History
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was a conflict between the British and French, with both sides enlisting Native American allies, fought in North America from 1754 to 1763. It was part of the larger Seven Years' War and resulted in the British gaining control of Canada and Florida from the French, but also contributed to tensions that eventually led to the American Revolutionary War.
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11 Key excerpts on "French and Indian War"
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- College Publishing House(Publisher)
Pitt significantly increased British military resources in the colonies, and between 1758 and 1760 the British military successfully penetrated the heartland of New France, with Montreal finally falling in September 1760. The outcome was one of the most significant developments in a century of Anglo-French conflict. France ceded French Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to its ally Spain in compensation for Spain's loss to Britain of Florida. 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 the eastern half of North America. Origin of the name The conflict is known by several names. In British America, wars were often named after the sitting British monarch, such as King William's War or Queen Anne's War. Because there had already been a King George's War in the 1740s, British colonists named the second war in King George's reign after their opponents, and thus it became known as the French and Indian War . This traditional name remains standard in the United States, although it obscures the fact that American Indians fought on both sides of the conflict. American historians generally use the traditional name or the European title (the Seven Years' War). Other, less frequently used names for the war include the Fourth Intercolonial War and the Great War for the Empire . ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Map showing forts at the start of the war. In Europe, the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War usually has no special name, and so the entire worldwide conflict is known as the Seven Years' War . The Seven Years refers to events in Europe, from the official declaration of war in 1756 to the signing of the peace treaty in 1763.
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- 2014(Publication Date)
- University Publications(Publisher)
The fighting in North America is known in the United States as the French and Indian War and in Quebec as the War of Conquest. War in Europe began in 1756 with the French siege of British Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, and Frederick the Great of Prussia's invasion of Saxony on the continent which also upset the firmly established Pragmatic Sanction put in place by Charles VI of Austria. Despite being the main theatre of war, the European conflict resulted in a bloody stalemate which did little to change the pre-war status quo, while its consequences in Asia and the Americas were wider ranging and longer lasting. Concessions made in the 1763 Treaty of Paris ended France's position as a major colonial power in the Americas (where it lost all claim to land in North America east of the Mississippi River along with what is now Canada, in addition to some West Indian islands). Prussia confirmed its position in the ranks of the great European powers, retaining the formerly Austrian province of Silesia. Great Britain strengthened its territories in India and North America, confirming its status as the dominant colonial power. Poland remained neutral throughout the war, despite the fact that it was tied in a personal union with Saxony and the fate of Silesia was important to both. This signifies the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a political power. Nomenclature In Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, the name Seven Years' War is used to describe the North American conflict as well as the European and Asian conflicts, as the name Nine Years' War was already taken. This conflict lasted seven years from 1756 to 1763. In the United States, however, the North American portion of the war, which started in 1754, is popularly known as the French and Indian War.
eBook - PDF- Alfred A. Cave(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW OF THE French and Indian War On a backwoods trail in western Pennsylvania in the summer of 1758, a Delaware Indian the colonists called Daniel cursed both England and France. "Damn you!" he exclaimed to a British emissary, "why do not you and the French fight on the sea? You come here only to cheat the Indians and take their land from them." 1 As a survivor of a people driven from the eastern seaboard by land-hungry whites and forced to resettle in west- ern villages hundreds of miles from their homeland, Daniels distrust and his anger are understandable. His fear that the war would lead to further loss of Indian land proved to be all too well founded. But Daniel did not comprehend the scope of the conflict Americans would later name the French and Indian War. Known in European history as the Seven Years' War, it was fought not only on land but also on the high seas, and not only in North America, but in the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia as well. It was one of a long series of Anglo-French wars beginning in 1689 and not ending until 1815, wars fought not only for dominance in Europe but also for control of vast, intercontinental empires. King William's War 1689-97 The first of those conflicts, the Nine Years' War (1688-97), was known in America as King William's War. In 1688, a number of European powers, including Austria, Spain, the United Provinces (Holland), Savoy, and several German states, alarmed by the expansionist ambitions of Louis XIV, had gone to war against France. England joined this anti-French al- liance a year later. Although military action on this side of the Atlantic was limited to the frontier between French Canada and the English colonies, THE French and Indian War this war in its brutality foreshadowed the greater conflicts to come.
