The French and Indian War, also called the Seven Years' War in America, was an undeclared (1754-56) war fought between Great Britain and the Kingdom of France from 1754 to 1763 over the Ohio Valley and French Canada.
Background[]
French troops in the Ohio Valley
Conflicting colonial ambitions of age-old enemies, Britain and France, led repeatedly to warfare in North America, with Native Americans becoming involved on both sides.
Sparring Partners[]
In 1682 the French laid claim to a vast swathe of territory from the
British and Mohawk scouts
ir sparsely populated colonies in Canada, down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, as "New France". The claim was a direct challenge to the territorial ambitions of the British colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, which had no defined western borders. Whenever Britain and France went to war, which was often, fighting flared in North America. The British colonists, with the Iroquois Indians, attacked New France in King William's War of 1689 to 1697. This was followed by Queen Anne's War from 1702 to 1713, through which Britain gained Newfoundland and part of Acadia.
Continued Fighting[]
From 1744 King George's War - the North American offshoot of the War of the Austrian Succession - brought heavy fighting between British colonial militias, the French colonial Troupes de la Marine, and their respective Indian lalies. Colonial militia and the Royal Navy captured the French fortress of Louisbourg, but this was returned to France by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which restored pre-war borders.
War[]
Generally seen as a North American offshoot of the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763, the French and Indian War in fact started before the related European conflict. Britain and France were still at peace when the first significant clashes occurred in 1754. The area under dispute was the Ohio Valley. For France, this was an essential link between its colony in Canada and the lands it claimed along the Mississippi. The British government, however, was busy awarding land grants in the region to the Ohio Company, founded by its Virginian colonists.
In 1752 Marquis Duquesne was made governor of New France with specific instructions to assert control of the Ohio territory. He set about establishing a string of forts southward from the Great Lakes, winning the support of many of the traditionally pro-British Algonquin Indians. Virginia governor and leading participant in the Ohio Company, Robert Dinwiddie was determined to resist the French advance. In spring 1754 he sent a body of Virginia militia, under Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington, to face the French at Fort Duquesne, on the site of present-day Pittsburgh.
A skirmish between Washington's force and a French patrol on May 28 left a French officer dead. Washington's men were too weak to resist a French and Indian force sent to punish them. On July 4, Washington surrendered at Fort Necessity. He was released only after signing a document admitting to the "murder" of the French officer.
The British Falter[]
A burned-out settler cabin in upstate New York, 1757
The Virginians appealed to the British government for support, and received it in the form of two regiments of troops under Major General Edward Braddock. With Washington as his aide-de-camp, Braddock marched 2,000 men to attack Fort Duquesne. On July 9, 1755, they were ambushed by a predominantly Indian force under French leadership at the Monongahela River. About 500 were killed, including Braddock. After the disaster the French were in the ascendant. The British had successes, taking Nova Scotia and holding the Hudson Valley. But when the situation in Europe brought Britain and France to a declaration of war in May 1756, it was the French who were in a position to take the offensive in North America. General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm was sent to take command in Quebec. He captured and destroyed Fort Oswego, a key British outpost on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, in August 1756, and a year later forced the British to surrender at Fort William Henry on Lake George. The fall of Fort William Henry became notorious because of the behavior of Montcalm's Indian allies, who tortured and massacred hundreds of British men following their surrender.
The balance of power shifts[]
By 1757 the shape of war was changing. Now engaged in a general war with France, Britain began to devote more substantial military resources to the North American conflict. The British Royal Navy's command of the Atlantic Ocean mdae it difficult for France to reinforce its troops in Canada, so the British enjoyed a growing numerical advaantage. As they began to score victories, the Indians tended to switch sides, further shifting the balance against the French. While the struggle for the Ohio territory continued, the war increasingly became a British campaign of conquest directed at Canada.
An outstanding general, Montcalm ensured that his opponents enjoyed no easy successes. In summer 1758 Generalroops under t James Abercrombie led a British army of more than 15,000 men - a huge force by the standards of this conflict - in an advance through New York state to the Canadian border at Fort Ticonderoga (also known as Fort Carillon). With less than 4,000 men under him, Montcalm prepared field fortifications that Abercrombie disastrously attempted to take by frontal assault. The British suffered 2,000 casualties and were obliged to withdraw. In the same month of July 1758, however, the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, commanding the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was taken by British troops under General Jeffery Amherst, brought from Halifax, Nova Svotia, by sea.
The British take Canada[]
The following year, the Louisbourg fortress provided the base for a thrust into the heart of Canada. While other British and colonial forces captured Fort Ticonderoga and Niagara from the French, a British fleet carried 8,000 troops under the command of General James Wolfe up the St. Lawrence River to attack Quebec. The city was ably defended by Montcalm. An initial British landing was repulsed and a bombardment of the city from the opposite riverbank had little effect. Feeling unable to maintain a lengthy siege, Wolfe adopted a risky plan that required a night landing upriver from Quebec, and the scaling of the cliffs of the Heights of Abraham. This was achieved on September 12, forcing Montcalm to give battle on the Plains of Abraham, a plateau outside the city walls, the following day. The British were victorious in a brief but savage encounter in which both commanders lost their lives. The French made one last effort to retake Quebec in spring 1760, but their attacks were held off. Their position became increasingly untenable. Vastly outnumbered, the French surrendered Canada to the British at Montreal in September 1760.
The European war between Britain and France continued until 1763, but the contest in North America was over at last. The peace agreement of 1763 confirmed the British in possession of Canada. The Spanish ceded Florida in the British and, in return, took Louisiana from the French, leaving France with no substantial territory in North America.
Aftermath[]
The aftermath of the war was far more painful for the Indians than for the French and Canadians, and it set Britain on the path to conflict with its North American colonies.
Civil Disquiet[]
By the Quebec Act of 1774, Britain allowed its new Canadian subjects the free practice of the Catholic faith and the use of French civil law, reconciling many of them to British rule. The Indian tribes found that the treaties agreed by the British during the war to win their support were not respected after the war ended. An Indian uprising known as Pontiac's Rebellion flared in 1763, but this petered out after a few years of massacre and counter-massacre.
Unpopular Policy[]
The British government tried to prevent trouble by banning the westward expansion of its colonies into Indian territory. This limitation, like the tolerance of Canadian Catholics, was deeply unpopular in the British colonies. British attempts to make colonists pay the cost of their defense through various duties led directly to the American Revolution and Britain's loss of its colonies south of Canada.