Marvelous Maples: Visions of Maple Sugar in New France, 1691–1761

Abstract:Maple sugar was a multivalent product in the New France. Before the “discovery” of maples by early American boosters like Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Rush, French settlers in Canada had already developed a deep connection to maple sap and its sugary products. Although it failed to enter the world market in the eighteenth century like its cane cousin, maple sugar held intriguing—but ultimately unrealized—possibilities for New France within a mercantilist framework. This natural sweetener also fueled a utopian vision of New France and troubled eighteenth-century French beliefs about their own mastery of knowledge, the environment, technology, and the Indigenous Peoples of North America. This article assesses descriptions of maple sugar in both French texts, such as those by Sieur de Dièreville, Baron de Lahontan, Joseph-François de Lafitau, and Pierre-Xavier de Charlevoix, as well as texts associated with several Indigenous nations of the Great Lakes in order to explore the history of sweetness beyond the sugar plantation.