In America the Seven Years’ War was characterized by the British seizure of Canada and Cuba, Indian strife— and also conspicuous intercolonial commerce among the European combatants. The Family Compact powers, France and Spain, certainly traded essential commodities in the period 1756-1763. French and Spanish settlements also conducted business with their English enemies in almost all stages of the long struggle. Abundant evidence exists of continuous commerce between the British colonies and Spanish Florida. Through the eighteenth century South Carolina and St. Augustine engaged in constant traffic because, according to the situado, the Captaincy General of Cuba failed to provide the impecunious colony with sufficient supplies. The French and Indian War did not disrupt such trading enterprises.
Commerce also continued between English and French settlements during the Seven Years’ War, as this documentary monograph clearly demonstrates. Parlementaires or “truce ships” were employed to exchange prisoners and transport legal and contraband traffic between the belligerents. In this well-researched and -written work students of colonial history will find a fascinating case study of such commerce in French Louisiana. The monograph also offers some interesting revelations regarding the status of anti-Semitism in colonial Louisiana and the bitter rivalries which almost incapacitated the French government in New Orleans near the end of the international war. Governor Kerlérec and Commissaire Ordonnateur Rochemore unfortunately became involved in a disruptive competition for power in the American province.
A very incisive view of the French bureaucracy and its operations thus emerges from the story of the controversy in colonial Louisiana. This mongraph makes an important documentary contribution to the study of colonial life in America at the close of the French and Indian War.
