People, State, and War under the French Regime in Canada

Abstract

Examining the period from the founding of New France in the early seventeenth century to the conquest of 1760, People, State, and War presents a study of colonial warriors and warfare that surveys the exercise of state military power and its effects on ordinary people. Resisting the pervasive and overgeneralizing stereotype of “Canadians” as a warrior people, Louise Dechêne draws readers’ attention to the overlapping and all-encompassing reality of perpetual warfare in New France and the uneven and varied demands of war on the diverse members of colonial society, effectively illustrating the relationship between “Canadian” colonists and the ancien régime administration.Published posthumously, People, State, and War represents a lifetime of research. The book is separated into twelve chapters, tracing the events that led to the creation of the colonial militia in 1669 through the militia’s participation in different colonial, imperial, and inter-Indigenous conflicts, including French offensives against the Haudenosaunee in the late seventeenth century, culminating in what Dechêne terms “the Sixteen Year War,” which ended with the conquest of New France. There are immense details about administrative structures, hierarchies, and specific individuals, included in the chapters (2, 3, 4, and 8) that examine moments of conflict, which expertly reconstruct the varied conditions and composition of colonial military forces, that included members of the dispatched Carginan-Salières regiment, and later the Troupes de la Marine, the militia, colonial volunteers, and regular troops, and the crucially important Indigenous allies of the French empire. However, Dechêne also turns her attention in the intersecting chapters to the experiences and attitudes of the habitants and small urban populations who were equally affected by the exigencies of perpetual conflict through policing, forced labor requisitions, and taxation (chapters 6 and 7). In this still fragile colonial world, the military prowess and effectiveness of colonial military men, regardless of imperial objectives and frequently arbitrary measures, relied heavily on French alliances with different and powerful Indigenous allies, who usually outnumbered colonial troops and provided invaluable support in defense of the colony, on the forced labor of colonial peasants who constructed fortifications throughout the Saint Lawrence Valley, and on itinerant fur traders and coureurs de bois, whose familiarity with the pays d’en haut and Ohio Valley proved crucial to the success of French defense strategies. Rather than the well-worn image of an entire “Canadian” population of natural and enthusiastic soldiers, Dechêne emphasizes the diversity of social and individual circumstances among colonists in New France to highlight how different peoples reacted to, participated in, and came to grips with the reality of warfare in New France.Over her entire career, Dechêne recorded unimaginable details, using official correspondence, memoirs, military campaign journals, taxation records, local parish records, and visual sources, including maps, which offer a window into administrative, social, military, diplomatic, religious, and demographic patterns in New France and draw attention to the sometimes conflicting or disconnected but always enduring relationship between the colony and the metropole. Although People, State, and War examines in depth the experiences of French colonists, the constant presence and the invaluable and indisputable role of France’s Indigenous allies in military campaigns and in the colony’s defense and survival remains constant throughout Dechêne’s analysis. Contributing to the ongoing movement away from past scholarly conclusions that have overlooked or underacknowledged the role of Indigenous peoples in the growth, development, and protection of France’s overseas colonies, Dechêne situates the Indigenous inhabitants of North America as the principal military force of New France (118). Presenting a combined examination of government and societal structures, military hierarchies, and colonial conflicts, interwoven with tantalizing details about diverse peoples, specific military campaigns, diplomatic negotiations, and individual reactions and responses to changing imperial regulations, demands, and objectives in the colony, People, State, and War is an indispensable resource for scholars of New France.