage warehouse, supply center, and a bank.35 The Company of One Hundred Associates, which held sole trading privileges in New France, appointed a General Clerk to oversee commercial transactions and regulate access to the building’s stockpile.36 With the settlement’s expansion, Champlain replaced the original storehouse with a new structure along the riverfront (fig. 7).37 One of Bourdon’s drawings, composed in brown ink on laid paper, shows the elongated U-shaped building, measuring 78 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 12 to 13 feet high, with a double gabled roof and two turrets facing inland (marked b). In addition to storage, the hub accommodated a bakery, brewery, brickworks, and bank.38 The latter distributed salaries, collected taxes, and allowed residents to store and loan money in the form of cash or credit. Given the scarcity of coined currency, the residents resorted to other means of exchange, notably labor and agricultural goods.39 The complex graphically dwarfed the size of the former building, marked l, signaling the importance of the magasin’s security for the single-economy community. In many ways, the storehouse functioned as the architectural manifestation of the company’s monopolization of the fur market.

Figure 7 : Jean Bourdon, “Description de la plateform et magasin de Québec” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.

Figure 7 : Jean Bourdon, “Description de la plateform et magasin de Québec” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.

Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.

  • 40 In 1633, Champlain wrote in the Mercure françois that he added, “une belle plate-forme pour mettre (...)

17Bourdon’s drawing illustrates the architectural tactics that the traders employed to defend their economic center. Champlain added a riverfront platform and dock, marked a, on which he positioned three to four cannons to fire at approaching enemy vessels.40 A zigzag-shaped ditch, marked c, provided the first layer of protection (it separated the storehouse from the original fort, located to the north). The channel stalled approaching attackers, placing them in a position that left them vulnerable to artillery fire. A line of palisades, marked d, ringed the western and southern side of the building. For these structures, traders sharpened the ends of wooden stakes, which they drove into the ground to create a serrated fence for enclosure and protection. A redoubt, marked f, offered the traders an elevated and off-site platform to fire at those approaching the site from the ground. This, along with the turrets on the corners of the depot, helped the traders defend the site from multiple sides. A lime kiln, marked o, and a line of gun powder barrels, marked g, signal the munition technologies that adjoined the fortification of the depot. The traders protected the commodities of the trade through corporate privileges as well as a system of militarized architecture and warfare.

  • 41 Champlain’s maps from 1613 and 1632 depicted the natural features after which Trois-Rivières and Mo (...)
  • 42 Antoine de Ville’s Les fortifications du chevalier Antoine de Ville, Lyon: Irenée Barlet, 1628 pres (...)
  • 43 Basile Baudez examines the use of color in the representation of military architecture in Inessenti (...)

18Using the Québec storehouse as the colony’s anchor, Bourdon helped to develop a network of fortified depots along the St. Lawrence River. The company operated two branches upstream: one in Trois-Rivières, which was located inside the fort and, after 1649, along the riverfront, and one in Montréal, which was placed inside the fort.41 The development of a storage and shipment infrastructure helps to explain one remarkable drawing of a fortress-like warehouse on the banks of the river (fig. 8). The centrally organized building, hand-colored in red to designate its massing and logistical program, sits atop an elevated platform (the key places the corps de logis, or principal block, in the front and right wings, the magasin in the rear and left wings, and turrets and pavilions on the corners). The building’s geometric regularity and axial symmetry echo treatises like Antoine de Ville’s Les fortifications (1628), which presented ideal military designs for a range of environmental contexts.42 Bourdon placed the storehouse on a headland, which minimized its onshore exposure and abetted its capability for waterfront defense. Toned in blue, the system includes grand triangular bastions that jut into the river and smaller ones that project into the landscape.43 A gated entry provides access for canoes and other vessels arriving with purchased pelts from the interior and those departing with them for Québec and, eventually, France. The drawing illustrates Bourdon’s understanding of contemporary fortification theory as well as a desire to offer monumental form to the corporation’s system of storage and shipment.

Figure 8. Jean Bourdon, “Plan of a Fort” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper and hand colored in red and blue, 31 x 45 cm.

Figure 8. Jean Bourdon, “Plan of a Fort” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper and hand colored in red and blue, 31 x 45 cm.

Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.

19Bourdon’s floor and site plans are evidence of the French effort to control the operations of the fur trade through a series of militarized depots. The size and prominence of these buildings in the drawings shows the importance of secure storage for the colony’s foundational economy. Given its monopolistic privileges, the Company of One Hundred Associates required large and fortified spaces to protect the entirety of French-purchased pelts before their export to the metropole. In many ways, the development of this transshipment infrastructure spoke to the logistical needs, environmental realities, and political stakes of the market. Expanding hunting and trade and ongoing threats of attack required the development of new storage sites at strategic locations farther inland. Settlements at Trois-Rivières and Montréal allowed the French to defend commercial waterways while also establishing logistical nodes closer to the areas of resource extraction. Bourdon’s fortified depots illustrate the protectionist ethos of early modern French trading institutions as well as the violent and militarized nature of commercial transactions in the St. Lawrence Valley.

Fortified spaces of transaction

20The hardly noticeable inclusion of the storehouse in Champlain’s Voyages offered an image of the colonial settlement that elided its foundational function, that is, the trade in, storage of, and shipment to the metropole of beaver fur. Throughout this process, French merchants and colonists explored waterways and established alliances that helped them penetrate deeper into the Canadian interior, fundamentally transforming the environmental and geopolitical composition of the North American continent. The maps illustrate Champlain’s efforts to expand beyond the confines of the habitation in pursuit of political esteem and commercial prosperity. As documents, they illustrate how navigational skill and imperial politics helped give rise to a form of cartographic representation reliant on geographical accuracy and the ethos of economic expansion.

21Bourdon’s floor and survey plan drawings shed light on the effort to control the commercial networks that Champlain and his colleagues helped to establish in support of the French luxury industries. Along the St. Lawrence River, a series of militarized depots functioned as nodes of commercial transaction and, at the same time, sites of spatial and militarized enclosure. As documents, the drawings suggest that, in matters of economics, the processes of globalization unfolded within a system that remained protected by corporate privileges and architectural defenses. The depots are the physical trace of the political and economic forces that structured the commercial networks and fortified spaces of trade and exchange in early modern New France.

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Notes

1 Samuel de Champlain provided a description of the fort in Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613, p. 175-184.

2 The definitive biography of Champlain remains Marcel Trudel, “Champlain,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966, p. 186-199.

3 In La Relation de voyage en Amérique, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles: un carrefour des genres

, Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010, Réal Ouellet argues that these tales helped to transform their narrators into literary protagonists.

4 A detailed description of the early colonial architecture of Québec, including the likely organization of Champlain’s habitation, is provided in James D. KornwolfArchitecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America, Baltimore, MA; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 206-239.

5 Samuel de ChamplainLes Voyages, op. cit. (note 1), p. 176: “[J]e n’en peu trouver de plus commode, n’y mieux situé que la poinete de Quebecq[.] Aussitost j’emploiay une partie de nos ouvriers à les abbatre pour y faire nostre habitation, l’autre à scier des aix, l’autre fouiller la caue & faire des fossez: & l’autre à aller querir nos commoditez à Tadoussac avec la barque. La premiere chose que nous fismes fut le magazine pour mettre nos vivres à couvert, qui fut promptemet faire par la diligence d’un chacun & le soin que j’en eu.”

6 Champlain wrote how, following Indigenous customs, the traders used birchbark canoes to navigate the continent’s interior waterways. See his Les sauvages ou Voyage de Samuel Champlain De Brouage, fait en la France Nouvelle l’an mil six cens trois, Paris: Chez Claude de Monstr’oeil, 1603, esp. 24.

7 In addition to the collection at McGill University, Bourdon’s drawings are preserved at the Aix-en-Provence (France), Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer.

8 This work forms part of an ongoing line of research on the architecture of trade and exchange in the early modern world, which aims to conceptualize how built spaces and infrastructure conditioned the flow of capital and constructions of economic and political value. Following the scholarship of Fernand Braudel and, more recently, Jonathan Levy, the project conceives capitalism as a process of trade and exchange that generates different forms of value across local, regional, and global scales. This approach makes it possible to assess the systemic impacts of capitalism in the era before modern machinery and mass production, notably in matters related to speculative markets, global commerce, and the political and economic forces tied to colonization. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce, [First published as Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle. 2. Les Jeux de l'échange, Paris: Armand Colin, 1967; trans. Siân Reynolds], Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992, p. 232-249; Jonathan Levy, “Capital as Process in the History of Capitalism,” Business History Review, vol. 91, no. 3, August 2017, p. 483-510. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680517001064.

