French and Indian War

From 1754 to 1763 Britain and France, each with Indigenous allies, fought for control of eastern North America. The struggle, which most historians treat as the American theatre of the global Seven Years' War, began with a skirmish in the Ohio valley and ended with the conquest of New France. The peace left Britain master of the continent east of the Mississippi, but the debts and grievances it created helped set off the American Revolution little more than a decade later.

In the early 1750s some 1.5 million British colonists lived along the Atlantic seaboard, outnumbering the French about twenty to one. New France, with perhaps 75,000 settlers, was spread thinly along the St Lawrence, around the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi, but its fur traders had close ties with many Indigenous nations. Between the two lay lands controlled by Native peoples, among them the Iroquois Confederacy, which tried to stay neutral and trade with both sides. The peace of 1748 left the boundaries undecided, and the fertile Ohio Country became the flashpoint. Virginia investors sought to settle it, while the French built a chain of forts to hold it.

In late 1753 Virginia's governor sent a 21-year-old militia officer, George Washington, to order the French out; they refused. The next spring French troops drove off a small Virginian party building a fort at the Forks of the Ohio and finished it themselves as Fort Duquesne. On 28 May 1754 Washington's men, with Mingo allies led by Tanaghrisson, ambushed a French detachment at Jumonville Glen, killing its commander. The French struck back and forced Washington to surrender at Fort Necessity in July. These clashes are generally seen as the opening of the war, though Britain and France did not formally declare war until 1756.

London sent General Edward Braddock with regular troops in 1755, but his column was ambushed near Fort Duquesne on 9 July; Braddock was mortally wounded and around 1,000 of his men killed or wounded. The only British success that year was the capture of Fort Beauséjour in Acadia, which was followed by the forced deportation of thousands of French-speaking Acadians. Under the Marquis de Montcalm, the French took Oswego in 1756 and Fort William Henry in 1757, where some of their Native allies attacked the surrendered garrison as it marched away.

The setbacks helped bring William Pitt to the direction of the war. He poured men and money into America while France, short of supplies and blockaded by the Royal Navy, gave priority to Europe. In 1758 the British took the fortress of Louisbourg and the French abandoned Fort Duquesne, though Montcalm won a striking defensive victory at Carillon (Ticonderoga). In September 1759 James Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec, and both commanders were killed; the city surrendered. Montreal capitulated in September 1760, completing the conquest of New France.

The war ended formally with the Treaty of Paris in February 1763. France gave Canada and its lands east of the Mississippi to Britain, keeping only the small islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and its valuable Caribbean sugar islands. Spain gave Florida to Britain and received French Louisiana west of the Mississippi.

Native nations lost a counterweight to British expansion, and resistance flared in Pontiac's War from 1763. The Royal Proclamation of that year tried to reserve lands west of the Appalachians for Indigenous peoples. To pay a national debt that the war had nearly doubled, Britain began taxing its colonies, provoking resistance that led to the American Revolution. France joined that war as an American ally in 1778. The defeat of 1763 and its financial burden also undermined the French monarchy and helped bring about the French Revolution.

Our 1715 map shows the rival British and French claims in North America, and our 1783 map shows the continent after New France had passed to the British Empire.