Chapter 3: Abstract

War, Culture, and Gender in Colonial and Revolutionary North America

(Serena Zabin, Carleton College, Department of History)

In Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600, ed. by Karen Hagemann et al. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 96-116.

Abstract

The warfare of colonial and revolutionary North America, from European-native conflicts and the Seven Years War (1756–63) to the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) and the War of 1812, has only recently come to be considered in gendered terms. The roles of both women and men in North American warfare underwent enormous changes from the last quarter of the sixteenth century to the first quarter of the nineteenth. Two major themes are in the centre of this chapter: On the one hand the theme of the contested and changing constructions of military masculinity of Native Americans, British and French white settlers and the British and French armies that were brought to North America in the context especially of the Seven Years War; on the other hand the theme of women's different and changing involvement in warfare, which is related to the contested and changing representations of femininity in the different war societies.

Keywords

Seven Years’ War; American Revolutionary War; War of 1812; North America; colonial wars; native warfare; military culture; military masculinity; indigenous people; gender.

In Part I “From the Thirty Years War and Colonial Conquest to the Wars of Revolution and Independence” of the Oxford Handbook of Gender, War and the Western World since 1600.

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