page_title: Seigneurial system of New France
section_title: Economic impact on New France
hierarchical_section_title: Seigneurial system of New France / Types of tenure / Economic impact on New France
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte des seigneurie du Bas-Canada
context_page_description: The manorial system of New France, known as the seigneurial system, was the semi-feudal system of land tenure used in the North American French colonial empire.
  Both in nominal and legal terms, all French territorial claims in North America belonged to the French king. French monarchs did not impose feudal land tenure on New France, and the king's actual attachment to these lands was virtually non-existent. Instead, landlords were allotted land holdings known as manors and presided over the French colonial agricultural system in North America.
  Manorial land tenure was introduced to New France in 1628 by Cardinal Richelieu. Richelieu granted the newly formed Company of One Hundred Associates all lands between the Arctic Circle to the north, Florida to the south, Lake Superior in the west, and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. In exchange for this vast land grant and the exclusive trading rights tied to it, the Company was expected to bring two to three hundred settlers to New France in 1628, and a subsequent four thousand during the next fifteen years.
context_section_description: Some historians suggest that the structure of feudal land tenure itself might have caused delays in economic growth for New France. Morris Altman, for example, argued that by shifting disposable wealth and therefore spending power from the villein socagers to the manorial lords (crown vassals), the system deeply altered the economy of New France. Furthermore, since the manorial lords rarely had their estates as their chief source of income, the relatively insignificant sums of money from the feu-duties were used largely in the purchase of luxury items which were almost always imported from France. Altman theorizes that since the villein socagers would have either re-invested this money or bought goods produced locally, this limited growth and was damaging to the economy of New France. Though Altman later altered the precise estimates he made (based on annual outputs) of how much disposable income the socagers might have been deprived of (and therefore the amount of local investment lost), he confirmed his original thesis that the feudal fees reduced growth through wealth transfer. Other historians such as Allan Greer have also argued that the wealth transfer limited the growth of the villein socagers’ farms as well as other local enterprises, which in the long run might limit general economic growth.
caption: Boundaries of fiefs, including sub-fiefs, in Lower Canada (as charted in 1923).
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