1756-1763
(The Seven Years War)
The French and Indian War is the
name given to the American theater
of a massive conflict involving
Austria, England, France, Great
Britain, Prussia, and Sweden called
the Seven Years War. The conflict
was played out in Europe, India, and
North America. In Europe, Sweden,
Austria, and France were allied to
crush the rising power of Frederick
the Great, King of Prussia, while the
English and the French battled for
colonial domination in North
America, the Caribbean, and in India.
The English ultimately came to
dominate the colonial outposts in
North America and India, but at a
cost so staggering that the resulting
debt nearly destroyed the English
government.
Incidents leading up to the French and Indian War, 1753-54
The French and Indian War, the North American phase of the larger Seven Years' War, began after a
series of incidents in the upper Ohio River valley, which the French and British governments both
claimed as their territory. Military forces assembled by both imperial powers built and attempted to
capture each others' forts in the region. These skirmishes, and particularly an expedition led by
George Washington, ultimately led to the escalation of a wider, full-scale war between Great Britain
and France.
Wanting to limit British influence along their frontier, the French built a string of forts from Lake Erie
towards the forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh). Since the colony of Virginia also claimed this
region, Virginian lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie sent Major George Washington with a small
expedition to order the removal of the French forts in late 1753.
Washington arrived at Fort Le Boeuf, about 15 miles inland from present-day Erie, Pennsylvania, and
delivered his message. The commander of the fort, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, received
Washington and his men courteously, but denied the validity of English claims to the contested
region. Washington then returned hastily to Virginia, arriving in early 1754, and delivered the French
reply to Governor Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie and the legislature agreed 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. Dinwiddie sent Captain William Trent of the Virginia militia to construct a fort at
the strategically important forks of the Ohio River and also to convince the local Indians to ally
against the French. Dinwiddie also promoted Washington to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and
ordered an expedition to compel the French to surrender their forts.
While French and British officials maneuvered military forces about,
they also attempted to curry favor with American Indians living in the
region. However, many Indians in the upper Ohio Valley were
concerned about British colonists encroaching upon their land, and
did not acknowledge British authority. Although many of them also
feared French power and bore grudges against the French from
previous wars (e.g. the Iroquois Nation), the Indians of the upper
Ohio Valley believed a French alliance to be the lesser of two evils
(e.g. Algonquin & Huron). Consequently, they were amenable to
supplying French forces with additional men and intelligence about
British movements.
Aided by such reports, the French soon learned of the British fort that
William Trent and his small group of men were constructing, and
French forces moved swiftly to compel its surrender on April 17,
1754. The French destroyed the unfinished fort, building in its place the much more formidable Fort
Duquesne (plans to the right).
Further south, Washington set up camp in an open field known as the Great Meadows. Great
Meadows is located about 40 miles from the French fort – Fort Duquesne. Washington learned from
the camp of the Native American chief Half-King, who told the English that a small group of French
soldiers might be planning to attack them. Washington decided to attack them first. With a group of
40 men he marched all night. In the morning, George Washington, accompanied by Iroquois men,
surprised an encampment of French soldiers in southwestern Pennsylvania on May 24, 1754. A brief
fight ensued, wherein the French leader, Joseph de Jumonville was killed. Controversy surrounds the
events that took place at Jumonville Glen.
Expecting further French incursions, Washington ordered a round fort built in the meadow which he
called Fort Necessity. Later, a force of 600 French and 100 Native Americans attacked his crude fort.
In an all-day rain, Washington’s troops
were fired upon from higher ground.
They were outnumbered and many of
his men were sick or wounded.
Washington surrendered the hastily
made fortification on July 3 to the
French. The French allowed Washington
and his men to return to Virginia without
their weapons. The fort was ripped apart
and burned.
Once he heard of Washington's defeat,
Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie immediately passed on the news to his superiors in London and called
for aid from neighboring colonies. Only North Carolina responded, but refused to
make any expenditures outside its own borders. However, British Prime Minister
Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, reacted swiftly to the news, and planned
a quick strike against the French forts before they could be reinforced. King George
II approved Newcastle's plan to send General Edward Braddock to quickly seize
French frontier forts.
