Causes of the War
The French and Indian War from 1754-1763 was a conflict between Great Britain and France over their territorial possessions in North America. Both countries wanted control of the Ohio River Valley because of the profitable fur trade. The two countries could not agree on their boundaries. The British claimed land along the Atlantic Coast to the Appalachian Mountains. The French settlements were north of the British colonies along the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes and southward to the Mississippi River. Both claimed the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River known as the Ohio River Valley. Both countries wanted to reap economic benefits of the profitable fur trading and were willing to fight for control of North America.
Battles
To secure their hold on the land, the French built forts along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to keep away the British fur traders and settlers. The British set out to capture the French forts and to drive the French from the North American continent. Both the British and French had the support of the Native Americans and the troops from their home countries in fighting for control of the land.
The American colonists joined with the British to drive out the French. As a young twenty-two year old Major in the Virginia Militia, George Washington led colonial troops to force the French troops to withdraw from their forts along the Allegheny River. Washington’s troops were attacked and defeated at Ft. Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This was the first battle of the war.
The most significant battle of the French and Indian War was fought in Canada. The fort at Quebec was the main fortress for France because it supplied all of the other French forts in colonial America. The British knew that if they captured Quebec, they would win the war. In early 1759, British General James Wolfe laid siege to Quebec with 9,000 soldiers. When the French surrendered, this was the turning point of the war. Now the British would soon control all of North America.
Results
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France. France ceded (gave up) its territory in North America (including Canada) to Great Britain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain and in return received the lands west of the Mississippi River.
The end of the French and Indian War however resulted in a large debt that the British Parliament decided would be repaid by imposing higher taxes on the American colonies. The British felt the colonists benefited the most from the war and should help pay for the war debt. It is evident that conditions arising from the French and Indian War helped set the stage for the colonial revolt against the British and is considered the first step of the American Revolution.
Note Questions:
1. What was the major cause of the French & Indian War?
2. Why was the Ohio River Valley so important?
3. What were the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763?
4. What happened after the French and Indian war?
The French and Indian War from 1754-1763 was a conflict between Great Britain and France over their territorial possessions in North America. Both countries wanted control of the Ohio River Valley because of the profitable fur trade. The two countries could not agree on their boundaries. The British claimed land along the Atlantic Coast to the Appalachian Mountains. The French settlements were north of the British colonies along the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes and southward to the Mississippi River. Both claimed the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River known as the Ohio River Valley. Both countries wanted to reap economic benefits of the profitable fur trading and were willing to fight for control of North America.
Battles
To secure their hold on the land, the French built forts along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to keep away the British fur traders and settlers. The British set out to capture the French forts and to drive the French from the North American continent. Both the British and French had the support of the Native Americans and the troops from their home countries in fighting for control of the land.
The American colonists joined with the British to drive out the French. As a young twenty-two year old Major in the Virginia Militia, George Washington led colonial troops to force the French troops to withdraw from their forts along the Allegheny River. Washington’s troops were attacked and defeated at Ft. Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This was the first battle of the war.
The most significant battle of the French and Indian War was fought in Canada. The fort at Quebec was the main fortress for France because it supplied all of the other French forts in colonial America. The British knew that if they captured Quebec, they would win the war. In early 1759, British General James Wolfe laid siege to Quebec with 9,000 soldiers. When the French surrendered, this was the turning point of the war. Now the British would soon control all of North America.
Results
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France. France ceded (gave up) its territory in North America (including Canada) to Great Britain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain and in return received the lands west of the Mississippi River.
The end of the French and Indian War however resulted in a large debt that the British Parliament decided would be repaid by imposing higher taxes on the American colonies. The British felt the colonists benefited the most from the war and should help pay for the war debt. It is evident that conditions arising from the French and Indian War helped set the stage for the colonial revolt against the British and is considered the first step of the American Revolution.
