=273. Founding of commercial companies, and colonial expansion.=—The revival of French commerce was evidenced by the incorporation of companies designed to trade with distant parts of the world, and by the encouragement and growth of colonization. The list of commercial companies founded, 1599-1642, including reorganizations, amounted to twenty-two, including in its scope Canada, the West Indies, Guinea, the west coast of Africa, Madagascar, East India, and the Malay Archipelago (Java, etc.). The government accorded great privileges to the companies, and the royal influence was exerted in every way to help them; men were forced even by intimidation to invest in them, and nobles were allowed to participate without lowering the dignity of their order. The colonies were likewise pushed by the force of the government; emigration was encouraged and discharged soldiers and poor girls were sent out by the government to further the growth of population. The number of Europeans in Canada was perhaps 2,500 in 1660, and increased to 10,000 in the next twenty years; a considerable number of French settled also in various islands of the West Indies. France stood next to Spain as a colonial power, measuring merely by the area to which she could lay claim. =274. Reasons for the failure of these enterprises.=—Most of these commercial and colonial enterprises were failures. They showed the characteristic faults of the time: inefficiency of organization, a failure to appreciate the difficulties of their task, and impatience in their attempts to solve the problems. They had special elements of weakness, moreover, in their rather artificial character, and in the fact that they carried with them abroad the class distinctions and prejudices of the home country. Still, the seventeenth century was for all nations a time of experiment in distant commerce and colonization; a large proportion of failures was natural, and the French had attained a sufficient measure of success before 1700 to have enabled them to enter the international competition of the eighteenth century with good prospects. Their prospects were blighted, and France lost its opportunity to become a “world-power” by the fault of the French political constitution, which put the interests of the people at the mercy of one man, the king.