Why Did France Lose North America?

Background context: New France surrendered in 1760, leaving North America pregnant with the USA. An immediate consequence was the further rise of cruelty in North America, with the further expansion of slavery, expropriation and the near complete extermination of the Natives. Another consequence was the boosting of racist, militarist Prussia, its malevolence overrunning Europe, for many generations to come, culminating with the apocalyptic world wars of 1914-1945 which wrecked Eurasia. The most significant consequence, though, was the triumph of the over-exploitative extermination colonial model, over the gentle trading model and “mission civilisatrice” the French practiced (and which, confronted to the extermination model, got exterminated, naturally enough).  

Dreadful consequences all over: Contemplating the success of the American holocaust, enthused by the success of ferocity against colonization as “mission civilisatrice”, frenzied forms of colonizations similar to the US extermination model sprouted all over to duplicate the American experience: King Leopold in Congo, snatched an entire country for himself, to make them all into his slaves, and the alternative was death. The Prussians conducted deliberate extermination of African populations. Even Britain declared war to force Zhong Guo, the “Central State”, 5,000 years old, China, the sister civilization, to overdose on opium (the British idea of free trade!) The towering successes of having holocaust serving greed propagated to Turkey (when the Young Turks allied themselves to racist, holocaustic Germany, bringing the Armenian holocaust) or the Japanese empire (which started to view the Chinese the way the Germans viewed Slavs and Jews, as the new Native Americans to profitably exterminate, by having them all die, and steal all they had…)

The loss of New France is more than historical, it was a conflict of philosophies. And it is extremely relevant today.

Would civilization be technologically different if New France had kept on going? Certainly not: the region known as France nowadays was always at the forefront of technology, for the deepest reason: location. But the really interesting observation is that the collapse of New France was greatly a consequence, not just of the hatred of some English plutocrats, but also of some factors inherent to France. In some ways France was too civilized (New France couldn’t resist the cynicism, money and ferocity deployed by English speaking America), in other ways, New France was not civilized enough (French idealism prevented to implement enough realism, a well-known French atavism; the religious wars came at the wrong moment, the Sixteenth Century; and Louis XIV’s persecution, and expulsion of 10% of France, often the best, the Protestants, had terrible direct and indirect consequences).

The philosophical interferences between these sums over histories is not over, quite the opposite (it’s similar to a Quantum computation, and it is not over). It is of greater import than ever. Right now what is at stake is not just a New France, hundreds of Native American and African nations, and the equivalent of the 100+ million Chinese and Europeans who died in the 1914-1945 wars. It is the entire planet that is at stake: we are clearly heading towards a 4 degree Celsius global temperature rise. Not by coincidence, the USA is now producing more oil than ever, and more than anybody else (thanks to be addressed to Obama; Trump needs no encouragement: he is successfully pursuing the coal export policy launched by… Obama, you guessed it).

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Jean de Verrazane and other French explorers visited the entire eastern shore of North America on French boats, starting before 1508 CE. In particular New Angoulême (French: Nouvelle-Angoulême) was the name given in April 1524 by the Tuscany born da Verrazzano (1481-1528) to the future New York. Jacques Cartier succeeded Verrazane in “Canada” in 1534 CE. Cartier reported that the Natives didn’t think that French colonization was a good idea: they lived, just so. The French pointed out that they knew intense agricultural techniques enabling to feed much more from the land, so maybe they could squeeze in. So the French dutifully started a trading model of interaction with the naive Natives: we give you our know-how, you gave us your furs.

I am saying that the Natives were “naive” because of what happened in the end: they should have seen it coming. They should have known better, and cooperate maximally with the French had they been smarter. Self-examination, well-done, would have brought greater smarts.

Native Americans were wont to exterminate each other. It didn’t require much imagination to guess that the decent deal the French were offering was the best imaginable. If the invading Europeans started to behave like the Native American themselves, the latter were going to be exterminated. That was clear. And it is exactly what happened.

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Native Americans’ Self-Destructive Viciousness:

Here is an example: the Iroquois massacred the Hurons in the Seventeenth Century; the root cause was that the Hurons had been civilized by the French, so were left defenseless against their old neighbours, the savage Iroquois confederation. The Iroquois always detested the Hurons. As soon as the Hurons had become soft, sedentarized, using intense agriculture taught by the French, and praying to the ever forgiving Lord Jesus, they were easy prey.   

Thus, had they contemplated reality for a moment, the Native Americans in Canada could have realized that it would be smarter to get allied to the well-disciplined, government organized French than possibly be exposed to rogue white tribes.

