Colonization of a Continent

In 1670, the King Charles II of England allowed the colonial British Hudson's Bay Company exclusive trading rights over the large watershed draining into occupied bay area newly renamed the Hudson Bay. For the next 100 years the English company competed with Montreal-based traders. The company men who travelled by canoe were called voyageurs and coureurs des bois.

As a result, British occupiers and newly arrived settlers along the Atlantic seaboard, dating from the early 1600s, became richer and more populous than New France.

In the 1700s France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. In 1759, the British defeated the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City -- marking the end of France's empire in America. The commanders of both armies, Brigadier James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm, were killed in battle.