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- 2014(Publication Date)
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________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 3 French and Indian War French and Indian War Part of the Seven Years' War Map showing forts at the start of the war. Date 1754–1763 Location North America Result Treaty of Paris Territorial changes France cedes Canada to Great Britain, retaining Saint Pierre et Miquelon, and transfers Lo uisiana to Spain; Spain cedes Florida to Great Britain Belligerents France New France • Abenaki • Algonquin • Caughnawaga Mohawk • Lenape • Mi'kmaq Great Britain British America Iroquois Confederacy • Onondaga • Oneida • Seneca • Tuscarora ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ • Ojibwa • Ottawa • Shawnee • Wyandot • Mohawk • Cayuga • Catawba • Cherokee (before 1758) Commanders and leaders Louis-Joseph de Montcalm † Marquis de Vaudreuil François-Marie de Lignery † Chevalier de Lévis (P.O.W.) Joseph de Jumonville † Jeffrey Amherst Edward Braddock † James Wolfe † James Abercrombie Edward Boscawen George Washington Strength 10,000 regulars (troupes de la terre and troupes de la marine, peak strength, 1757) 7,900 militia 2,200 natives (1759) 42,000 regulars and militia (peak strength, 1758) The French and Indian War is the common U.S. name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756 the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war. In Canada, it is usually just referred to as the Seven Years' War , although French speakers in Quebec often call it La guerre de la Conquête (The War of Conquest). In Europe, there is no specific name for the North American part of the war. The name refers to the two main enemies of the British colonists: the royal French forces and the various Native American forces allied with them.
eBook - PDFThe Encyclopedia of North American Colonial Conflicts to 1775
A Political, Social, and Military History [3 volumes]
- Spencer C. Tucker, James R. Arnold, Roberta Wiener, Spencer C. Tucker, James R. Arnold, Roberta Wiener(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
New York: Knopf, 2000. Corbett, Julian S. England in the Seven Years’ War. London: Greenhill Books, 1992. Dull, Jonathan. The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Fowler, William, Jr. Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754–1763. Walker, NY: Walker, 2004. Frégault, Guy. Canada: The War of the Conquest. Translated by Margaret M. Cameron. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Jennings, Francis. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies and Tribes in the Seven Years’ War in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Leach, Douglas E. Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America 1607–1763. New York: Macmillan, 1973. French and Indian War, Naval Campaigns Start Date: 1754 End Date: 1763 Alongside the major land campaigns of the French and Indian War (1754–1763; known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763), Britain and France engaged in major battles at sea. The war saw fleet actions, raids, privateering, blockade operations, and overseas expeditions, all of which contributed to the war’s outcome. In early 1755, shortly after Major General Edward Braddock departed to take his command in North America, the French ministry prepared 18 ships with 78 companies of reinforcements for New France (Canada). On April 23, the British responded by sending out 11 ships of the line and a frigate, all commanded by Rear Admiral Edward Boscawen. Then, on May 8, the Admiralty dispatched another 6 ships of the line and a frigate under Vice Admiral Francis Holbourne. These British ships were intended either to divert or to destroy any effort by the French to reinforce their North American possessions.
eBook - PDF- G. Mortimer(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
162 Early Modern Military History, 1450–1815 While these interpretations have much to commend them, the Seven Years War should best be viewed not as the end of a historical period or as the pre- lude to another more important event. Rather the war is best seen as the first part of a prolonged armed struggle for control of eastern North American. The Seven Years War did not end this struggle. On the contrary it marked the beginning of a particularly violent and intense phase of the conflict which had been waged intermittently since the seventeenth century. In the six decades between 1754 and 1815 eastern North America was the scene of inces- sant armed conflict. This conflict involved all of the major players who had participated in the Seven Years War – the British, the French, the Spanish, the Native Americans and the provincials, both Canadian and American. At issue was control over the continent and its resources. The apparent defeat of France in 1763 did not mark a definitive peace but rather a brief truce. The American War of Independence The third type of armed colonial conflict during the early modern period was the war of independence. Probably the most famous such conflict was the American War of Independence (1775–83). Historians have suggested that the war represents a departure from past practice. According to this view the American War of Independence was one of the first of what came to be known in the twentieth century as colonial wars of liberation. It was a conflict in which the combatants (at least in its North American aspects) were motivated by ideol- ogy and a desire for national self-determination. In this respect the American Revolutionary War anticipated the experiences of the wars of the French Revolution.
