Studio Aletheia · World Builders Academy
6.3.COSC 6th Grade World Civilizations
France and Great Britain Join the Race
Lesson 4.5 · Competing European Claims in North America
Spain and Portugal had a decades-long head start, but France, England, and the Netherlands were not willing to be left out. Watching Spanish silver and Portuguese trade goods flow home, they set out to build empires of their own.
Learning Targets and Success Criteria
Build the vocabulary and evidence needed to meet standard 6.3.CO.
What I will learn
- I can identify the major settlements France and England established in North America.
- I can compare the economic goals of French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonization.
- I can explain how the Treaty of Tordesillas provoked other European nations to explore.
- I can describe why the fur trade shaped French colonization differently than sugar shaped Spanish colonization.
What success looks like
- I identify at least two French and two English settlements in North America.
- I compare the primary export or resource driving French, English, and Spanish colonial economies.
- I explain why other European powers ignored the Treaty of Tordesillas.
- My exit ticket compares French and English colonization goals in one sentence each.
Compare European motivations for exploration and settlement.
Pulling twenty lessons into one argument.
These terms will be used throughout the mini-lesson, evidence lab, hands-on activity, journal, and exit challenge.
Jacques Cartier
The French explorer who claimed Canada, calling it New France, in the name of King Francis I in 1535.
Indentured Servant
A person bound by contract to work for an agreed number of years, often in exchange for passage to the colonies, after which they typically received freedom and land.
New France
France's colonial territory in North America, centered on the fur trade and settled far more sparsely than Spanish or English territory.
Treaty of Tordesillas
The 1494 agreement dividing new territories between Spain and Portugal along a line through the Atlantic, largely ignored by France, England, and the Netherlands.
Where this shows up in the real world.
History is not just something that happened. It is training for how you will read evidence, weigh sources, and make decisions in a career.
Building an Economy Around One Resource
Economists who study resource-dependent regions still analyze the risks and benefits of an economy built around a single export, exactly the pattern that shaped New France's reliance on furs.
Contesting Territorial Claims
International lawyers today negotiate competing territorial and resource claims, the same kind of dispute the Treaty of Tordesillas attempted, and failed, to fully resolve.
Latecomers with Their Own Ambitions
France and England built colonies shaped by very different goals than Spain's search for gold and silver.
The success Spain and Portugal found in the Americas did not go unnoticed. England, France, and the Netherlands all set out across the Atlantic hoping to found colonies whose resources they could exploit to compete with their rivals. England established colonies along the North American mainland beginning in the sixteenth century, and by the mid-eighteenth century they stretched from Newfoundland to Georgia. Beyond tobacco, these colonies supplied England with timber, furs, and salted fish from the north and rice, indigo, and deer hides from the south. Many English colonists arrived as indentured servants, bound by contract to work for a set number of years before receiving their freedom and often a grant of land.
France pursued a different strategy. In 1535, Jacques Cartier claimed Canada, calling it New France, in the name of King Francis I, though a permanent French settlement did not take hold until Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in the early seventeenth century. France deliberately limited immigration to New France to fur trappers, traders, a small number of farmers, and soldiers, granting a monopoly over the fur trade to the Company of New France in 1627. Animal hides and furs, not gold or silver, were New France's most valuable export. A small Dutch colony briefly flourished in what is now New York and New Jersey before England took control of it in 1664, also centered on the fur trade.
None of these nations felt bound by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, in which Spain and Portugal, with the pope's blessing, had divided the unclaimed world between themselves. As the French king Francis I put it, 'the sun shines for me as it does for others.' England and the Netherlands, both Protestant nations by this point, felt no obligation to obey papal decrees, and even Catholic France ignored the treaty in practice. As Spain and Portugal's power declined over the seventeenth century, England, France, and the Netherlands expanded their own colonies in North America and the Caribbean, turning the Atlantic World into a contest among several rival empires rather than a Spanish and Portuguese monopoly.
Adapted from Studio Aletheia's World Builders Academy curriculum library, drawing on classical world history resources on French and English colonization of North America.
Materials for the colonial claims map.
- A. Colonial Claims Map, provided
- B. Highlighters, 2 colors minimum
- C. Notebook or chart paper
- D. A pencil for labeling
- E. Your Evidence Log
Every session this unit: identify the evidence, cite where it came from, connect it to the day's vocabulary, write a one-paragraph explanation.
Compare the Colonial Powers
Practice comparing the economic motivations of competing European colonial powers.
Build a Colonial Claims Map
Map and compare the territory and economic goals of Spain, Portugal, France, and England in the Americas.
Evidence Log: Entry 5
Accountability Checklist
Exit Challenge
In a short paragraph, compare the economic goals that shaped French and English colonization of North America, and explain why neither nation felt bound by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
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