As the vast land of the Americas began to become domesticated, it was inevitable that there would be a conflict between the mother countries. This conflict occurred between the British and the French as they were both looking for frontier expansion. As these two countries started to encounter each other more in the American frontier, it led to conflicts that created tension between the British and the French. These tensions started to escalate until France and Britain thought it was necessary to go to war.
The French and Indian War or the Seven Years War was a deadly world war between two major European powers. The French and Indian War was the main event that sparked the American Revolution. During the 18th century the main world powers of Britain, France, Netherlands, Portugal, etc. felt it was necessary to expand the country’s sphere of influence. By doing so these nations would colonize land to bring power to the mother country. This idea of expansion was brought to the new world of America. Britain’s land consisted of the 13 colonies east of the Appalachian Mountains while the French had stakes in Canada and the Ohio River Valley. With no definitive boundary, both nations were looking to expand, leading to conflict between the French and British, “The French and Indian War resulted from ongoing frontier tensions in North America as both French and British imperial officials and colonists sought to extend each country’s sphere of influence in frontier regions”. The land around the Ohio River, known as the Ohio River Valley, was the main area of dispute; both countries believed they had the right to the land.
France, their people, and their native allies were pitted against Great Britain, the Anglo-American colonists, and the Iroquois Confederacy in the ultimate battle for territory, power, and prestige. The French were the first to construct a number of forts in this region surrounding the Ohio River, in hopes of establishing some type of claim that Britain couldn’t touch. British colonial forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, attempted to expel the French in 1754, but were outnumbered and defeated by the French. When news of Washington’s failure reached British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, he called for a quick undeclared retaliatory strike. However, his adversaries in the Cabinet outmaneuvered him by making the plans public, thus alerting the French Government and escalating a distant frontier skirmish into a full-scale war.
The war did not begin well for the British. The British Government sent General Edward Braddock to the colonies as commander in chief of British North American forces, but he alienated potential Indian allies and colonial leaders failed to cooperate with him. On July 13, 1755, Braddock died after being mortally wounded in an ambush on a failed expedition to capture Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh. The war in North America settled into a stalemate for the next several years, while in Europe the French scored an important naval victory and captured the British possession of Minorca in the Mediterranean in 1756.
However, after 1757 the war began to turn in favor of Great Britain. British forces defeated French forces in India, and in 1759 British armies invaded and conquered Canada. One of the most notable victories for the British was at Fort Niagara in 1759. First occupied by the French in 1725, Fort Niagara had been improved during the course of the war and was situated on a rocky point at the mouth of the Niagara River. Guarded by a 900-ft. battlement that was anchored by three bastions, the fort was garrisoned by slightly less than 500 French regulars, militia, and Native Americans under the command of Captain Pierre Pouchot. The British began to carefully surround the fort after a month of travel and trenches, and although talks of a treaty were circling, the tensions had proved to be too high. Upon hearing that the French were marching out 1,200-1,300 men, colonial forces doubles, Indian tribes flanked the outsides, and the British came head-on with doubled fire.
After nearly a week of fighting, France suffered enough losses to finally surrender. In the Battle of Fort Niagara, the British sustained 239 killed and wounded while the French incurred 109 killed and wounded as well as 377 captured. The victory at Fort Niagara was the first of several for British forces in North America in 1759 and was the beginning of a feeling of nationalism and pride amongst colonists. In addition, 1759 saw several more British victories as well as the slowing down of the war. British victories continued in all theaters in the Annus Mirabilis of 1759: the British captured Ticonderoga, James Wolfe defeated Montcalm at Quebec in a battle that claimed the lives of both commanders, and a British victory at Fort Niagara cut off the French frontier forts to the west and south. The victory was made complete in 1760; the British did suffer a defeat outside Quebec City in the Battle of Sainte-Foy, but they prevented the arrival of French relief ships in the naval Battle of the Restigouche while armies marched on Montreal from three sides. Governor Vaudreuil in Montreal negotiated a capitulation with General Amherst in September 1760. Amherst granted his requests that any French residents who chose to remain in the colony would be given freedom to continue worshiping in their Roman Catholic tradition, to own property, and to remain undisturbed in their homes.
The British provided medical treatment for the sick and wounded French soldiers, and French regular troops were returned to France aboard British ships with an agreement that they were not to serve again in the present war. This fading out of fighting in North America did not mean that the war was over, as fighting between the two countries continued on back in Europe for several months. That being said, the war in North America officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, and war in the European theater was settled by the Treaty of Hubertusburg on February 15, 1763. The British offered France the choice of surrendering either its continental North American possessions east of the Mississippi or the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had been occupied by the British. France chose to cede the former but was able to negotiate the retention of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along with fishing rights in the area. They viewed the economic value of the Caribbean islands’ sugar cane to be greater and easier to defend than the furs from the continent.