Note Questions:
1. What was the major cause of the French & Indian War?
2. Why was the Ohio River Valley so important?
3. What were the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763?
4. What happened after the French and Indian war?
Ten surprising facts about the imperial war for colonial domination between Great Britain and France. -- History Channel Article by Christopher Klein
George Washington struck the war’s first blow.
In 1753, Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie dispatched 21-year-old George Washington to southwestern Pennsylvania with a written order to French forces to vacate the contested territory of the Ohio Valley. When the French refused, Lieutenant Colonel Washington returned the following year with a force of hundreds and ambushed a small scouting party before dawn on May 28, 1754. The first military action of Washington’s life resulted in the deaths of 13 enemy soldiers and launched the French and Indian War. Washington was forced to surrender his makeshift garrison, Fort Necessity, on July 4, 1754, and the following year he was part of British General Edward Braddock’s disastrous expedition to southwestern Pennsylvania. Two decades after fighting to extend the dominion of King George III over the North American frontier, Washington would lead the armed rebellion to expel the king’s forces.
It was part of the first global war.
“The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire,” declared English author Horace Walpole, and indeed the 1754 battle started by Washington sparked the Seven Years’ War, a global conflagration in which hundreds of thousands died. Called “the first world war” by Winston Churchill, the Seven Years’ War included fighting in Europe, the Caribbean, the Philippines, India and Africa. It was the North American portion of the conflict that became known as the French and Indian War. While Britain kept up the fight in North America against France, it relied on its ally Prussia, led by Frederick the Great, to sustain the fight in Europe against France, Austria, Russia and Sweden.
The Seven Years’ War actually lasted nine years.
Although hostilities began in 1754, Britain did not formally declare war on France until May 18, 1756. France reciprocated three weeks later. Nine years of armed conflict between the two countries on the North American continent ended with the ratification of the Treaty of Paris by the British Parliament on February 10, 1763.
In spite of the war’s moniker, not all Native Americans sided with the French.
While the majority of Native American tribes backed the French, numerous tribes remained neutral, fought alongside the British or shifted allegiances with the winds of war. Native American tribes, which laid claim to the same territories that the British and French were fighting over, were hardly monolithic, and their fault lines were reflected in the sides they backed. The Iroquois Confederacy, initially neutral, eventually allied with the British in 1758, while the Algonquins, their traditional rivals, backed the French.
The war led Benjamin Franklin to draw a famed political cartoon.
Weeks after the war began, delegates from 7 of the 13 British colonies met in Albany, New York, to discuss the growing crisis and their collective defense. At the Albany Congress, Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Franklin presented a plan for a unified colonial government that included a legislature of delegates chosen by colonial assemblies and an executive branch headed by a president-general appointed by the British crown. To support his plan, Franklin penned a political cartoon for his Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper that depicted a rattlesnake chopped into pieces with the caption: “Join, or Die.” The colonies, however, did not want to cede any power, and they overwhelmingly rejected Franklin’s Albany Plan.
The war gave rise to the Cajuns.
Although the Catholic residents of French-speaking Acadia—composed of portions of the present-day Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island—pledged neutrality, the British feared they would be subversive. Beginning in 1755, the British expelled thousands of Acadians. Refugees fled to the American colonies and to France, but beginning in the 1760s, hundreds started to settle in French-controlled Louisiana. There, the name “Acadian” morphed into “Cajun,” and present-day Cajuns are descendants of these French and Indian War refugees.
The war inspired “Yankee Doodle.”
Although more associated with the American Revolution, the lyrics for the patriotic tune were thought to have been composed by the British during the French and Indian War to mock the ragtag colonists fighting alongside the finely drilled and nattily attired redcoats. Intended as a derisive taunt, the patriots proudly adopted the tune during the American Revolution.
It launched an 18th-century special operations force—Rogers’ Rangers.
One of the war’s most famous fighting men was Major Robert Rogers, a New Hampshire frontiersman who led a band of daring scouts and raiders who devised guerilla tactics to fight in the thick wilderness, conducted reconnaissance missions deep into enemy territory and launched bold hit-and-run raids against French forts and Native American villages. Rogers’ Rangers served as a Loyalist force during the American Revolution, although many of its French and Indian War veterans joined the patriot cause instead.
