Illinois on the eve of the Seven Years' War, 1747-1755

Using original French correspondence and papers (with English translations), the authors have tried to document the period between the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War as it was reflected in the Illinois country. The collection mainly represents the writings of the people who labored to maintain the cause of France in the West.

Throughout, the story is one of Indian disaffection, of the wiles which English traders exercised not merely over the French Indians, but over the French traders themselves, of the measures concerted at New Orleans and Quebec to uphold the name of France in the interior and of how these measures were carried out on the ground by post commandants, officers and Jesuits.
- From the author’s Preface