New France the 16th and early 17th centuries New France's economy was heavily centered on its Atlantic fisheries. This would change in the later half of the 17th and 18th centuries as French settlement penetrated further into the continental interior. Here French economic interests would shift and concentrate itself on the development of the North American fur trade. It would soon become the new staple good that would strengthen and drive New France's economy, in particular that of Montreal, for the next century. The trading post of Ville-Marie, established on the current island of Montreal, quickly became the economic hub for the
Custom of Paris in New France adopting each other's children (or having the husband adopt the wife's children from a previous marriage). Thus, customary inheritance laws enhanced and facilitated the economic and social blending of families. The general historiographic consensus based on case studies in Quebec is that egalitarian inheritance practices, as stipulated in the Custom of Paris, were observed in the early period of the colony in the 16th and the 17th centuries. However, by the mid-18th century, there were various qualifications favouring preferential treatment. In the early settlement of New France, settlers would practice equality of the division of property post mortem in its