9 Jan de Vries outlines the differences between “soft” and “hard” definitions of economic globalization. The former, which is relevant for the early modern period, involved processes of contact, interaction, and exchange, which carried cultural and political consequences on all sides (he terms this the “process” of globalization). The latter, which is more relevant for the modern period, includes the integration of markets through trade, investment, and labor (he terms this the “outcome” of globalization). See his “The Limits of Globalization in the Early Modern World,” The Economic History Review 63, no. 2, August 2010, p. 710-733.

10 William Cronon examines the ecological transformation of New England in the aftermath of European contact in Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2003, esp. 82-107.

11 Emily Mann, “To Build and Fortify: Defensive Architecture in the Early Atlantic Colonies,” in Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman, Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600-1850, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016, p. 31-52.

12 Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, and Society, 1604-1830, Montréal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, p. 148-172.

13 Louise Dechêne published letters by Vauban concerning the defensive architectural efforts in Canada in La correspondance de Vauban relative au Canada, documents introduced by Louise Dechêne, [Québec]: Ministère des affaires culturelles, 1968.

14 Émilie d’Orgeix, “Quelques considérations sur les traceurs de plans dans l’Amérique coloniale aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: l’exemple des fondations urbaines en Nouvelle-France,” Aldaba, no. 40, 2015, p. 181-196. URL: https://revistas.uned.es/index.php/ALDABA/article/view/20561/17050. Accessed 23 December 2025.

15 Jason Moore writes how this condition presumed that, “capital is value-in-motion is value-in-nature” in “Anthropocene or Capitalocene: On the Nature and Origins of Our Economic Crisis,” in Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, New York, NY: Verso, 2015, p. 453-500.

16 Pierre Dockès outlines the political and economic forces that conditioned the spaces of trade during the 17th and 18th centuries in “The Birth of Concepts of the Trading Space in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 12, no. 2, 1990, p. 124-145.

17 Claude Perrault, Description anatomique d'un caméléon, d’un castor, d’un dromadaire, d’un ours et d’une gazelle, Paris: Frederic Leonard, 1669, p. 51-70.

18 Michael Sonenscher outlines the legal and labor regulations passed in 1658, 1666, 1667, 1673, 1699, and 1700 associated with hat production in The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987, p. 32-42, esp. 38-40. The statistic on the trade, export, and sale prices of beaver pelt is provided by Louise Dechêne in Habitants et marchands de Montréal au XVIIe siècle, Paris: Plon, 1974, p. 141.

19 The fur trade developed out of the partnerships between European fishermen and coastal Indigenous communities during the 16th and early 17th centuries. See Christy Anderson, “Left on Shore: Iron and Fish in the North Atlantic,” in Jennifer Ferng and Lauren Jacobi (eds.), Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2023, p. 211-232 and Jason Nguyen, “Encountering the Shoreline: Ecology and Infrastructure on the Early Modern Newfoundland Coast,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, vol. 42, no. 2, Fall 2022, p. 231-242.

20 Margaret Wickens Pearce engaged Champlain’s travelog to develop a cartographic mode that gives voice to silenced Indigenous voices in “What Shall We Map Next? Expressing Indigenous Geographies with Cartographic Language,” in Ute Dieckmann (ed.), Mapping the Unmappable: Cartographic Explorations with Indigenous Peoples in Africa, Bielefeld: transcript, 2021 (Social and Cultural Geography, 39), p. 317-340.

21 This approach, which exaggerated geography at the poles (given that due north and south were evenly spread across the map’s top and bottom), distorted spatial reality for the purpose of navigation. On maritime and commercial cartography in the context of European colonization of the Americas, see Jason Nguyen, “Handheld Cartographies: Herman Moll’s Pocket Globes and Speculative Capital in the 1710s,” Journal18, no. 10 (1720), Fall 2020. URL: https://www.journal18.org/5331. Accessed 23 December 2024.

