This was the last in a series of conflicts between Great Britain and France for dominance in North America. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), sometimes referred to as the Great War for Empire, and part of the global conflict called the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) in Europe, resulted in a British victory and the end of the French empire in North America.
In the seventeenth century, the French had explored and claimed a vast amount of land in the interior of North America, ranging from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes in the north to the Mississippi River and New Orleans in the south. In order to consolidate and control this enormous region, they had established a series of forts, trading posts, missions, and settlements, all enclosed by four major cites: Montreal, Quebec, Detroit, and New Orleans. In this manner, France hoped to restrict English settlement in North America to the Atlantic seaboard east of the Appalachian Mountains.
While the English colonies were still confined to the area along the North American coast from Maine to Georgia, some of the English colonies claimed lands as far west as the Mississippi. In three wars fought between 1689 and 1748, French and English colonists had struggled inconclusively for control of the interior. Interest in these unsettled lands was primarily speculative since there were not yet enough settlers in North America to occupy the entire region, although by the 1750s the British colonials were beginning to feel the pressures of population growth. Adding to the growing tensions between the colonists on both sides were disputes over the fur trade and over fishing rights along the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
English settlers were eager to expand westward. High birth rates and a drop in the number of infant deaths were combining to produce larger families and generally dramatic rises in population. As farmers, the settlers felt it only natural that they should expand their colonies across the Appalachian Mountains into the Ohio Valley. In his "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind" published in 1751, Benjamin Franklin summarized the feelings held by many of his fellow colonists. Noting that the colonial population was doubling every twenty-five years, Franklin argued that additional land for settlement was required or the colonies would begin to deteriorate. He went on to state that Britain should help acquire this land, as that nation would profit greatly from the opening of new markets that would come about as the result of expansion. Like other colonial leaders Franklin understood that expansion would involve conflict with the French.
In King George's War (1744–1748), the ambitions of some of the English colonists were fulfilled by the capture of the French fort of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island. There was also talk of conquering the rest of Canada and of driving the French out of their holdings along the Mississippi. These ambitions were disappointed when the peace agreement, negotiated in Europe, returned Louis-burg to the French.
Both sides understood the importance of the original inhabitants of North America in their competition for control of the continent. England and France each worked to win the support of the various native tribes, either as trading partners or as military allies. Britain had the advantage of a more advanced economy and could therefore offer the Indians more and better goods. The French, however, with a far smaller number of settlers, could be more tolerant of Native American concerns, and when the war began France enjoyed better relations with the Indians than did the British.
The powerful Iroquois Confederacy that stood astride the colony of New York tended to keep their distance from both the British and French. The Iroquois generally remained independent of both powers by trading with both and playing them off against each other.
Between 1749 and 1754, the relations between the French and English broke down rapidly, and the Iroquois Confederation found itself caught in the middle. The Iroquois had agreed to give the English what amounted to significant trading privileges in the interior; for the first time the Iroquois had taken a side. The French, interpreting this action as the prelude to British expansion into the Ohio Valley, began to construct new forts in that area. Meanwhile, in 1749, unimpressed by French claims to that region, a group of Virginia businessmen had secured a grant of half a million acres in the Ohio Valley for settlement purposes. The French program of building forts was seen as a threat to their plans, and the English began making military plans and building their own fortifications.
The French completed a line of forts in the region extending from Presque Isle to Fort Duquesne on the Monongahela River. Finally, in the summer of 1754, Virginia's governor, Robert Dinwiddie, alarmed by the actions of the French, sent a militia force under the command of the young and inexperienced officer named George Washington to halt French encroachment on what he considered English soil. Arriving near the site of present-day Pittsburgh, Washington built a small fort, named Fort Necessity, and attacked a detachment of French troops, killing their commander and several others. The French retaliated with a strike against Fort Necessity, trapping Washington and his force. Washington surrendered and retreated to Virginia. These encounters began the French and Indian War.
Meanwhile, the London Board of Trade had arranged for a conference between delegates from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and New England at Albany, New York, to deal with the question of improving relations with the Indians as well as to promote frontier defense. Meeting between June 19, 1754 and July 11, 1754, the delegates learned of Washington's defeat before the conference concluded. The conference adopted the Albany Plan of Union, which would grant a central colonial authority unprecedented powers to oversee their defense, manage Indian relations, and administer the western lands. The clash at Fort Necessity had already taken place when the plan was presented to the colonial assemblies. None of them approved the plan, as they were unwilling to surrender their autonomy to any central authority, even when threatened with war.
In 1755, the British government responded to Washington's defeat by sending two regiments of infantry to Virginia under the command of General Edward Brad-dock. Braddock was experienced in European warfare, but not in the type of fighting that would take place in the forests of America. In May 1755 Braddock and his men started out for the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne, arriving in early July. There, the British were surprised by the French and their Indian allies, and routed. The Indians fought in the way they were accustomed, using all available cover to conceal themselves and to fire upon the enemy, and Braddock was unable to adjust to these tactics. Braddock was mortally wounded and the British troops and colonial militia were forced to withdraw. The French now controlled a line of forts extending from Lake Champlain to Lake Erie to the mouth of the Ohio River.