Smart alliance is what happened during the conquest of Meso America. Although the Aztec empire fought to death, it lost because Cortez found hundreds of thousands of Native allies, most of the nations and cities subjects of Tenochtitlan, or in outright war with it. It was a military alliance: Cortez had hundreds of thousands of copper tipped bolts made to exacting standards for Spanish crossbows.  

It was not all a deliberately human engineered holocaust, at least in the Sixteenth Century. Toribio Motolinia, a Spanish monk that witnessed the smallpox epidemic, wrote: “It became such a great pestilence among them throughout the land that in most provinces more than half the population died; in others the proportion was less. They died in heaps, like bedbugs.”

Smallpox was a factor in the Fall of Mexico to the Conquistadores. The emperor, many top lords and perhaps half the Aztec army died from it.

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Patrice’s Little Proof That North America Had 100 Million Inhabitants:

As Stony Brook University “the French Mapping of New York and New England, 1604-1760” puts it: “The French contributions to the early mapping of the northeastern United States are frequently overlooked. Usually when we think of colonial mapping of this area, English and in some cases Dutch maps come to mind. However… French cartographers often made the earliest and the best maps of much of what is now the northeastern United States.

  The neglect of these French maps is mostly the result of national biases. The best recent work on colonial-era French maps of North America has been done by Canadian scholars… American historians have been preoccupied with other subjects, such as the westward expansion of the United States, and French exploration and mapping do not fit in very well with the main themes of U.S.history. Besides, students of American history tend to be allergic to foreign languages, and consequently they usually view events through the eyes of British or American witnesses.”

When in 1604, Samuel de Champlain explored exactly the same places the Mayflower colonists would, fifteen years later, he reported that the land was too full of Native Americans to accept French colonists. However, by the time the Mayflower showed up, most of the population was dead. Presumably from a smallpox epidemics: European cod boats were just off the coast, in full view, and some crew landed.

The preceding is well-known. My conclusion, though, is new. Think of it: Champlain said the population of Massachusetts was of a density similar to France. Now the arable land of North America temperate and lush such like the best agricultural land of France was at least five times that of France (that’s an underestimate; and half of France is mountains). What was the population of France? Twenty millions in 1600. Now 20 x 5 = 100! One may say that I am exaggerating here. But not really: the USA most arable, French like land is really around 3 million square kilometers (excluding the West, Alaska, Great Lakes, Florida, Louisiana, etc; personal evaluation).

Now, of course, many Native Americans died from a lack of resistance to Afroeurasiatic diseases (somewhat still mysterious, modern biology doesn’t get it yet) .

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Native Americans Were All Too Close Genetically & Isolated:

Not all the details are in to elucidate this dark biology. In particular it is possible that there was a genetic contact between “Australasians” and… Amazonians (!) (we know this from both direct genetic trace, and the fact the Sweet Potato, initially from South America is found in New Guinean highlands…).

But the big picture is this: the future Native Americans were isolated in Beringia for maybe around 10,000 years (say between 25,000 and 16,000 BCE). The cause was the Last Glacial Maximum: the giant glaciers isolated Eastern Siberia and Alaska in a common land mass, centered around the present Behring Straight, There a population comprising as low as 2,000 women interbred and thrived. When the glaciers shrank a bit around 16,000 years ago, a very small subpopulation squeezed along the coast with boats, squirting the glacial outlets, and invaded the Americas. They took less than 2,000 years to arrive in Southern Chile.

But they were genetically compressed, from an original Siberian stock which was already pretty isolated from the Africano-Eurasiatic biologic.

However, as we will see next, it is not biology which was most devastating to the Native Americans, but the philosophy that the English-speaking colonists, or, more exactly initially, their masters wielded. That mentality was straight from the Bible, Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions. It was a mentality founded on greed as the supreme value, and few qualms at implementing it…

New France was lost, because its philosophy was less militarily effective than the philosophy of its English enemy. One can’t just scoff, and pontificate that philosophy don’t have to be militarily effective. If a philosophy is killed by killing its followers, occupying their lands, making its documents disappear, never to be seen again, it doesn’t matter how right it was.

Fortunately, in the case of New France, the state died, but the philosophy is not dead yet. Far from it, as we will see…

(To be continued…)

WAR, Great DOMINATOR, Destroyer of Europe, Creator of USA

Abstract: Celebrating Fourth of July 2016 my way. France, Britain, the USA and the philosophical systems they incarnate are to this day entangled into a brazen history, and a scalding future. It is often overlooked that, when France declared formal war to Britain about America, the rebels, seduced by an offer of general amnesty from Westminster, were going to surrender. This is precisely why Louis XV avoided with total war in February 1778, after sending weapons secretly starting in 1775, and secret agents before that.