eBook - PDF- Clarissa Confer(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
These three-quarter-million acres near the Lehigh and Delaware rivers were in no way the province of the Iroquois League, yet the chiefs forced the Delaware to acquiesce to the Penn’s fraudulent claims. The Delaware reluctantly removed to the Susquehanna River region, but their treatment at the hands of the Iroquois remained a serious point of contention. In similar style the Iroquois earned the enmity of other groups like the Shawnee. By the 1750s many of the displaced, disgruntled native groups had reestablished themselves in the Ohio country purposely beyond the expected reach of the Iroquois League. As the Iroquois League gained unprecedented power, it also faced growing resistance. French and Indian War The period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries was one of great change for all peoples. Representatives of both European empires sought to expand and strengthen their claims in the interior Northeast. All the conflicting forces—native rivalries, European rivalries, colonial aspirations—came together on the western frontier in the mid-1750s. The ensuing struggle for power in this region of the Ohio River Valley has been called the War that Made America. It has long had other names: the French and Indian War, the Seven Years War, the Great War for Empire. All of those reflect a Eurocentric view. For native peoples it would be one of their last chances to challenge Europeans for dominance in the eastern United States This was a war to exert influence, a war to maintain homelands, a war for survival. The desirable land so hotly contested between France and Great Britain was of course the homeland of many thousands of indigenous people who would not give it up without a struggle. Social Organization The daily lives of native peoples in the Ohio country had been in turmoil for some time. So many of them had not been original resi- dents of the area but instead had relocated to the region.
eBook - PDFWar and American Popular Culture
A Historical Encyclopedia
- M. Paul Holsinger(Author)
- 1999(Publication Date)
- Greenwood(Publisher)
Indeed, during the remaining eight years of King William's War in North America, the two national powers took turns engaging in bloody raids that brought terror to the many settlers living on both sides of the border. The English and the French were at war again from 1701 to 1713 as a part of the so-called Queen Anne's War (an offshoot of the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe), and then again from 1740 to 1748 during King George's War (when the two enemies fought around the world as a part of the European War of the Austrian Succession). Throughout North America, supporters of the two nations vied for control of the land and sea. After the French built what was supposedly the world's most impregnable fortress, at Louisbourg on the coast of Cape Breton Island, the New Englanders attacked and captured it in 1745. Even earlier in that same war, British colonial troops under the command of the founder of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, also launched an attack on France's ally, Bourbon Spain, in Florida. Its failure impelled the Spanish to attempt to capture Savannah and the small colony in Georgia in 1743, but Ogle- thorpe, though outmanned by his enemy, was able to force a stalemate in battles off St. Simons Island. Of all the colonial wars, certainly the two most famous were the bloody, but limited, King Philip's War of 1675-1676 and the far greater French and Indian War, from 1754 to 1763. Philip, the son of Massasoit (the Wampanoag chieftain who befriended the first Pilgrim settlers), tried for years to unite the many Indian tribes throughout New England against the white settlers. When the war that bears his name erupted in January 1675, the numerically stronger New Englan- ders had an opportunity to destroy the last vestiges of Native American oppo- sition to their control.
eBook - PDFThe First Global War
Britain, France, and the Fate of North America, 1756-1775
- William Nester(Author)
- 2000(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
Greene, Jack P. ‘‘The Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution: The Causal Relationship Reconsidered.’’ In Peter Marshall and Glyn Williams, eds., The British Atlantic Empire Before the American Revolution. London: Frank Cass, 1980. GrinnelMilne, Duncan. Man Is He? The Character and Achievement of James Wolfe. London: Bodley Head, 1963. Groulx, Lionel Adolphe. Lendemain de Conquete. Montreal: Universite de Montreal, 1920. Gwyn, Julian. ‘‘British Government Spending and the North American Colonies, 1740–1775.’’ In Peter Marshall and Glyn Williams, eds., The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution. London: Frank Cass, 1980. Haan, Richard L. ‘‘Covenant and Consensus: Iroquois and English, 1676–1760.’’ In Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987, 41–57. Hadlock, Wendell Stanwood. ‘‘War Among the Northeastern Woodland Indians.’’ American Anthropologist 59 (April–June 1947), 204–21. Hagerty, Gilbert. Massacre at Fort Bull: The De Lery Expedition against the Oneida Carry, 1756. Providence, R.I.: Mowbray Company Publishers, 1971. Hamer, P. M. ‘‘AngloFrench Rivalry in the Cherokee Country, 1754–1757.’’ North Carolina Historical Review 2 (July 1925), 303–22. Hamer, P. M. ‘‘Fort Loudoun in the Cherokee War, 1758–1761.’’ North Carolina Historical Review 2 (October 1925), 442–48. Page 282 Hamer, Philip M., ed. A Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961. Hamilton, Edward. The French and Indian Wars: The Story of Battles and Forts in the Wilderness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1962. Hamilton, Edward. Fort Ticonderoga: Key to a Continent. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. Hamilton, Edward P. The French Army in America. Ottawa: Museum Restoration Service, 1967.
