Every Tuesday, The duty offers a space to the creators of a periodical. This week, we offer you a text published in The Notebooks of the Ten, number 77 (2023-2024).
The notion of peace is badly mistreated today. The conflagration of the world we know, with fratricidal conflicts, often launched in the name of a just cause, devastates entire countries, displaces populations, causes suffering and despair and a great feeling of helplessness in the face of these humanitarian disasters. .
On a historical level, the war has everything to mark the imagination: well-defined camps which confront each other, memorable dates, precise statistics, essential places of memory, cultural goods preserved over time and coveted by collectors, personalities who became heroes or dictators, technological inventions used for the benefit of destruction. War stories captivate and make good stories.
Peace stories… are there compelling and important peace stories? For example, that of 1701, concluded in Montreal in the “Great Peace of Montreal”? The question is valid.
Archaeological discoveries made over the last decade at the founding site of Montreal and the Callière estate in Old Montreal motivate us to explore the themes of war and peace in the North American colonial space. .
The Chevalier de Callière, the French instigator of this great conference, succeeded, in the company of several allies, in sealing a peace whose main characteristic is certainly its long duration. Is it possible that the bases on which he partly built his approach were inspired by the manual On the Way of Negotiating with Sovereigns, What did his brother, François de Callières, write? This is the bias we adopt.
We may be surprised by the fact that studies on peace, although essential to our understanding of the progress of the world, fare poorly compared to the phenomenal number of historical, political, social and economic studies on war. It must, however, be emphasized that an increasingly marked interest has been given to the study of peace over the last thirty years. […].
Negative peace
War is certainly easier to describe and circumscribe than peace. However, as early as 1969, the Norwegian mathematician Johan Galtung developed the concept, widely adopted subsequently, according to which there are two kinds of peace: negative peace and positive peace.
Negative peace would be the absence of war or any form of direct violence; positive peace, in addition to the absence of violence, is inseparable from a context of development, equity and social justice. This nuance is fundamental and helps us analyze the political and diplomatic issues faced at the end of the 17th century.e century the First Nations in their relations with the colonial, French and English authorities.
All the XVIIe century is an almost uninterrupted series of comings and goings between feats of arms, skirmishes, invasions repelled or suffered, truces necessarily punctual, followed by armed twists and turns […].
In colonial America of the 16th centurye in the 18the centuries, material evidence related to warfare is well documented by archaeology. Fortifications, weapons, munitions and war trophies inevitably leave traces. On the other hand, tangible evidence of peaceful movements, alliances and exchanges between groups requires greater attention from archaeologists to decode their meanings from material traces.
While archival and ethno-historical sources from colonial America provide precise markers and references to evoke episodes of peace, they are however hardly useful for studying periods prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent.
The presence of particular goods, such as pipes accompanying diplomatic rituals, or even exogenous materials found in abundance within communities, such as native copper or ores sought for the manufacture of tools, provide interesting clues for exploring relationships between close or distant groups and their exchanges based on reciprocity or negotiation.
In the social sphere in the precolonial period, it was through alliances and marriages that cultural dynamics between groups were achieved, but also through the expression of prayers and spiritual rituals codified and recognized to promote abundance and prosperity. survival […].
The colonial dynamic led to an increase in violent episodes, more than just the transition from nomadism to sedentary groups. Influence games, strategic alliances, arrival of new goods and previously unknown technologies, contagious diseases, conversions, etc.
Overall, the centers of colonization, the networks of forts and trading posts in indigenous territory as well as the missions contributed to profoundly modifying indigenous lifestyles and cultures and to accentuating clashes of all kinds, often within the same community.
Comments or suggestions for Ideas in Review? Write to [email protected].