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Too Much Enlightenment Will Get You Burned:

Icarus flew too close to the Sun. One can also come to close to the truth for comfort:

A basketball court sized, solar-powered US probe is braking hard to hard in Jupiter’s orbit. Just prior, it was flying twice the distance Earth-Moon in three hours. How was the USA created? War. War against the Indians, War against the French and the Indians. War, allied to the French, against the English. These entangled wars made the USA possible. Yes, it is an extremely long story. Some of this story was anticipated in British Parliament: stealing Canada from sweet France would made the independence of the USA ineluctable. However, English hubris took over. In its arrogance, the winning faction underestimated French resentment, and French military capability. Plus the strong hold of the principles of the Republican Enlightenment on the French and American elites. When told his actions were going to create a Republic in America, Louis XVI shrugged. He knew.

Not only that, but Louis XVI’s actions would create the institution of a Revolution of Human Rights in France, which he himself led for five years (1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792). The mood in France was revolutionary, and that had started decades earlier.

Louis XV was actually surrounded by revolutionary characters, including teachers of Adam Smith, the French “physiocrats”. France lost America, because France clang to the Enlightenment, at a higher level. France traded with the Indians, and civilized them, rather than outright massacring them. (More precisely, France was doing more trading, more mixing, and less massacring.) All too philosophical. 

Too Much Advanced Philosophy And Not Enough Brexit Cost France America, Among Other Things. Philosophy Is Excellent As Long As It Does Not Prevent To Kill Those Who Want You Dead In The First Place. More French Greed, Short Term, Would Have Insured A More Advanced Civilization: In Canada Slaves Such As Endured Servants Were Unlawful, And Authorities Never Paid For Indian Scalps. Quite The Opposite.

Voltaire. Louis XV’s boyfriend and adviser, insisted that it was below French dignity to fight all-out the “Seven Year World War of 1753”. I am sure it helped that Voltaire had made a fortune in Great Britain (this is a meta observation explaining the low philosophical performance of Voltaire in this respect.)

Louis XVI was an interesting character: he was not supposed to become king: his elder brother was. He did not want to become king, however, grimly enough, he set himself to do the right things, although, often, again and again he faltered at the last moment. A giant of a man, he had, that way, much in common with the one he fed and saved, George Washington (Washington, in spite of his friend Lafayette’s insistence, would never try to abrogate slavery, even in his own household..    

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Where Were the Pacifists During the Demise of the European Union of Nation-States?

Nowhere, because pacifism is weak. Pacifism is neurohormonally associated with submission, surrender, sleep, it does not have the appeal that hatred, fear, anger, and the fight or flight instincts’ overwhelm us with. When the herd gets ready to stampede, what can the pacifists do? Fight it off? Scare it off? No. Pacifists can do nothing. Nigel Farage’s “Independence Day” speech was eerily similar to some of Adolf Hitler’s speeches in his manner of delivery (and content too!). No clam discourse can then persuade the masses. They don’t care: confronted to a threat, they want to fight and flight. Playing Buddha in a ten foot cell is not a proposition that is noticed, let alone attractive.

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What Is The Biggest Defect Of Europe?

It is precisely not being what the Brexiters claims it is: a Super State. Or even, a State. Instead it is a state of anarchy. Not as bad as Britain, but close. Britain whines about uncontrolled immigration, forgetting it organized it deliberately, and depends upon France for defending its border. Europe has proven incapable of defending its borders. And what does history teach us? That borders should be defended dynamically, something Julius Caesar had completely understood. Not that Caesar invented this. Earlier, the Second Punic War had turned around when Scipio carried the war in North Africa, forcing the recall of Hannibal there (where Scipio defeated him). The Greeks had also understood that staying on their hands while plutocratic Persian Satraps attacked at will had no future. So the Athenian Republic came to the rescue of Egypt (against Persia). Later many Greeks felt that a complete invasion of Persia was the solution to their travails. Hence the expedition of the 10,000 (whom the great philosopher Xenophon ended up leading). The Greeks were less pleased when the Macedonians (Philip and his son Alexander), ran away with the idea.

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War Is The Great Dominator:

Why always to speak of France? Not only is France the Middle Kingdom, at the core of the philosophical creation of European civilization, but even British historians focus on France, because France has the best historical records. The peak of the Middle Ages was around 1300 CE. Shortly after that the disasters piled up: ecology, plague, war.  Historian Guy Bois was able, by looking at Normand Parish registries, around Caux to find how the population evolved, assigning index 100 in 1314 CE.