Other political leaders wanted a bigger war, and so they publicly announced Newcastle's plans and
changed the original plan so that Braddock would command more forces and order the restless North
American colonies to provide additional support against the French. Once the plans had been publicly
announced, the French government moved quickly to dispatch reinforcements to North America and
further pursued negotiations to diplomatically isolate the British government by winning over its
traditional European allies. Once military forces were under way, war was inevitable.
Braddock Road
In 1755, the English sent General Braddock with 3,000 Redcoats and colonial militia to capture the
French Fort Duquesne. Washington traveled with Braddock’s army. About eight miles from the fort,
while crossing the Monongahela River, Braddock’s army was attacked. Although he greatly
outnumbered the French and Native Americans three to one, Braddock’s army was badly trounced.
Braddock was killed and buried in the middle of the rough road Washington’s men had built earlier.
Two-thirds of his soldiers were dead or wounded.
Albany Plan of Union, 1754
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to place the British North American colonies under a more
centralized government. The plan was adopted on July 10, 1754, by representatives from seven of
the British North American colonies. Although never carried out, it was the first important plan to
conceive of the colonies as a collective whole united under one government.
Representatives of the colonial governments adopted the Albany Plan during a larger meeting known
as the Albany Congress. The British government in London had ordered the colonial governments to
meet in 1754, initially because of a breakdown in negotiations between the colony of New York and
the Mohawk nation, part of the Iroquois Confederation. More generally, imperial officials wanted to
sign a treaty with the Iroquois that would articulate a clear colonial-Indian relations policy for all the
colonies to follow. The colonial governments of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire all sent commissioners to the Congress. Although
the treaty with the Iroquois was the main purpose of the Congress, the delegates also met to discuss
intercolonial cooperation on other matters. With the French and Indian War looming, the need for
cooperation was urgent, especially for colonies likely to come under attack or invasion.
Prior to the Albany Congress, a number of intellectuals and
government officials had formulated and published several
tentative plans for centralizing the colonial governments of
North America. Imperial officials saw the advantages of
bringing the colonies under closer authority and supervision,
while colonists saw the need to organize and defend common
interests. One figure of emerging prominence among this group
was Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin. Earlier, Franklin had written to friends and colleagues
proposing a plan of voluntary union for the colonies. Upon hearing of the Albany Congress, his
newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, published the political cartoon 'Join or Die,' which illustrated
the importance of union by comparing the colonies to pieces of a snake's body. The Pennsylvania
government appointed Franklin as a commissioner to the Congress, and on his way, Franklin wrote to
several New York commissioners outlining 'short hints towards a scheme for uniting the Northern
Colonies' by means of an act of the British Parliament.
The Albany Congress began on June 19, and the commissioners voted unanimously to discuss the
possibility of union on June 24. The union committee submitted a draft of the plan on June 28, and
commissioners debated aspects of it until they adopted a final version on July 10.
Although only seven colonies sent commissioners, the plan proposed the union of all the British
colonies except for Georgia and Delaware. The colonial governments were to select members of a
'Grand Council,' while the British Government would appoint a 'president General.' Together, these
two branches of the unified government would regulate colonial-Indian relations and also resolve
territorial disputes between the colonies. Acknowledging the tendency of royal colonial governors to
override colonial legislatures and pursue unpopular policies, the Albany Plan gave the Grand Council
greater relative authority. The plan also allowed the new government to levy taxes for its own
support.
Despite the support of many colonial leaders, the plan, as formulated at Albany, did not become a
reality. Colonial governments, sensing that it would curb their own authority and territorial rights,
either rejected the plan or chose not to act on it at all. The British Government had already
dispatched General Edward Braddock as military commander in chief along with two commissioners
to handle Indian relations, and believed that directives from London would suffice in the
management of colonial affairs.
The Albany Plan was not conceived out of a desire to secure independence from Great Britain. Many
colonial commissioners actually wished to increase imperial authority in the colonies. Its framers saw
it instead as a means to reform colonial-imperial relations, while recognizing that the colonies
collectively shared certain common interests. However, the colonial governments' own fears of losing
power, territory, and commerce at one another's expense, and at the expense of the British
Parliament, ensured the Albany Plan's failure.
