There was a long history of Breton seafarers voyaging to North America before Columbus’ epic voyage of 1492, and a question that is often asked is why the new continent was not claimed as a province of Brittany.
Early Breton Explorers
There is reason to believe that monks from Ireland and Brittany may have been in the habit of crossing the Atlantic from as early as the ninth century: early manuscripts of a poem describing the adventures of St. Brandan, suggest that he voyaged from Ireland to places where he found either coconuts or varieties of the wild American grape; and there are also stories of monks leaving Britain and Ireland, either to escape plague or Viking invasions, and settling somewhere in the vicinity of modern-day Boston. Whatever the truth of such stories, it is now more or less an established fact that Breton fishermen had been exploiting the fishing banks off Newfoundland for at least sixty years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, and probably for much longer.
European Explorers of the 1400s and 1500s
There was a difference between the early Bretons who sailed to the shores of Canada for fish, and possibly trade, and a new breed of ‘explorers’ who emerged in Europe during the fifteenth century. The idea of exploration was closely allied to the new idea of independent European countries, which left kings free to build up their personal power to the maximum limit. Portuguese sailors found a route to India round the coast of Africa making it, briefly, the richest country in Europe, and the Spanish monarchs funded Columbus’ trip to America, which ultimately led to huge quantities of gold flowing into Spain, plundered from the Incas and other South American peoples. These exploits left the King of France lagging behind his neighbours, and put him in a receptive frame of mind when Jacques Cartier, a sea captain from St. Malo, came to his court in search of money to finance an expedition to Canada.
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier sailed to Canada at least three times. His best-documented trips were made in 1536 and 1541. Both involved exploring the St. Lawrence seaway, partly in the hope of finding a new sea route to China.
Very little is known about the early life of Jacques Cartier – it was common for sailors of that time to obscure their origins so that they could work for whichever country they chose – but it seems probable that he was born somewhere near Saint Malo, and he was certainly an eminent member of the Saint Malo seafaring fraternity. Records suggest that in his youth he succeeded in passing himself off as Portuguese and spent some time in Brazil.
He managed to persuade the French King to finance a trip to ‘discover lands and islands where there is reputed to be much gold’ and set off with two ships in April 1534. He arrived off the coast of Canada, just twenty days later, in late May. The ease of this crossing has led people to suppose that he was already familiar with the winds and currents for at least part of the way, information that he had gained either from fishermen in St. Malo, or on previous, unofficial trips that he had made himself.
On this trip he sailed down the coast of Canada to the St Lawrence river, made friendly contact with the inhabitants, and went to the extent of claiming the whole country for France, even though it was clearly already populated. In his written account of his adventures it is plain that Jacques Cartier was overwhelmed by the grandeur and beauty of the landscape, the abundance of produce and the wealth of wildlife. He was also particularly impressed by the nobility of the local people, and, in an effort to rationalise what he had discovered, he suggested that he had perhaps found the descendents of Cain and that Canada was the land to which they had been banished when expelled from the Garden of Eden.
He returned to St. Malo in the September of the same year, with no gold, but with two Indian princes and stories that fired the imagination of the whole of France.
Jacques Cartier returned to Canada the following year, and again in 1541. He explored the Saint Lawrence seaway as far as ‘Hochelaga’ (modern day Montréal), which to his disappointment turned out not to be a fabulous city full of gold, as he had hoped, but a simple township of wooden huts. He failed to find a route to America and the expediton was unable to establish a viable colony as had been planned. He was rewarded with honours, however, when he returned to France, and died during a plague epidemic when he was in his late sixties.
Why Isn’t Canada Breton?
Even after the time of Jacques Cartier, most of the trade with Canada was conducted exclusively by Bretons, indicating that perhaps trading links had been existant before his voyages of ‘discovery’. From a modern perspective it seems strange that Brittany did not claim Canada for itself while it was still independent of France, prior to 1532. Brittany, however, was probably never a country, in the sense that we understand the word today. Each big town and each region was almost self-governing and autonomous. It would never have occurred to the people of Saint Malo to claim Canada for themselves, just because their fishermen had sighted land there. In many ways it could be considered regrettable that the peaceful approach of developing trade with the ‘new’ continent was not given more time to develop, before a breed of monarchs emerged in Europe, eager to expand their power by claiming foreign lands for their own.
Article written by Gareth Lewis. First published in the Central Brittany Journal May 2005