eBook - PDFDecades of Reconstruction
Postwar Societies, State-Building, and International Relations from the Seven Years' War to the Cold War
- Ute Planert, James Retallack(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
In 1761, a representative of the Chippewa explained to a British trader: Your king has never sent us any presents, nor entered into any treaty with us, therefore he and we are still at war; and until he does these things, we must consider that we have no other father, nor friend among the white man, than the king of France. 22 Many Native Americans accepted neither the results nor the European chronology of the war. Much of the warfare had taken place in the areas of settlement of the Native Americans. In Iroquoia, villages had been burnt down and harvests destroyed. People suffered severe hardship. As soon as British military leaders realized that they were likely to win the war, they felt that they were no longer dependent on their Native American allies. Consequently, they stopped providing them with arms, munitions, and food. This added to the economic hardship in many Native American communities. Poverty and the uncertainty about the future fueled radical ideologies like Nativism. Many British go-betweens still joined Native American condoling councils and participated in indigenous practices and rituals symbolizing postwar negotiation. However, most British officials and military com- manders did not find this necessary any more after they had, from their point of view, won the war. The claim of the speaker of the Chippewa that the war was not yet over thus referred to both the economic consequences of the new British policy and to the fact that the British ignored the cultural practices of the Native Americans that signified the end of a war and the beginning of a process of reconciliation. In the negotiations in Paris, Native American participants were not consulted. The results of the treaty were regarded as an existential threat by many of them. Therefore, the northern societies took up arms in a joint effort in 1763 and began the so-called Pontiac’s War.
eBook - PDFBritain and the Seventy Years War, 1744-1815
Enlightenment, Revolution and Empire
- Anthony Page(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
While Yorktown effectively ended the conflict in North America, the global war continued. In West Africa the British captured Goree and all of the Dutch bases on the Gold Coast, but called off an attempt on the Dutch Cape Colony when it was reinforced by the French Navy. In India the war see-sawed. While the British East India Company was already at war with the Maratha Confederacy, reinforced by several regular army regiments it managed to capture all of the remaining French factories by 1779. This provoked Haidar Ali of Mysore to attack British interests in the Carnatic, commencing the Second Mysore War (1780 – 84), and by late 1780 he threatened Madras. The British might have been expelled from southern India if the French had provided decisive assistance. The East India Company successfully counterattacked Haidar Ali and also occupied most of the Dutch bases in India and Ceylon. The French intervened in early 1782 and captured Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon before the war ended. The Caribbean became the main theatre of war after the French entered the conflict. 78 In 1778 less than 10% of British ships of the line were in the West Indies, but by 1780 the figure was over 40%. 79 Troops withdrawn from North America were used to capture St Lucia at the end of 1778, but in the following year the French Navy occupied St Vincent and Grenada. On entering the war, Spain attacked British bases on the Mississippi, while the British made some gains in modern day Honduras and Nicaragua. After declaring war on the Dutch in December 1780, the British took St Eustatius and their other islands. These were in turn captured by the French, who went on the offensive in mid 1781 and also BRITAIN AND THE SEVENTY YEARS WAR, 1744–1815 38 took Tobago, St Kitts and Montserrat. A French invasion of Jamaica was narrowly avoided when Admiral Rodney returned with reinforcements and defeated the French fleet at the Battle of the Saintes in April 1782.
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