Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France

This book is a cultural history of the Seven Years’ War in French-claimed North America, focused on the meanings of wartime violence and the impact of the encounter between Canadian, Indian, and French cultures of war and diplomacy. The book highlights the relationship between events in France and events in America and frames them dialogically, as the actors themselves experienced them at the time. It examines how codes of martial valor were enacted and challenged by metropolitan and colonial leaders to consider how those acts affected French–Indian relations, the culture of French military elites, ideas of male valor, and the trajectory of French colonial enterprises afterwards, in the second half of the eighteenth century. The book shows the period of the Seven Years’ War to be one of decisive transformation for all American communities. Ultimately the augmented strife between metropolitan and colonial elites over the aims and means of warfare, raised questions about the meaning and cost of empire not just in North America but in the French Atlantic and, later, resonated in France’s approach to empire-building around the globe. The book shows how the lessons of New France were assimilated and new colonial enterprises were constructed based on a heightened jealousy of French honor and a corresponding fear of its loss in engagement with Native enemies and allies. [Publisher]