The French and Indian War [7 Years War]

[Aepsilons]

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).

Lake Erie, Pennsylvania

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. The most important group, the Mingoes, were part of the Iroquois Confederation, which in turn was allied with Great Britain. British officials claimed the Iroquois Confederacy had granted a Native American named Tanaghrisson the title of ‘Half-King’ over the Mingoes and other Native communities under Iroquois rule. However, many Indians in the upper Ohio Valley were concerned about British colonists encroaching upon their land, and did not acknowledge either British or Iroquois authority. Although many of them also feared French power and bore grudges against the French from previous wars, the Indians of the upper Ohio valley believed a French alliance to be the lesser of two evils. 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.

Fort Duquesne

Further south, George Washington, accompanied by Tanaghrisson, surprised an encampment of French soldiers in southwestern Pennsylvania on May 24, 1754. A brief fight ensued, and afterwards the wounded French leader, ensign Joseph de Jumonville, attempted to explain through translators that the French expedition was on a peaceful mission to warn British forces about their incursions into French-claimed territory. Although accounts of the incident differ, it seems that Tanaghrisson, who bore an intense personal hatred of the French stemming from earlier war experiences, intervened in the negotiations and killed Jumonville. Expecting further French incursions, Washington then hastily constructed a fort and prepared to defend his forces, but a combined French and Indian force forced his surrender on July 3.

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 fractious 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.

 

[Aepsilons]

French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War, 1754–63
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war’s expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American revolution.

Map from the French and Indian War

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. In North America, the war pitted France, French colonists, and their Native allies against Great Britain, the Anglo-American colonists and the Iroquois Confederacy, which controlled most of upstate New York and parts of northern Pennsylvania. In 1753, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Great Britain controlled the 13 colonies up to the Appalachian Mountains, but beyond lay New France, a very large, sparsely settled colony that stretched from Louisiana through the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes to Canada. (See Incidents Leading up to the French and Indian War and Albany Plan)

The border between French and British possessions was not well defined, and one disputed territory was the upper Ohio River valley. The French had constructed a number of forts in this region in an attempt to strengthen their claim on the territory. 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.

General Edward Braddock

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 himself died while on a failed expedition to capture Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh, after being mortally wounded in an ambush. 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.

Facing defeat in North America and a tenuous position in Europe, the French Government attempted to engage the British in peace negotiations, but British minister William Pitt (the elder), Secretary for Southern Affairs, sought not only the French cession of Canada but also commercial concessions that the French Government found unacceptable. After these negotiations failed, Spanish King Charles III offered to come to the aid of his cousin, French King Louis XV, and their representatives signed an alliance known as the Family Compact on August 15, 1761. The terms of the agreement stated that Spain would declare war on Great Britain if the war did not end before May 1, 1762. Originally intended to pressure the British into a peace agreement, the Family Compact ultimately reinvigorated the French will to continue the war, and caused the British Government to declare war on Spain on January 4, 1762 after bitter infighting between King George III’s ministers.

Despite facing such a formidable alliance, British naval strength and Spanish ineffectiveness led to British success. British forces seized French Caribbean islands, Spanish Cuba, and the Philippines. Fighting in Europe ended after a failed Spanish invasion of British ally Portugal. By 1763, French and Spanish diplomats began to seek peace. In the resulting Treaty of Paris (1763), Great Britain secured significant territorial gains, including all French territory east of the Mississippi river, as well as Spanish Florida, although the treaty returned Cuba to Spain.

Unfortunately for the British, the fruits of victory brought seeds of future trouble with Great Britain’s American colonies. The war had been enormously expensive, and the British government’s attempts to impose taxes on colonists to help cover these expenses resulted in increasing colonial resentment of British attempts to expand imperial authority in the colonies. British attempts to limit western expansion by colonists and inadvertent provocation of a major Indian war further angered the British subjects living in the American colonies. These disputes would ultimately spur colonial rebellion that eventually developed into a full-scale war for independence.

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.

Cartoon originally appearing in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754

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.

Uniform of the British Army, 1750-1781

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