Onontio’s War, Louis XV’s Peace

Abstract

This chapter outlines the various interpretations of legitimate violence in the French Atlantic world and describes the stakes that induced European and indigenous men to conduct campaigns or undertake violent actions in the years between 1748 and 1756. It also provides an overview of the different goals and concerns that military elites in France drew from their prior war experience, thereby providing insight into how multiple noble, martial masculinities could coexist in the French Atlantic empire so long as they did not come into direct contact. The year 1748 brought about different results for martial elites in both France and New France. Louis XV’s peace in Europe returned French military nobles to a world of anxiety over their future position, status, and opportunity. New France, on the other hand, experienced no peace at all, making a sixteen-year war in North America, not a seven-year war. Conflict among Native nations, British colonies, and the French regime in Canada carried on after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle went into effect and flowed seamlessly into the “new war” in 1756. Onontio, the indigenous name for both the governors of New France and the king of France, remained at war, continuing a pattern of borderlands conflict more than a half century old.