general editors included extracts from some of the criticisms as a forward, but did not alter Oleson's text at all. The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663 The Beginnings of New France was written by Marcel Trudel, a Quebec historian in French, and translated by Patricia Claxton. Published in 1973, it was the first volume of the series to appear which dealt with the history of New France. Trudel was one of the first specialists in the history of New France prior to the British Conquest, and this volume is a condensation of three of his earlier texts: Les vaines tentatives, 1524-1603; Le comptoir, 1604-1627; La seigneurie des Cent-Associés, 1627-1663. It also drew on data from two of his other books, Le terrier du Saint-Laurent en 1663, which examined the land settlement patterns under the seigneurial system, and La population du Canada en 1663. Overall, the thesis of the volume is the difficulties which France had in establishing a colony in North America, particularly compared to the successes of the English and Dutch colonies in the same period. Part of the difficulty was in finding an appropriate area of settlement, both in Acadia and in the Saint Lawrence valley, but another part was the economic basis for the colonies. There was a continual tension between the economy based on the fur trade, and the attempts to establish permanent settlements. The initial attempts at colonial settlement relied on a succession of grants of rights to the fur trade to commercial groups, with an added requirement to bring in settlers (habitants). However, the immediate profits from the fur trade always tended to take priority for the commercial groups over the costly, and not profitable, requirement to bring settlers to the new colonies. Even by the end of the period of the book, the numbers of French settlers in New France were very low, compared to the other European colonies. Trudel also explores in detail the relations with the Indians (First Nations). He makes it clear that they were not simply passive traders with the French, and explores the various economic conflicts between the different Indian groups, who all wanted to control the fur trade with the French and the profits it would bring. The economic interests of the various Indian tribes hampered French attempts at exploration. The Indian tribes which acted as middle-men in the fur trade realised that if the French were