3.2: The Seven Years’ War

3.2: Explain the causes and effects of the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War).

Welcome to the first topic of Unit 3! In this set of notes, we will be talking about the French and Indian War, which was a war that occurred during the bigger Seven Years’ War.

Before the name of the war misleads you, it is important to establish who was fighting who in this war. In this war, the French and the Indians were allied together and fighting the British. So what were the causes of this war?

The French and Indian War

The French and Indian War was actually a smaller conflict within the much larger global conflict between the British and French called the Seven Years’ War, where European countries were competing for domination. The French and Indian War was the part of this war that occurred on American soil. This was mainly due to British colonists encroaching on French land in the Ohio River Valley. In 1753, George Washington, who had recently been appointed as Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginia militia, was sent by the Virginia governor to warn the French of trespassing on British holdings in the valley. Six months later, the French responded by taking control of a British fort in Pennsylvania and building Fort Duquesne. Later in 1754, Washington and some native allies launched an attack on the fort and took it back. The French later launched an invasion in return and soon after, these territorial disputes led to a war breaking out in North America.

The Albany Congress

During the Albany Congress, Benjamin Franklin put forward his Albany Plan of Union. He suggested that the colonies should unite and form a Grand Council of representatives who would decide on issues regarding frontier defense, trade, and westward expansion. Although this idea wouldn’t work out due to the high taxes it would require, it set the groundwork for the Revolutionary Congress and ideas of uniting against Britain in the future.

Although the specific events of the war aren’t important to our study of United States history, there were many practices done by the British that angered the colonists. For example, they increased the practice of forcibly impressing colonists to serve in the Royal Navy. They also stationed troops in colonial homes, forcing families to provide free food, care, and lodging for the soldiers. These practices were highly unpopular among the colonies.

The Peace of Paris and Consequences

After the tide of the war shifted in favor of the British in the 1760s, the war ended in 1763 with the signing of the Peace of Paris. This treaty had massive consequences on the territories and borders of the Americas. For example:

  • Spain ceded Florida to the British

  • The French were removed from the North American continent

  • All previously French lands west of the Mississippi River were given to the Spanish

  • All previously French lands east of the Mississippi River were given to the British (namely, the Ohio River Valley)

This fourth point had the most significant impact on the British, as it meant that the colonists could now freely move into the Ohio River Valley without French intervention. This led to many conflicts with the native groups already living there. For example, Pontiac, the leader of the Ottawa tribe, carried out attacks against the colonists in Detroit and other military forts in the region. In response, the British Parliament established the Proclamation Line of 1763 to ban colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. However, the colonists ignored this proclamation and continued to migrate westward because they believed they deserved to claim this land because they had fought a war for it.

This war also doubled the British national debt, causing the British Parliament to raise taxes to pay them off. This led to increased anger and resentment in the colonies toward the British. These taxes, along with the impressment and quartering from earlier, led to immense dissatisfaction among the colonists.

Because of these conflicts, British colonies started meeting to try to figure out how to defend against the French and their native allies. This led to the Albany Congress or Albany Convention, a meeting in 1754 in which representatives from the various British colonies gathered to discuss frontier defense, trade, and westward expansion. They also invited the Iroquois Confederacy to attend with the hope of forming an alliance but they mostly ignored the natives in their discussions. The natives, despite the various invasions and colonization, were willing to ally themselves with different European powers because they hoped that allying with them would protect them from future conflict and would distract the Europeans. The idea was that if the Europeans kept fighting each other, none of them would be able to gain total control of North America and the natives would remain free.