French philosopher Voltaire referred to Canada disparagingly “as nothing more than a few acres of snow”. The British, however, were happy to take New France, as defence of their North American colonies would no longer be an issue; they also had ample places from which to obtain sugar. Spain traded Florida to Britain in order to regain Cuba, but they also gained Louisiana from France, including New Orleans, in compensation for their losses. Great Britain and Spain also agreed that navigation on the Mississippi River was to be open to vessels of all nations. While this might have seemed like the perfect end to a major war, the consequences following its conclusion would eventually prove detrimental to all involved. The war changed economic, political, governmental, and social relations among the three European powers, their colonies, and the people who inhabited those territories. Following the treaty, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 on October 7, 1763 which outlined the division and administration of the newly conquered territory, and it continues to govern relations to some extent between the government of Canada and the First Nations. Included in its provisions was the reservation of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to its Indian population, a demarcation that was only a temporary impediment to a rising tide of westward-bound settlers.
For some of the Indian tribes, the elimination of French power in America meant the disappearance of a strong ally, although other tribes were not so affected. The Ohio Country was now more available to colonial settlement, due to the construction of military roads by Braddock and Forbes. The Spanish takeover of the Louisiana territory was not completed until 1769, and it had modest repercussions. And while they placed little apparent value in there American possessions, the military defeat and the financial burden of the war weakened the French monarchy and contributed to the advent of the French Revolution in 1789. Perhaps the most consequential backlash from the war came from the British monarchy’s attempt to get themselves out of the debt collected over the course it. The Seven Years’ War nearly doubled Great Britain’s national debt. The Crown sought sources of revenue to pay it off and attempted to impose new taxes on its colonies. These attempts were met with increasingly stiff resistance until troops were called in to enforce the Crown’s authority.
The colonists were feeling revived and accomplished after the war, and felt as though it may have been a small nudge towards becoming an independent nation. Before the war, the 13 colonies had found nearly no middle ground and simply were coexisting with mutual animosity. The war showed them that is was possible for them to unite against a common enemy. They felt as though they were on good terms with their mother country until they found out that they were expected to pay for the war themselves. Parliament passed a series of taxes that they expected the colonists to pay: Stamp Act, Townshend Act, and the Tea Act. The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first layer of taxes inflicted on the colonists and entailed that any official documents to be required to have an embossed revenue stamp. It was also required with the purchase of magazines, playing cards, and newspapers. To add fuel to the fire, the taxes had to be paid in valid British currency instead of colonial paper money. The Stamp Act was very unpopular among colonists. A majority considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent—consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant. Their slogan was ‘No taxation without representation.’ Colonial assemblies sent petitions and protests, and the Stamp Act Congress held in New York City was the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure when it petitioned Parliament and the King. Following the Stamp Act was the Townshend Act of 1767, which placed a higher indirect tax on glass, lead, paper, and paints. Because these products had to be imported, the ports at which they arrived were expected to pay for the influx, which meant that the colonists had to pay more for them.
Colonial indignation over the Townshend Acts was predominantly driven by John Dickinson’s anonymous publication of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, as well as the Massachusetts Circular Letter. As a result of widespread protest and non-importation of British goods in colonial ports, Parliament began to partially repeal the Townshend duties. The colonists couldn’t believe that Britain would continue to tax them even after they had expressed their discontent. Their frustration was near the peak, which meant that they were banning together against the force that was supposed to assist them. The final turning point towards the American Revolution was the application of the Tea Act on the colonists. A tax on tea was simply an addition of insult to injury; they had bent over backwards to help aid the British in the war against the French, and were now being unfairly punished. Retaining the Townshend Acts’ taxation on imported tea, the Tea Act subsequently led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773, in which Bostonians destroyed a shipment of taxed tea. Parliament responded with severe punishments in the Intolerable Acts in 1774.Tensions held by the colonists against their mother country reached the boiling point after that, and militias began to prepare for an uprising.
The colonists had done everything in their power to remain subordinate with Britain, but the taste of independence they received from the French and Indian war was too sweet to ignore. Ultimately, the tensions between Britain and France escalated into a war neither of them were financially prepared for. The prospect of additional territory and power proved to be too tempting for either side to think rationally. They both found themselves in tremendous debt after the fighting concluded, and were at a loss as to how to come out on top of it. The taxation against the colonists appeared to Parliament as the perfect solution, but only further angered the colonies. The French and Indian War, as well as the events that immediately followed, urged the colonists to unite together in their own fight, except this time it would be for their independence.
References
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