the governing company were never satisfactory, because the
colonists felt that their interests were wholly subordinated.

The distinguishing feature of French imperial activity during this
period was its dependence upon the support and direction of the
home government, which was the natural result of the highly
centralised regime established in France during the modern era.
Only in one direction was French activity successfully maintained
by private enterprise, and this was in the not very reputable
field of West Indian buccaneering, in which the French were even
more active than their principal rivals and comrades, the English.
The word 'buccaneer' itself comes from the French: boucan means
the wood-fire at which the pirates dried and smoked their meat,
and these fires, blazing on deserted islands, must often have
warned merchant vessels to avoid an ever-present danger. The
island of Tortuga, which commands the passage between Cuba and
Hispaniola through which the bulk of the Spanish traffic passed on
its way from Mexico to Europe, was the most important of the
buccaneering bases, and although it was at first used by the
buccaneers of all nations, it soon became a purely French
possession, as did, later, the adjoining portion of the island of
Hispaniola (San Domingo). The French did, indeed, like the
English, plant sugar colonies in some of the lesser Antilles; but
during the first half of the seventeenth century they attained no
great prosperity.

For the greater enterprises of trade in the East and colonisation
in the West, the French relied almost wholly upon government
assistance, and although both Henry IV. in the first years of the
century, and Richelieu in its second quarter, were anxious to give