The British gained Florida as a result.
With a stroke of the pen, the 1763 Treaty of Paris stripped France of its North American empire. Spain, which allied with France in 1762, was also forced to cede Florida to the British, although it did gain possession of Louisiana, which had been secretly granted to it by the French in the Treaty of Fontainebleau the year before.
The French and Indian War set the stage for the American Revolution.
After paying Prussia to fight in Europe and reimbursing the American colonies for military expenses, Britain found itself in deep debt at war’s end. As a result, it enacted the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and other unpopular measures aimed at raising funds from its 13 American colonies, which gave birth to protests against “taxation without representation.” The issuance of the Proclamation of 1763, which banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, in the war’s immediate aftermath also contributed to colonial discontent that broke out into armed rebellion in 1775.
George Washington struck the war’s first blow.
In 1753, Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie dispatched 21-year-old George Washington to southwestern Pennsylvania with a written order to French forces to vacate the contested territory of the Ohio Valley. When the French refused, Lieutenant Colonel Washington returned the following year with a force of hundreds and ambushed a small scouting party before dawn on May 28, 1754. The first military action of Washington’s life resulted in the deaths of 13 enemy soldiers and launched the French and Indian War. Washington was forced to surrender his makeshift garrison, Fort Necessity, on July 4, 1754, and the following year he was part of British General Edward Braddock’s disastrous expedition to southwestern Pennsylvania. Two decades after fighting to extend the dominion of King George III over the North American frontier, Washington would lead the armed rebellion to expel the king’s forces.
It was part of the first global war.
“The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire,” declared English author Horace Walpole, and indeed the 1754 battle started by Washington sparked the Seven Years’ War, a global conflagration in which hundreds of thousands died. Called “the first world war” by Winston Churchill, the Seven Years’ War included fighting in Europe, the Caribbean, the Philippines, India and Africa. It was the North American portion of the conflict that became known as the French and Indian War. While Britain kept up the fight in North America against France, it relied on its ally Prussia, led by Frederick the Great, to sustain the fight in Europe against France, Austria, Russia and Sweden.
The Seven Years’ War actually lasted nine years.
Although hostilities began in 1754, Britain did not formally declare war on France until May 18, 1756. France reciprocated three weeks later. Nine years of armed conflict between the two countries on the North American continent ended with the ratification of the Treaty of Paris by the British Parliament on February 10, 1763.
In spite of the war’s moniker, not all Native Americans sided with the French.
While the majority of Native American tribes backed the French, numerous tribes remained neutral, fought alongside the British or shifted allegiances with the winds of war. Native American tribes, which laid claim to the same territories that the British and French were fighting over, were hardly monolithic, and their fault lines were reflected in the sides they backed. The Iroquois Confederacy, initially neutral, eventually allied with the British in 1758, while the Algonquins, their traditional rivals, backed the French.
The war led Benjamin Franklin to draw a famed political cartoon.
Weeks after the war began, delegates from 7 of the 13 British colonies met in Albany, New York, to discuss the growing crisis and their collective defense. At the Albany Congress, Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Franklin presented a plan for a unified colonial government that included a legislature of delegates chosen by colonial assemblies and an executive branch headed by a president-general appointed by the British crown. To support his plan, Franklin penned a political cartoon for his Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper that depicted a rattlesnake chopped into pieces with the caption: “Join, or Die.” The colonies, however, did not want to cede any power, and they overwhelmingly rejected Franklin’s Albany Plan.
The war gave rise to the Cajuns.
Although the Catholic residents of French-speaking Acadia—composed of portions of the present-day Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island—pledged neutrality, the British feared they would be subversive. Beginning in 1755, the British expelled thousands of Acadians. Refugees fled to the American colonies and to France, but beginning in the 1760s, hundreds started to settle in French-controlled Louisiana. There, the name “Acadian” morphed into “Cajun,” and present-day Cajuns are descendants of these French and Indian War refugees.