22 Conrad E. Heidenreich and Edward H. Dahl outline the significance of Champlain’s cartography in “Samuel de Champlain’s Cartography, 1603-32,” in Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois (eds.), Champlain: The Birth of French America, trans. Kathe Roth, Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004, p. 312-332.

23 Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History, New Edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, p. 9-145 and 383-402. For a contemporary architectural audience, Pierre Bélanger analyzes Canadian resource in Extraction Empire: Undermining the Systems, States, and Scales of Canada’s Global Resource Empire, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2018.

24 The Huron-Wendat, the Algonquin, and allied middlemen transported the hides toward European trading posts, making use of existing Indigenous partnerships and protected waterways.

25 Among the French, corporate monopolies regulated the terms of trade, which eliminated competition. See Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada, op. cit. (note 23), p. 9-22, esp. 17-20.

26 Champlain learned about the existence of the Hudson Bay from maps and publications by the Dutch cartographer Hessel Gerritsz, who chronicled Henry Hudson’s fourth and final voyage in Descriptio ac delineatio geographica detectionis freti, sive, transitus ad Occusum, supra terras Americanas, in Chinam atq; Iaponem ducturi, Amsterdam: Ex officina Hessel Gerritsz, 1612. He incorporated this, among other new findings, in Voyages de la Nouvelle-France, Paris: Claude Collet, 1632. Innis outlines the struggle for the Ottawa River, which offered a protected path to the St. Lawrence River for French allied traders, in The Fur Trade in Canada, p. 23-42.

27 Heidenreich and Dahl downplay the map’s cartographic importance, noting the many errors stemming from Champlain’s lack of first-hand experience.

28 Later, these figures would be known as coureurs de bois, or “runners of the woods,” signaling their extralegal standing as traders working beyond the strictures of the colonial government. Gilles Havard offers a thorough history of the coureurs de bois, including information of the circulation of goods among the French and Indigenous communities, in Histoire des coureurs de bois: Amérique du Nord, 1600-1840, Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2016 (Rivages des Xantons).

29 Ibid., p. 28-32.

30 Ibid., p. 36-39.

31 Champlain signaled the need to fortify the storehouse, complaining about the metropolitan investors’ hesitations due to costs of construction in The Work of Samuel de Champlain, edited by H. P. Biggar, trans. W. D. LeSeur, Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1933, p. 18-19.

32 Émilie d’Orgeix offers an overview of military engineering in the French colonial context in the Americas in “French Military Engineers in the American Colonies, 1635-1776,” in Bruce P. Lenman (ed.), Military Engineers and the Development of the Early Modern European State, Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2013, p. 245-258.

33 Françoise Thésée, “L'ingénieur du roi François Blondel (1618-1686): sa mission aux Isles d’Amérique (1666-1667),” Outre-Mers, vol. 95, no. 360-361, 2008, p. 223-240 and Antoine de Roux, “La création urbaine en Martinique et en Guadeloupe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Laurent Vidal and Émilie d’Orgeix (eds.), Les villes françaises du Nouveau Monde: des premiers fondateurs aux ingénieurs du roi (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art, 1999, p. 99-107.

34 André Charbonneau, Yvon Desloges and Marc Lafrance note the similarities between Québec and New Amsterdam (as well as the military strengths and weaknesses of the Bourdon plan) in Québec: Ville fortifiée du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, Québec: Éditions du Pélican, 1982, p. 113-114. Bourdon likely learned the theory of military architecture from Dutch treatises like Samuel Marolois’s Fortification ou architecture militaire, The Hague: La Haye: H. Hondius, 1615.

35 Marcel Trudel analyzed early 17th-century trading operations in New France, debating whether the Québec settlement functioned as anything more than an entrepot in Histoire de la Nouvelle-France II: Le comptoir: 1604-1627, Montréal: Fides, 1963, p. 151-181, 405-434.

36 Helen Dewar outlines the wider culture of privileges (and the bitter conflicts between private trading enterprises) prior to the establishment of the province in Disputing New France: Companies, Law, and Sovereignty in the French Atlantic, 1598-1663, Montréal; Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2022, esp. 22-60 and 111.

