resources — legitimately on common land, often illegally in privately-owned and royal forests. However, the basic attitude of all three of these groups to the forests of France was the same: it was, not surprisingly, utilitarian, with the forests being viewed almost entirely in terms of the useful materials that they c0uld supply. What the three parties were often in contention about was over who should control and/or have the use of this resource. The crown was frequently in conflict with the landowners, especially over the reservation to the king of particular trees on privately owned land for use in the building of naval ships (though the landowner would receive payment for the wood). To encourage the production and preservation of such timber, from at least the Middle Ages the crown had imposed regulations concerning forest management, though it was only in the 16605 — and just at the time when the colonies in New France were coming under the direct control of the crown119 — that more strict regulations on forest use, with enforceable penalties, were enacted for the forests of the home country by Jean Colbert, Louis XlV's minister of the Marine.

This utilitarian attitude to the forests was transferred to the New World. However, given the small human population and the super-abundance of wood, the potential for conflict over its use was likely to be far less. Also on lle Saint-Jean the ownership of the land and timber was initially more clearly defined, at least on paper: in legal terms the island belonged to the king — the Mi’kmaq who had been living on it for millennia were simply disregarded. However, the complications of the Old World were given a foot-hold whenever the king granted land in the form of seigneuries to others (there were two such grants on lle Saint- Jean in the eighteenth century — though one was short-lived and the other was confined to a small part of the island‘m). However, even when the land had been granted away, restrictions on the use of the timber similar to those placed on private landowners in France were applied: oak trees

“9 From 1663 and 1674, with the cancellation of grants to

successive seigneurial companies, New France came increasingly under the direct control of the king and was to remain under royal government, administered as if a province in France, until 1760 (Vachon 1969).

12° As noted elsewhere, the grant of the whole island to the Company of He Saint-Jean was in effect from 1719 to 1730, though the government had assumed direct control from 1726, while the grant to the Company of the East of Tie Saint-Jean, although of longer duration (1731 to 1753), was confined to a very small part of the whole island — the land fronting the three rivers flowing into Cardigan Bay.

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suitable for ship-building were reserved to the king‘“, and the king also had free access to whatever timber was needed for public works. There do not appear to have been any restrictions placed by the two seigneurial companies on the use of forest materials by their own colonists, such as the 300 or so persons that arrived from France in 1720122. If they were, they would have been irrelevant from 1726 when the island returned to the de facto control of the crown after the failure of the Company of lle Saint—Jean. However in 1732, in the interests of forest conservation, additional restrictions on the use and management of the forests of the island, not dissimilar to those applicable in France were contained in a letter from the minister of the Marine, the Count of Maurepas (see below). However, with the minister and his officials half a world away in France, the officials and habitants could in the end do as they wished with the forest, and given the Surplus of forest and forest materials, there was no one on the ground who would have had much concern.

Thus in the New World the very different state of affairs with respect to woodland meant that even though both the attitudes and the forest regulations of the Old World might be transferred to the New, they underwent considerable modification in their actual application in the New World. With the above as background I will now examine the various attitudes of the French towards the forests of lle Saint—Jean that are evident in the sources.

The utilitarian view: the forest as a source of materials — The view of the forest as a resource is one that pervades virtually all of the records that have survived from the French period. It is the view of the top level of government as expressed in the official grants that bear the king’s

signature.123 It is found in many of the

121 Since there was little oak on lie Saint—Jean, such clauses had little practical relevance for the forests of the island. As well, what oak there was, was red oak, a tree that did not have the qualities of the European oaks that were the reason for the inclusion of such clauses in seigneurial grants. (See oak in Appendix 1., p. 135)

122 At least a document of 1724, that outlines some of the

restrictions placed on the tenants of the Count of St. Pierre (that are quoted from the ‘contracts de concession' accorded the tenants), does not include the utilisation of the forests as one. [Sourcez Margry (1876-77) (Vol. 1, p. 50), copied from Mémoire sur la concession des Isles St. Jean et autres a M. Ie comte de St. Pierre (communiqué a Mss les députés. /e 20 sept 1724). Evidence in a court case: (M. Ie comte de St. Pierre contre les négociants de 8!. Male et autres).]

‘23 Louis xv 1719, 1731.