Political Culture in Louis XIVs Canada: Majesty, Ritual, and Rhetoric

What does absolutism mean beyond the bounds of metropolitan France? This is a question that historians have started to take seriously in recent years. Colin M. Coates’ study of Canada under Louis XIV makes an important step forward in offering some answers. Throughout the Sun King’s reign, Canada remained a modest settler colony, precariously and illegitimately carved out within what Pekka Hämäläinen has dubbed an ‘Indigenous continent’. Comprising three towns (Québec, Montréal and Trois-Rivières), alongside a series of forts, farms and fishing settlements, this was in many ways an inauspicious outpost of absolute power. Yet Coates argues cogently for the fairly successful transplantation of the French state into the St Lawrence Valley through ‘the performativity of power’ and, by extension, the power of performativity. In Coates’ words, ‘colonial authorities performed the state in a variety of ways: in processions and rituals, in court cases and conflicts, in representations of France and the royalty, and in the rhetoric that individuals chose to describe these phenomena’. Nevertheless, the performances of French colonial officials were inevitably shaped by settlers and Indigenous actors alike: thus, the same rituals could be performed in metropolitan France and Canada, but their meaning was transmuted across space and time.

The book comprises six chapters, bookended by an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 focusses on political rituals, including entry ceremonies of new governors, fireworks and Te Deum masses, offering a thoughtful engagement with witness accounts of these necessarily modest (yet still significant) events. Chapter 2 zooms out to look at how colonial institutions functioned, alongside how colonial officials sought to fashion the dignity of their positions by establishing them as colonial analogues of metropolitan offices and thus worthy of the same perquisites. However, the lofty ambition of projecting royal power and magnificence across an ocean often clashed with quotidian financial realities that forced the crown to turn down or compromise on colonial requests. Chapters 3 and 4 draw on an array of written and visual/material sources to look at how Louis XIV learned about Canada and integrated it into the kingdom and, in turn, how Canada itself viewed Louis XIV. Chapter 5 shifts the focus to ‘discourses of power’, looking at how officials engaged in conflict with each other and how colonists made their voices heard. Chapter 6 turns to how the French perceived the Indigenous nations around them and the challenges this posed for how they perceived themselves. Collectively, the chapters offer an insightful analysis of political culture in Canada that draws thoughtfully on the methodological tools of cultural history.

At the core of the book is an analysis of interactions between colonial officials and the French crown. Sadly, this analysis is inescapably blunted by the text’s frequent, ambiguous reference to these officials’ correspondence with ‘the minister’ or the ‘French ministry’/‘ministry in France’. Which ministry is being referred to throughout the text is not explicitly stated, nor is the ministry itself explained. This is unfortunate since Coates himself stresses the significance of this correspondence for his argument. Given the references to Colbert and the Pontchartrain (albeit an inconsistent naming system makes it difficult to keep track of which Pontchartrain is being referred to at any given point in the discussion), the reader may well deduce that Coates is referring to the secrétariat d’État de la Marine. Nevertheless, this should not need to be deduced, and a more explicit discussion of the secretariat’s role in the administration of Canada would have been useful. Moreover, closer attention to the ministers themselves would have allowed Coates to reflect more extensively on how crown policy towards Canada changed over time.

Coates is clear from the outset that his interest is in ‘the internal logic of power within Canada, more than in its broader Atlantic or imperial context’. Certainly, there is a story to be told here on a much larger scale: we learn from Coates that a Te Deum was sung in Canada in 1691 to celebrate France’s capture of Nice, Mons and other territories; from my own archival work, I can share that the French nation in Constantinople also sung a Te Deum that year to commemorate those same military victories; earlier in the year, the French nation in Surat also sung a Te Deum, albeit to commemorate earlier military victories in the Nine Years’ War. French communities in Canada, the Ottoman Mediterranean and India were thus united by a shared lexicon of ritual that manifested the power and glory of the Sun King far beyond the bounds of metropolitan France. Coates offers a solid foundation on which further studies can build to tell this global story.