The war inspired “Yankee Doodle.”
Although more associated with the American Revolution, the lyrics for the patriotic tune were thought to have been composed by the British during the French and Indian War to mock the ragtag colonists fighting alongside the finely drilled and nattily attired redcoats. Intended as a derisive taunt, the patriots proudly adopted the tune during the American Revolution.
It launched an 18th-century special operations force—Rogers’ Rangers.
One of the war’s most famous fighting men was Major Robert Rogers, a New Hampshire frontiersman who led a band of daring scouts and raiders who devised guerilla tactics to fight in the thick wilderness, conducted reconnaissance missions deep into enemy territory and launched bold hit-and-run raids against French forts and Native American villages. Rogers’ Rangers served as a Loyalist force during the American Revolution, although many of its French and Indian War veterans joined the patriot cause instead.
The British gained Florida as a result.
With a stroke of the pen, the 1763 Treaty of Paris stripped France of its North American empire. Spain, which allied with France in 1762, was also forced to cede Florida to the British, although it did gain possession of Louisiana, which had been secretly granted to it by the French in the Treaty of Fontainebleau the year before.
The French and Indian War set the stage for the American Revolution.
After paying Prussia to fight in Europe and reimbursing the American colonies for military expenses, Britain found itself in deep debt at war’s end. As a result, it enacted the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and other unpopular measures aimed at raising funds from its 13 American colonies, which gave birth to protests against “taxation without representation.” The issuance of the Proclamation of 1763, which banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, in the war’s immediate aftermath also contributed to colonial discontent that broke out into armed rebellion in 1775.
French & Indian War
Goal
#1: To understand how the French and Indian War pushed the colonists toward
independence
The French and Indian War was the colonial portion of the Seven Years War fought in Europe from 1756 to 1763. It was bloodiest and most widely-fought American war in the 18th century, taking more lives than the American Revolution and involving people on three continents, including the Caribbean. The war was but one of many imperial struggles between the French and English over colonial territory and wealth both in North America and in Europe, as well as a product of the local rivalry between British and French colonists.
So, what led us into this war? For years, the French had been bulding a strong of forts from Lake Erie towards the forks of the Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh) to limit British influence along their frontier. However, the colony of Virginia also claimed the same region.
The French and Indian War was the colonial portion of the Seven Years War fought in Europe from 1756 to 1763. It was bloodiest and most widely-fought American war in the 18th century, taking more lives than the American Revolution and involving people on three continents, including the Caribbean. The war was but one of many imperial struggles between the French and English over colonial territory and wealth both in North America and in Europe, as well as a product of the local rivalry between British and French colonists.
So, what led us into this war? For years, the French had been bulding a strong of forts from Lake Erie towards the forks of the Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh) to limit British influence along their frontier. However, the colony of Virginia also claimed the same region.
- Thus, in November 1753, the governor or Virginia sent Major George Washington with a small expedition to order the removal of the French forts. The commander of the fort politely received Washington and his men, but denied the validity of English claims to the region.
- Washington returned to Virginia and soon thereafter, the legislature determined that French rejection of British demands constituted a hostile act, and that the French must be driven from their frontier forts on British-claimed land.
- Washington received permission to build a fort near the present site of Pittsburgh. In May, after Washington's troops clashed with local French forces the English colonists surrendered the meager fort they had built.The incident set off a string of small battles. but it was not until May 1756 that the French and the English formally declared war.
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Goal
#2: To understand the road to the American Revolution
After the first steps toward war - the placement of British troops and the Intolerable Acts - the road to revolution still moved slowly:
After the first steps toward war - the placement of British troops and the Intolerable Acts - the road to revolution still moved slowly:
- 1774 - First Continental Congress established. The Congressmen sent a Declaration of Rights and Grievances to the King which established colonial standards for acceptable legislation by Parliament: colonists would accept acts meant to regulate "external commerce" but would not allow any "taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects of America, without their consent." The King's reply: "Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent."
