Christian Ayne Crouch. Nobility Lost

This excellent book examines both the defeat of New France during the Seven Years’ War and the impact of the military disaster on French imperialism. Christian Ayne Crouch views the conquest through the lens of the “culture war” (15) between French and Canadian officers over the rules governing warfare. While Canadians accepted the need to engage in diplomacy and warfare on Native terms, French elites demanded Native subjugation and rejected indigenous martial practices. Versailles, by siding with the French troops over the Canadians, sealed the colony’s fate. Furthermore, France’s rethinking of empire in the wake of defeat virtually erased New France from the national memory, while producing a new imperial model whose ideological legacy would linger for two centuries. Four chapters focus on “the encounter between the Canadian, Indian, and French cultures of war” (4) during the final struggle for New France. Canadian martial culture emerged in the 1680s, with the arrival from France of compagnies franches de la marine and the massive mobilization of Canadian militiamen to counter the Iroquois. The compagnies franches were colonial troops serving under the auspices of the naval ministry. Canadian nobles soon dominated the officer corps, enabling them to express their military ethos while enriching themselves through the Indian trade.

Ancient history · Battlefield · Colonialism · Diplomacy · Empire · Ideology · Indigenous · Nobility · Political science · Politics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies