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Gianna Koning
Ms. Vignali
American History
15 November 2014
New Spain and New France
The New Spain and New France colonies were different in many ways, but also had many things in common. These two colonies had one major thing in common. They both wished to find a water route from their country to another place and were unsuccessful in doing so. New Spain started searching for a water route first when
Christopher Columbus predicted that he could find a water route from Spain across the
Atlantic so the country could have easier access to the trade in Asia. This is when the
Spanish discovered there was land in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and couldn't find a way through the land which was later known as the Americas. Many years later, the king of France, King Francis I, hoped to find a passage through North
America since most of that land had not been explored yet. France was also unsuccessful but had explored much more of the northern coast then Spain had. The two countries had two different ways of claiming land. Hernan Cortes, a Spanish explorer, wanted to claim the land of Tenochtitlan but it was being used by the Aztecs.
After the Spanish had retreated from battle, smallpox broke out among the Aztecs killing most of their warriors. With reinforcements, Cortez returned and destroyed Tenochtitlan claiming the land for the Spanish who then built it into Mexico City, the New Spain colony capital. The Spanish claimed most their land through winning battles and

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destroying other Native American cities. The French on the other hand, when they came to the Americas, they did not take any land from the Native Americans. New France had very small colonies that were only for fur trade so there was no need to clear land, they could just build small forts for temporary living.
There was four social classes that you could be categorized in (peninsulares, creoles, mestizos, or Native Americans/Africans) and based on your wealth, education, birth place and income you were placed in one of these categories. The peninsulares were at the top and were those who were wealthy and had lead roles in the government and churches. Then, the creoles were the people that were a little less wealthy and didn't have as high roles in the government. Below them was the mestizos, the people of Spanish and Native American heritage who were farmers. And at the bottom were the
Native Americans/Africans who were poor servants or enslaved. In New France there wasn't much of a social pyramid. Mostly all the people that were in North America were merchants until King Louis XIV made a royal colony in New France and then it was just government, merchants, and other settlers. Another thing that differ New France from
New Spains society is the inclusion of the natives. In New Spain after Cortez started giving his men rewards of control over Aztec towns, and this ‘reward’ grew popular to became known as the encomienda system. Unfortunately, many of those rewarded took advantage of the opportunity and worked the Native Americans to death. Complete different from New Spain, New France were alys with the Native Americans and used them to trade with. A few of the French lived with and among the Natives.

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Unlike New France with very few problems coming over to and living in the
Americas, New Spain ran into manly dilemmas. The difficulty in New Spain started before there was even a New Spain. It started with Christopher Columbus being given trouble while trying to find a new water route from Spain traveling west to Asia instead of going around Africa. Even though he didn't end up in Asia, he did find new land which did end up profiting the Spanish. After that, Cortez had problems conquering
Tenochtitlan because the Aztec priests started a rebellion and the Spanish retreated after a few days of battle. But when smallpox broke out among the Aztecs and many of
their