France has been an important participant in the exploration and exploitation of Newfoundland from the very beginning of the sixteenth century. The first fishing voyage to the "new found land" for which there is documentary evidence was a Breton voyage in 1504. By the time Jacques Cartier arrived in Newfoundland in 1534 on his first voyage of exploration to North America, place-names like "Baye de Brest" and "Blanc Sablon in the Labrador Straits region gave proof that Breton, Norman and Basque fishermen had been fishing there in large numbers for a generation.

French fishermen could be found in many parts of Newfoundland. One region stretched from Cape Race to Placentia Bay and beyond. Eventually, in 1662, the French Crown established a colony at Plaisance (Placentia as it is known today), and for several decades, this was the economic, military and administrative centre of the French presence in Newfoundland. Nevertheless, settlement spread not only around Placentia Bay, the Burin Peninsula and the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon but even further west into Fortune and Hermitage Bays. Another region that attracted French fishermen in growing numbers throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries extended north from Bonavista and particularly on the coast of the Northern Peninsula, which became known as the "Petit Nord," as well as the Labrador coast on the other side of the Straits of Belle Isle. The western coast of Newfoundland became a third region, one that French Basques from Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Ciboure, Bayonne and Cap Breton made their own special domain, although fishermen from St. Malo and Granville were attracted to this region as well.

With the exception of the colony at Plaisance and the small settlements further west, the French presence in these regions was a seasonal one. Every spring, fishermen from the seaports of Brittany, Normandy, the Channel ports and the Basque region of southwestern France arrived by the thousands to catch and to cure cod through the summer, before returning home in the fall, like a vast human tide that ebbed and flowed in an annual cycle. At first, fishermen caught their fish close to shore, using hand lines and small open boats. The fish they caught were given either a "wet" cure ("morue verte") which was preferred in the markets of northern France, or a "dry" cure ("morue seche") which was preferred in more southern markets. By the mid-1500s, French fishermen had begun to fish some distance off-shore as well, over the vast undersea plateaus known as the "banks". There, they caught cod with hand lines lowered directly from the "banking vessels". In this fishery, the cod was heavily salted to prevent spoilage. It was then either brought to shore and given the dry cure or it could be transported directly to France for sale as "morue verte". This remained the pattern well into the nineteenth century, French fishermen using both methods to cure cod in order to satisfy both the domestic French market and foreign ones such as Spain. It was this ability to serve a variety of markets and consumer tastes that contributed to the longevity of the French fishery in Newfoundland.