The French and Indian War changed the fate of America by initiating
questions over Britain's authority to restrict westward movement into
the western frontier of the Ohio River Valley (The Proclamation of 1763)
and to begin to the increase of taxes on the colonies to pay for the
cost of this North American military struggle.
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| Map of the French and Indian War (1754–1763) |
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) comprised the North
American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756-1763. The war pitted
the colonies of British America against those of New France, with both sides
supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and
France, as well as by Native American allies. At the start of the war, the
French North American colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 European
settlers, compared with 2 million in the British North American colonies.[3]
The outnumbered French particularly depended on the Indians. Following months
of localised conflict, the metropole nations declared war on each other in 1756,
escalating the war from a regional affair into an intercontinental conflict.
The name French and Indian War, used mainly in the United
States, refers to the two main enemies of the British colonists: the royal
French forces and the various indigenous forces allied with them. British and
European historians use the term the Seven Years' War, as do English speaking
Canadians. French Canadians call it La guerre de la Conquête (the War of the
Conquest) or (rarely) the Fourth Intercolonial War.
Fighting took place primarily along the frontiers between
New France and the British colonies, from Virginia in the south to Nova Scotia
in the north. It began with a dispute over control of the confluence of the
Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, called the Forks of the Ohio, and the site of
the French Fort Duquesne (within present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). The
dispute erupted into violence in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in May 1754,
during which Virginia militiamen under the command of 22-year-old George
Washington ambushed a French patrol.
In 1755, six colonial governors in North America met with
General Edward Braddock, the newly arrived British Army commander, and planned
a four-way attack on the French. None succeeded, and the main effort by
Braddock proved a disaster; he lost the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9,
1755 and died a few days later. British operations in 1755, 1756 and 1757 in
the frontier areas of Pennsylvania and New York all failed, due to a
combination of poor management, internal divisions, effective Canadian scouts,
French regular forces, and Indian warrior allies. In 1755, the British captured
Fort Beauséjour on the border separating Nova Scotia from Acadia; soon
afterwards they ordered the expulsion of the Acadians (1755-1764). Orders for
the deportation were given by William Shirley, Commander-in-Chief, North
America, without direction from Great Britain. The Acadians, both those
captured in arms and those who had sworn the loyalty oath to His Britannic Majesty,
were expelled. Native Americans were likewise driven off their land to make way
for settlers from New England.
After the disastrous 1757 British campaigns (resulting in a
failed expedition against Louisbourg and the Siege of Fort William Henry, which
was followed by Indian torture and massacres of British victims), the British
government fell. William Pitt came to power and significantly increased British
military resources in the colonies at a time when France was unwilling to risk
large convoys to aid the limited forces it had in New France. France
concentrated its forces against Prussia and its allies in the European theatre
of the war. Between 1758 and 1760, the British military launched a campaign to
capture the Colony of Canada. They succeeded in capturing territory in
surrounding colonies and ultimately the city of Quebec (1759). Though the
British later lost the Battle of Sainte-Foy west of Quebec (1760), the French
ceded Canada in accordance with the Treaty of Paris (1763).
The outcome was one of the most significant developments in
a century of Anglo-French conflict. France ceded its territory east of the
Mississippi to Great Britain. It ceded French Louisiana west of the Mississippi
River (including New Orleans) to its ally Spain, in compensation for Spain's
loss to Britain of Florida (Spain had ceded Florida to Britain in exchange for
the return of Havana, Cuba). France's colonial presence north of the Caribbean
was reduced to the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, confirming Britain's
position as the dominant colonial power in eastern North America.
Source: Wikipedia
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