- In September 1774, representatives from 12 colonies (all but Georgia) began deliberating for 7 weeks about the best possible way to express their grievances and demand that such injustices be corrected without severing ties with England. The delegates came from many backgrounds and with many different agendas. Thus, when they came together, they were immediately confronted with the things that divided rather than united them. They finally agreed on four common principles:
- The colonies had the right to tax and legislate themselves.
- The colonies should stop all trade with Britain until the Intolerable Acts were repealed.
- The delegates formed a "community of leadership" that could unite the colonies by convincing the people that they shared unique interests that were distinct from those of England - that they were no longer English, but distinctly and uniquely American.
- The colonies had the right to mobilize a colonial militia to safeguard military supplies and depots. They raised a "defensive" force of 20,000 Minutemen to be ready in minutes in ”case of alarm.
- 1775 - Colonies began the transition from royal to patriot control. Throughout the colonies, patriots enforced boycotts of British goods, exposed those who refused, and used political pressure to force allegiance to the American patriot cause.
- April - British colonial secretary proclaimed Massachusetts was in a state of "open rebellion" and ordered General Gage to send his troops against the "rude rabble." On April 18, Gage sent 700 soldiers to capture the colonial leaders and military supplies at Concord. Paul Revere and two other Bostonians warned the Patriots and at dawn on April 19, the Minutemen met the British first at Lexington and then at Concord. British casualties: 73 dead, 174 wounded, 26 missing. It was 14 more months before the colonies formally broke with Britain.
- May - Second Continental Congress was called to prepare colonies for war. It authorized printing American paper money, created the Continental Army led by Washington (which was voted in "by bare majorities" according to John Adams), and wrote the Olive Branch Petition that offered to end armed resistance if the King would withdraw troops and revoke the Intolerable Acts. In July, the King rejected the Petition and persuaded Parliament to pass the Prohibition Act outlawing British trade with the colonies and instructing the Royal Navy to seize American ships engaged in any form of trade.
- 1776 - Thomas Paine published Common Sense in January. The pamphlet which reached hundreds of thousands of homes, stated in clear language that Americans should reject the "monarchial tyranny" of the King and the "aristocratical tyranny" of Parliament and create independent republican states.
- April - Congress opened American trade to all nations, except Britain, and instructed colonies to create official state governments.
- June - The staunch Loyalists and anti-independence moderates withdrew from the Continental Congress, leaving the Patriots completely in charge and unchallenged. Congress then appointed a committee, led by Jefferson, which drafted the Declaration of Independence, stating that the King had "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having a direct object of the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states." "Injuries" included dissolving colonial government, controlling judges by limiting trial by jury, sending armies of occupation, cutting off colonial trade with other parts of the world, and taxing without colonial consent. The Declaration was adopted July 4th and war began!
- 1778 - The Patriots' prospects for victory improved. The U.S. formed a military alliance with France, the most powerful nation on the European continent, and with Spain. The alliance brought the Americans money, troops, and supplies, as well as changed the nature of the conflict from a colonial rebellion to an international war. Thereafter, British forces not only confronted troops in North America, but also had to defend the West Indies and India against France and Gibralter against Spain.
- 1781 - The British Army surrendered at Yorktown in October - but it took diplomats two more years to end the war. Peace talks began in 1782, but the French stalled for time, hoping for a naval victory or territorial conquest.
- 1783, The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3. It formally recognized the independence of the U.S. Britain retained Canada north and west of the Great Lakes. All land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River was ceded to the new American republic - and the British promised to withdraw its garrisons throughout the territory.
- The only French territorial gain was
the Caribbean island of Tobago,
- The Spanish reacquired Florida from
Britain.
- Both treaties were vague in defining
the boundaries between the United States and its British and Spanish
neighbors. Thus, territorial disputes would mar relations for the next 30
years