Compagnie des Cent-Associés

The first administrators of New France, the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, was established on 29 April 1627 by Cardinal Richelieu to raise up an empire in America. Bringing together important people and the bourgeois, it pursued three fundamental aims: to populate the country with native-born Frenchmen, develop American trade, and lead the indigenous people to the Christian religion and a “civilized” way of life. This first form of government, in which the governor held nearly all power, was too primitive to last; in 1663, the Compagnie des Cent-Associés handed their resignation to the king and returned New France to him.