The French & Indian War, or the Seven Years' War
I have always been drawn to the first world war, the one that began in a remote glen in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1754 and by its end changed the look of the world in 1763. It sets up the American War of Independence, the decades of war between Britain and France -- in many ways, the modern age itself. For twenty years I attended as a vendor the annual seminar of the Braddock Road Preservation Association, and it educated and entertained me with some of the best scholars in the field. On this page I will offer new books and classics, dvds and audiobooks, and any other worthy items of the 18th century that relate to the "wilderness war."
Parkman: France and England in North America volume 1
Parkman: France and England in North America volume 1
This Library of America volume, along with its companion, presents, for the first time in compact form, all seven titles of Francis Parkman’s monumental account of France and England’s imperial struggle for dominance on the North American continent. Deservedly compared as a literary achievement to Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Parkman’s accomplishment is hardly less awesome than the explorations and adventures he so vividly describes.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865) begins with the early and tragic settlement of the French Huguenots in Florida, then shifts to the northern reaches of the continent and follows the expeditions of Samuel de Champlain up the St. Lawrence River and into the Great Lakes as he mapped the wilderness, organized the fur trade, promoted Christianity among the natives, and waged a savage forest campaign against the Iroquois.
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867) traces the zealous efforts of the Jesuits and other Roman Catholic orders to convert the Native American tribes of North America.
La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869) records that explorer’s voyages on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and his treks, often alone, across the vast western prairies and through the labyrinthine swamps of Louisiana.
The Old Régime in Canada (1874) recounts the political struggles among the religious sects, colonial officials, feudal chiefs, royal ministers, and military commanders of Canada. Their bitter fights over the monopoly of the fur trade, the sale of brandy to the natives, the importation of wives from the orphanages and poorhouses of France, and the bizarre fanaticism of religious extremists and their “incessant supernaturalism” animate this pioneering social history of early Canada.