« Cela m’est de la dernière conséquence que le tout soit fait en secret » Le commerce clandestin entre la Nouvelle-France et la Nouvelle-Angleterre dans la correspondance de Gabriel Bernon, marchand huguenot

Abstract

This research note approaches the theme of borders through a case study of Gabriel Bernon (1644-1736), a Huguenot merchant who took refuge in New England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, at a time when his brother, Samuel Bernon of La Rochelle (1647-1717), was the principal trader with New France. The correspondence addressed to Bernon at the end of the seventeenth century, preserved in the Gabriel Bernon Papers at the Rhode Island Historical Society, testifies to several years of clandestine commerce between New England and New France facilitated by his family network, notwithstanding the geopolitical, economic, and religious borders separating these two colonies of rival mercantilist empires.