In 1347 CE, affected by ecological troubles, and the start (in 1337 CE) of the “100 Years War” between the legitimate French heirs in London, and various illegitimate plotters in Francia proper, the population index was down to 97.

In 1348, the plague struck We The People (but not the plutocrats in their well defended, well organized castles).

By 1374 CE, the population was only 43% of what it was in 1314 CE. By then, peace being established, the population recovered. By 1413 CE, just before the “100 Year War” got launched again (Agincourt was won by Henry V in 1415 CE), the population was back up to 65% of 1314 CE. Then the area became a battlefield again, accompanied, naturally enough, by epidemics between 1415 and 1422 CE. The population oscillated down. The Battle of Castillon a Battle of Crécy in “reverse”, was the beginning of the end the “100 Year War”(70% of the English army was killed, mostly by French field guns, against less than 2% of the French army). By then the region of Normandy under consideration around far away Caux, was only 30% of what it was in 1314 CE.

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FIFTY MAJOR WARS IN EUROPE IN 1,000 YEARS THAT’S WHAT THE BRITISH DO NOT KNOW, LET ALONE UNDERSTAND:

Britons whine about the Battle of the Somme, and rightly so.

Who was killing the Britons in World War One? The one who had started the war, the Kaiser, a plutocrat, who owned Germany, grandson of plutocrat Queen Victoria who owned England. In World War One, Great Britain lost 2.23% of its population, Killed. France lost 4.39%. (US losses amounted to *only* 117, 465 soldiers killed, .13% of the total US population.)

This carnage was the (despicable) Brexiters neither know, nor understand, nor want to understand.

Why?

Well the “100 Years War” went on, on and off, until 1815 CE. The Revolutionary and so-called “Napoleonic” wars were launched by Great Britain, an island, but exclusively fought on the continent (but for Trafalgar). By 1815 CE, France alone had two million dead, and some of her allies, like Germany and Poland, even more.  

All this profited Great Britain immensely. In the period 1753 to 1815, England literally destroyed the French empire and population, through a succession of wars.

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By 1815 CE, France, relative to England, was a shadow of her former self. Thus, it is natural that the British would have come to believe war, especially among European states,  was a friend.

However, in early May 1940, the second British armored division, which had been assigned to stand behind a French reserve division at Sedan was late. The Nazis armored thrust pierced there, and thus the Battle of France was lost, and, as a result, the Nazis’ rule of horror and terror festered for years.

Both France and Britain came out of this as shadows of their former selves, while their ingrate progeny, the United States of America, grabbed all it could throughout the planets, starting with the zones her parents used to control.

The “West Country Men” method, taught by the English who founded the American colony in 1610 CE, has certainly blossomed in the USA.  

And to this day it rules. The Economist, July 2, 2016 gives an example, which I may detail in a future essay. Basically, US firms have become increasingly gigantic, which has allowed to become ever richer, and capable of deep research. Here is part of The Economist’s conclusion: …”if it wants to create giants, Europe may have to restrain more than its nationalist instincts—it may have to temper its tougher approach to antitrust, too. The secret of some big American firms is that they have created oligopolies at home.” In other words, the USA is eating Europe’s lunch by increasing its plutocratic index.

And this is what at the creation of European America.

France insisted upon the highest moral standards (only pure women, certainly not prostitutes could go to America, as early as 1600). England let Satan have a good run at America, re-introducing slavery, and not just for the “colored”!

Guess what? It worked. This is the whole idea behind Obama’s idea to let giant companies do whatever it takes to increase the USA’s empire. Actually, Bush had it fully started with the likes of Blackwater (a private corporation in charge of making war), and others abominable connections between official government policy and private profit.

Yet, the debate is not over. There is a new player bearing on, nature itself, with rising acidic seas, an increasingly warm and violent atmosphere, and all sorts of menace.

Greed may work, but it’s nothing without survival.

Patrice Ayme’

PLUTOCRACY IMPLIES SLAVERY

Plutocracy tends to install SLAVERY FOR 99%… Or maybe it’s 98% (the percentage of non-Nobles in the European Middle Ages). Plutocracy, as a concept is much more general than considering the color of the skin, or other origins, as the primary value of an individual. Generally the interpretation of “plutocracy” is the rule of the wealthy (from associating Pluto to wealth, and kratia as power). So plutocracy is usually interpreted as a society where money can buy anything and everything… from power, to freedom, health and happiness.

