War, Culture, and Gender in Colonial and Revolutionary North America
The warfare of colonial and revolutionary North America, from European–native conflicts and the Seven Years’ War to the American Revolutionary War 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 at the center 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 especially in the context of the Seven Years’ War; and 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.