The war entered a new phase when Great Britain and France formally declared war on 17 May 1756. The conflict now became international in scope. To this point, a lack of reinforcements had forced the English colonists to manage the war themselves, and things had not gone well. Now, Britain unleashed the power of the Royal Navy, which proved to be highly effective at preventing the French from reinforcing New France. Meanwhile, the fighting spread to the West Indies, India, and Europe, although North America remained the focal point.
The war was inconclusive until 1757, when William Pitt, as secretary of state, took command of the effort. He planned military strategy, appointed military leaders, and even issued orders to the colonists. Since military recruitment had dropped off significantly in the colonies, British officers were permitted to forcibly enlist or "impress" colonists into the army and navy. Colonial farmers and businessmen had supplies seized from them, usually without compensation. And the colonists were required to provide shelter for British troops, again without being paid. These measures strengthened the war effort but created resentment among the colonists. By 1758, the tensions between the mother country and its colonists threatened to paralyze Britain's war effort.
Pitt relented in 1758, easing many of the policies the Americans found objectionable. He agreed to pay back the colonists for all of the materials the army had seized, and control over recruitment was returned to the colonial assemblies. These concessions revived American support for the war, and increased militia enlistments. More important, Pitt began to send larger numbers of British regulars to North America and the tide began to turn in Britain's favor.
The French had always been significantly outnumbered by the English in North America, and after 1756, poor harvests also began to take their toll on the French. Together, the British regulars (who did most of the fighting in North America) and colonial militias began to capture important French strongholds. Pitt had developed a war plan that enabled the British to launch expeditions against the French in several areas, and the plan proved to be successful.
British forces under Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe took Louisburg in July of 1758. The French stronghold at Frontenac fell a month later, cutting the line of communications with the Ohio Valley. In November 1758 the French abandoned and burned Fort Duquesne just before English troops arrived.
In 1759, Quebec came under siege. Located atopa high cliff and seemingly impregnable, this century-old city was the capital of New France. But Quebec fell on 13 September 1759, after the British commander, General James Wolfe, led his men onto the Plains of Abraham, at the western edge of the city, and surprised the larger French garrison. The French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, led his troops out of the fortress to confront the English. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed in the ensuing battle, but the British won the day. Montreal surrendered to Amherst nearly a year later, on 7 September 1760. This victory concluded the French and Indian War.
The French continued to struggle on other fronts until 1763, when the Peace of Paris was concluded. France gave up some of its islands in the West Indies and most of its colonial possessions in India and Canada, as well as all other French-held territory in North America. French claims west of the Mississippi and New Orleans were ceded to Spain, so that France abandoned all of its claims to territory on the North American continent.
The results of the French and Indian War were of tremendous significance to Great Britain. While England's territory in the New World more than doubled, so did the cost of maintaining this enlarged empire. The victory over France forced the British government to face a problem it had neglected to this point—how to finance and govern a vast empire. The British realized that the old colonial system, which had functioned with minimal British supervision, would no longer be adequate to administer this new realm.
The cost of the war had also enlarged England's debt and created tensions with the American colonists. These feelings were the result of what the British felt was American incompetence during the war, along with anger for what was perceived as a lack of financial support on the part of the colonies in a struggle that was being waged primarily for their benefit. For these reasons, many of Britain's political leaders believed a major reorganization of the empire was in order, and that London would have to increase its authority over its North American possessions. The colonies would now be expected to assume some of the financial burden of maintaining the empire as well.
From the American standpoint, the results of the war had a different, although equally profound, effect. For the first time, the thirteen colonies had been forced to act together to resist a common enemy, establishing a precedent for unified action against the mother country. And the hostility that had been aroused over British policies between 1756 and 1757 seemed to justify the feelings held by some of the colonials that Britain was interfering illegally in their affairs. These feelings would be intensified once Great Britain began to administer its North American empire more intensively in the years ahead.
The British victory in the French and Indian war proved to be a disaster for the Native Americans who lived in the Ohio Valley. Most of them had allied themselves with the French during the conflict, and by doing so, they were now confronted with angry Englishmen. In the century before the war, the Iroquois Confederacy had carefully played the British and the French against each other, but in the war, they had gradually moved towards an alliance with Britain. The Iroquois alliance with the English broke down soon after the war's end, and the confederation itself began to disintegrate. The Ohio Valley tribes continued to struggle with both the British and Americans for control of the region for another half century. But, outnumbered and divided among themselves, they were rarely able to confront their European opponents on equal terms. In a sense, Tecumseh's defeat, fighting with the English against the Americans near Detroit in 1813, was the Indians last battle of the Seven Years War.
Bibliography
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.
———. A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Jennings, Francis. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies and Tribes in the Seven Years' War in America. New York: Norton, 1988.
Nester, William R. The First Global War: Britain, France and the Fate of North America, 1756–1775. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000.
Rogers, Alan. Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763. Berkley: University of California Press, 1974.
Schwartz, Seymour. The French and Indian War, 1754–1763: The Imperial Struggle for North America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Regions, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
—Gregory Moore