Obama and others have woken up to the fact that “300 years of slavery” have left a mark in the USA. “The legacy of slavery… discrimination in almost every institution of our lives… casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” the president said… “We’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

Yes, indeed. It goes much further than that, all the way to the root of human ethology. Slavery itself has roots in the organization of English AMERICAN society. It appeared there exactly in 1619. Slavery had been unlawful in Europe, per Frankish law which was nearly a thousand year old… in 1619!

The mentality of masters and slaves is all over the USA. To this day. This is why the USA is different from Europe.

Road Not Taken: New France Failed Out Of Goodness

Road not taken: New France was supposed to offer civilization to the Natives. What for? said the Masters. And the Masters proceeded to exterminate all those who could not master them, including the French.

Yes, masters and slaves were all over Europe too, and a war was fought about that from April 1792 (general attack by all European plutocrats against the French Constitutional Monarchy) until June 1815 (Waterloo). Superficially the plutocrats won. But there were a number of revolutions in the Nineteenth Century, and the French Republic got re-established. In the end, anti-plutocratic principles of 1789 came to rule the United Nations after 1944.

So what is the Plutocratic Principle?

That the best way to organize society is for the haves to rule, and exploit, no holds barred, and sky is the limit.

The idea that Plutocratic Rule is best, is already found in Aristotle. Thanks to his intimacy with the world’s mightiest men, that’s how Aristotle destroyed democracy. Aristotle thought monarchy was the best organizing principle of society. He conveyed that idea authoritatively to a number of very close friends and students. Among them the Macedonians Antipater, Alexander and Craterus, who were like family.

As a result, Direct Democracy has been buried for 23 centuries, and counting.

The liberty for the haves to exploit was optimal for the quick conquest of the Americas. It’s a success story. Who can argue with success? Philosophers? Deep thought? That’s why they are not welcome, in Plutocratic quarters.

The conquest of the Americas, fundamentally, was a military operation.

The French tried to make it into something else, an ethical operation, helped with a bit of fair trade. This moral calling arose from the discovery of Canada by Jacques Cartier. The next attitude the French explorer and commander found, to his dismay, was that many American Natives were actually hostile to the invasion of their land by Frenchmen. So it was decided, and it became a tradition, to use a light touch for the colonization of North America by France: it had to be made with the approval of the Natives, in particular the Hurons.

It worked splendidly.

The Hurons got civilized, Christianized, they built farms, grew and prospered. French “Coureurs de Bois” established fair trade all over Canada and the West, to Colorado, and beyond. They fraternized with the Natives, married them, had children.

It worked splendidly, until English plutocrats showed up, the “West Country Men“.

Those investors (including the English King) had refined the Plutocratic Principle in Ireland. It involved lining up roads with human skulls, to enlighten the Natives about what resistance untailed.

Against the Plutocratic Principle, Civilization contend in vain, if it does not go to war.

The French state insisted that only individuals of the highest morality be allowed to visit Canada. And that was with a return trip in mind. Women were carefully interrogated and inspected to make sure that they would not use their charms liberally.

The English plutocrats and their agents (the Iroquois) defeated the French, and annihilated the Iroquois.

Even before this, it became clear that Native Americans and Africans made excellent robots to help conquer the land, so, propped by the Plutocratic Principle, they introduced slavery. And soon there were much more slaves in some states than white masters.

Slavery was defeated by Lincoln.

But its root has not been. It has not even been detected, let alone condemned.

The Plutocratic Principle is better at war. To win a war, an army, a country, needs to act as one large body with just one brain. This is why the Fascist Instinct is crucial to a world conquering primate such as the genus Homo: E Pluribus Unum. The Plutocratic Principle is a generalization, to society, of the Fascist Instinct.

At some point, the human tendency to over-exploit the land has to be kept in check: thus the Dark Side. In the Americas, as anywhere in the world, this involved massacring people, to keep the numbers down.

But genocide is still something else: it reduces cultural diversity.

The Interest of the Dark Side has been, ultimately, sustainability. There is goodness in the Dark Side, on the level of the genus Homo. It protects against termination of the genus.

However, nowadays, the technological powers at our disposal are so great, that one cannot give free rein to the Dark Side. Let’s suppose that American Natives had nuclear bombs instead of horse and tomahawks: trying to massacre them may have been counter-productive to the English Colony.

Similarly, all out war against the biosphere through “climate change” and acid ocean, will turn out just as good as it did for the dinosaurs.

The Dark Side, the very success of the Plutocratic Principle in the USA, are leading us to a collision course with reality. We are now at war with physics.

Thus the Plutocratic Principle has to be jettisoned now. That means that the USA should strive to be more like Europe, and less like its old exploitative self. In turn, that may teach some emerging superpowers, such as China, that the Plutocratic Principle is counterproductive.

Patrice Ayme’