Military and Administrative Entrepreneurship in the “Age of Projects”: Canadian Aspect

The history of European colonialism contains a lot of material for comparing competing colonial powers. This article notes the inaccuracy of contrasting British and French colonialisms as “commercial” and “state”, respectively, in the context of the 17th and early 18th centuries. The author explains this inaccuracy by the fact that it is caused by an incorrect understanding of the nature of the early modern state, as well as an excessively narrow definition of the concept of “entrepreneurship”. The latest research on the formation of states in early Modern Europe has revealed the importance of the entrepreneurial component in this process. The consolidation of territorial states was largely prepared by joint-stock companies and individual businessmen, to whom the rulers and their ministers entrusted certain functions. A typical example is the famous Dutch and English East India Companies, which actually ruled the colonies of the two powers in South and Southeast Asia for centuries before they were actually “nationalized” in 1799 and 1874, respectively. Despite the fact that the French similar company in North America, the Company of One Hundred Associates (1627), was “nationalized” as early as 1663, the subsequent development of New France opened up wide opportunities for military and administrative entrepreneurship.