Despite the failure of the Albany Plan, it served as a possible model for future attempts at union: it
attempted to establish the division between the executive and legislative branches of government,
while establishing a common governmental authority to deal with external relations. More
importantly, it conceived of the colonies of mainland North America as a collective unit, separate from
the mother country but also from the other British colonies in the West Indies and elsewhere.
The War
After a year and a half of undeclared war, the French and the English formally declared war in May
1756. For the first three years of the war, the outnumbered French dominated the battlefield,
soundly defeating the English in battles at Fort Oswego and Ticonderoga. Perhaps the most notorious
battle of the war was the French victory at Fort William Henry, which ended in a massacre of British
soldiers by Indians allied with the French. The battle and ensuing massacre was captured for
history—though not accurately—by James Fenimore Cooper in his classic The Last of the Mohicans.
The tide turned for the British in 1758, as they began to make peace with important Indian allies and,
under the direction of Lord William Pitt began adapting their war strategies to fit the territory and
landscape of the American frontier. The British had a further stroke of good fortune when the French
were abandoned by many of their Indian allies. Exhausted by years of battle, outnumbered and
outgunned by the British, the French collapsed during the years 1758-59, climaxing with a massive
defeat at Quebec in September 1759, which was followed by the capture of the capital of New
France, Montreal in 1760.
Treaty of Paris, 1763
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War between Great
Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its
territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British
colonies there.
During the war, British forces had scored important overseas victories against France: not only had
the British conquered French Canada, they also won victories in India, and captured French island
colonies in the Caribbean. In March of 1762, French King Louis XV issued a formal call for peace
talks.
The British Government was also interested in ending the war. The Seven Years' War had been
enormously expensive, and the Government had had to finance the war with debt. Creditors were
beginning to doubt Great Britain's ability to pay back the loans it had floated on financial markets. In
addition, British King George II had died in 1760, and his successor
George III was more amenable to ending the war.
Initial attempts at negotiating a peace settlement failed. Facing this
dilemma, French negotiator Choiseul proposed a solution that
redistributed American territory between France, Spain and Great
Britain. Under Choiseul's plan, Britain would gain all French territory
east of the Mississippi, while Spain would retain Cuba in exchange for
handing Florida over to Great Britain. French territories west of the
Mississippi would become Spanish, along with the port of New Orleans.
In return for these cessions, along with territory in India, Africa, and the
Mediterranean island of Minorca, France would regain the Caribbean
islands that British forces had captured during the war. The British
Government also promised to allow French Canadians to freely practice Catholicism
and provided
Before
Treaty for
French fishing rights off Newfoundland.
Choiseul preferred to keep the small Caribbean islands of Martinique,
Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia rather than hold on to the vast territory
stretching from Louisiana to Canada. This decision was motivated by the
fact that the islands' sugar industry was enormously profitable. In
contrast, Canada had been a drain on the French treasury. The loss of
Canada, while lamentable to French officials, made sense from a
mercantile perspective.
The diplomats completed their negotiations and signed the preliminary Treaty of Paris on November
3, 1762. Spanish and French negotiators also signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso at the same time,
which confirmed the cession of French Louisiana to Spain.
Although British King George III and his ministers were in favor of the treaty, it was unpopular with
the British public. However, the treaty contained enough concessions to war hawks that the British
Parliament ratified the Treaty of Paris by a majority of 319 to 64, and the treaty went into effect on
February 10, 1763.
For Anglo-American colonists, the treaty was a theoretical success. By confirming the conquest of
Canada and extending British possessions to the Mississippi, the colonists no longer had to worry
about the threat of a French invasion. For the American Indians in what had been frontier territory,
the treaty proved disastrous' they could no longer pursue what had been a largely effective strategy
of playing the French and British against each other to extract the most favorable terms of alliance
and preserve their lands against encroachment by Anglo-American colonists.
Despite what seemed like a success, the Treaty of Paris ultimately encouraged dissension between
Anglo-American colonists and the British Government because their interests in North America no
longer coincided. The British Government no longer wanted to maintain an expensive military
presence, and its attempts to manage a post-treaty frontier policy that would balance colonists' and
Indians' interests would prove ineffective and even counterproductive. Coupled with differences
between the British government and colonists on how to levy taxes to pay for debts on wartime
expenses, the Treaty of Paris ultimately set the colonists on the path towards seeking independence,
even as it seemed to make the British Empire stronger than ever.