When James II became king of England, he modeled himself after Louis XIV of France. Like Louis, James saw himself as ruling by divine right and with absolute power, but the French king was far more successful in establishing and sustaining his authority. During his long reign from 1661 to 1715, Louis XIV dominated European affairs and oversaw an expansion of North American possessions. Still, in 1680 New France comprised only ten thousand inhabitants, and one potential source of settlers—Protestant Huguenots—was denied the right to emigrate.
The French government thus extended the boundaries of its North American colonies more through exploration and trade than through settlement. In 1682 French adventurers and their Indian allies journeyed down the lower Mississippi River. Led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the party traveled to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed all the land drained by its tributaries for Louis XIV. The new territory of Louisiana (named for the king) promised great wealth, but its development stalled when La Salle failed in his attempt to establish a colony.
Still eager for a southern outlet for furs, the French did not give up. After several more attempts at colonization in the early eighteenth century, French settlers maintained a toehold along Louisiana’s Gulf coast. Most important, Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville, a Canadian military officer, and his brother established forts at Biloxi and Mobile bays, where they traded with local Choctaw Indians. They recruited settlers from Canada and France, and the small outpost survived despite conflicts among settlers, pressure from the English, a wave of epidemics, and a lack of supplies from France. Still, Louisiana counted only three hundred French settlers by 1715.
Continuing to promote commercial relations with diverse Indian nations, the French built a string of missions and forts along the upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. These outposts in the continent’s interior allowed France to challenge both English and Spanish claims to North America. And extensive trade with a range of Indian nations ensured that French power was far greater than the small number of French settlers would suggest.