ABSTRACT
The unstable nature of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle can hardly be exaggerated. It reflected a fiscal rather than a military stand-off between the Crowns of France and Britain. The mental world of the Iroquois remained incomprehensibly different from that of all their European neighbours, but their life-style underlined the penetration of European material culture into their lands. In June 1754 the British cabinet officially recorded its view that French aggression threatened both British trade and the long-term viability of the American colonies. The New England prejudice which regarded the Indian allies of France as fiends incarnate received a boost which has, over the imaginative bridge provided by Fenimore Cooper, survived in images which became icons of late twentieth-century Anglo-American cinema. The West Indian legislatures, representative of white oligarchies presiding over a slave-driven sugar economy, were very much like their fellow British-American mainland counterparts when it came to cooperation with the war effort.
