Dissertation Information for Gayle Kathleen Brunelle NAME: - Gayle Kathleen Brunelle
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1988)
ADVISORS: - J. Russell Major
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - None
MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected
Title: Rouen and the New World: Rouennais investors in commerce with North and South America, 1559-1629
Abstract: Rouen in the sixteenth century was a center of international trade and a focal point of French commerce with the New World. Only during the worst years of the Wars of Religion was the city's commercial prosperity interrupted. Voluminous notarial contracts and other unpublished materials record the vast trade network from which the Rouennais elite enriched themselves. Yet despite the integration of North and South America into that network, Rouennais merchants were reluctant to finance colonies that would have expanded the French presence there. This hesitancy to invest commercial profits in colonization was rooted in the priorities that shaped the investment patterns of the Rouennais merchants.
French attempts to establish colonies in the New World in the sixteenth century failed. The Spanish and Portuguese succeeded in entrenching themselves quickly in the richest regions of the New World and crushed competing French settlements. The unprofitability of their early attempts to colonize soon convinced French merchants that profits from colonies could not be easily wrested from the New World. Meanwhile, the Rouennais merchants' growing licit and illicit trade with Spanish and Portuguese colonial markets, achieved with the assistance of Spanish immigrants settled in Rouen, reduced the necessity for French colonies. Hence they avoided contributing to colonial schemes sponsored by the crown or great nobles.
The Rouennais investors in New World commerce had little use for risky long-term colonial or commercial ventures because they sought to realize rapid commercial profits which they invested in land, rentes and offices. Their immediate goal was to obtain stable, diversified and therefore secure incomes for their families. Ultimately, they hoped to join the officeholding elite which was assuming increasing control over the municipal and royal administrations in Rouen. The crown indirectly encouraged investment in offices by its expansion of the royal bureaucracy. Such upward social mobility required capital, which could be derived from commerce. As a result, Rouennais investors in New World commerce, along with the rest of the Rouennais merchants, directed much of their commercial profits into non-commercial ventures. Thus their quest for social mobility drained capital away from colonization and other types of commercial investments.
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MPACT Scores for Gayle Kathleen Brunelle A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-06-01 16:47:59
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