37 Françoise Niellon and Marcel Moussette outline the chronology of construction, including archeological information on building materials and techniques in L’habitation de Champlain, Québec: Les publications du Québec, 1981, p. 27-36 and 183-199.

38 Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3. La Seigneurie des Cent-Associés, 1627-1663, Montréal: Fides, 1983, p. 283-341, esp. 283-287.

39 Trudel outlined the wider system of barter within New France in Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3, p. 287-290. The lack of minted currency, writes Dechêne, hindered efforts to diversify the economy. While early Québec settlers accepted beaver pelts as forms of payment, she challenges the assumption that those in Montréal hoarded fur as currency. See her Habitants et marchands, p. 131-140.

40 In 1633, Champlain wrote in the Mercure françois that he added, “une belle plate-forme pour mettre trois ou quatre pièces de canon pour battre au raz de l’eau le travers de la rivière.” The quote is republished in Lucien Campeau, Monumenta Novæ Franciæ: Établissement à Québec (1616-1634), Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1979, p. 378.

41 Champlain’s maps from 1613 and 1632 depicted the natural features after which Trois-Rivières and Montréal would be named, that is, the three channels of the Saint-Maurice River for the former, officially established in 1634, and the mountain named Mont Royal for the latter, officially incorporated in 1642. The previously mentioned Nicolet worked as the General Clerk of the storehouse in Trois-Rivières from 1635 to 1641. Trudel provides a list of the General Clerks in Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal in Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. 3, p. 284-285.

42 Antoine de Ville’s Les fortifications du chevalier Antoine de Ville, Lyon: Irenée Barlet, 1628 presented fifty-five plans, perspectives, and background views of fortifications for different physical conditions. Janis Langins discusses de Ville’s drawings within the wider context of early modern French military design in Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004, p. 39-83. For the context of early modern Québec, Noppel and Marc Grignon discuss the earliest architectural drawings of the fortified city, including those of idealized fortifications by Bourdon, in L’art de l’architecte: Three Centuries of Architectural Drawings in Québec City, Exhibition Catalogue (Québec, Musée du Québec, 6 April-29 May 1983; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 29 July-18 September 1983; Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 15 October-30 November 1983), Québec: Musée du Québec, 1983, p. 27-36.

43 Basile Baudez examines the use of color in the representation of military architecture in Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe, Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021, p. 80-99. Of particular importance are the drawing instructions offered by Alain Manesson Mallet, Les Travaux de Mars, Paris: Denys Thierry, 1684, 3 vols.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1 : The habitation of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain
Crédits Source: Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 311k
Titre Figure 2: The site plan of Québec, from Samuel de Champlain.
Crédits Source: Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 711k
Titre Figure 3: Jean Bourdon, “Plan du fort de Quebec par le Sr. Bourdon” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.
Crédits Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 610k
Titre Figure 4: Sébastien Le Clerc’s illustration of a beaver.
Crédits Source: Claude Perrault, Description anatomique d'un caméléon, d’un castor, d’un dromadaire, d’un ours et d’une gazelle, Paris: Frederic Leonard, 1669.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 524k
Titre Figure 5: “Geographiqve de la Novvelle Franse faicte par le Sieur de Champlain.”
Crédits Source: Samuel de Champlain, Les Voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris: Chez Jean Berjon, 1613.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 575k
Titre Figure 6: “Carte de la nouvelle France, augmentée depuis la dernière.”
Crédits Source: Samuel de Champlain, Voyages de la Nouvelle-France, Paris: Claude Collet, 1632.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 771k
Titre Figure 7 : Jean Bourdon, “Description de la plateform et magasin de Québec” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper, 31 x 45 cm.
Crédits Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 480k
Titre Figure 8. Jean Bourdon, “Plan of a Fort” (between 1635 and 1642). Dark brown ink on laid paper and hand colored in red and blue, 31 x 45 cm.
Crédits Source: Montréal (Canada), McGill University, Rare Books and Special Collections.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/16852/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 423k
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Jason Nguyen, « Documents of Transaction: Cartography and Architectural Drawings of Trade Infrastructure in Early Modern New France »ABE Journal [En ligne], 24 | 2024, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2024, consulté le 26 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/16852 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/1393d

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Jason Nguyen

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Toronto, Canada ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9853-1413

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