Leading to conflict

As the British empire in North America expanded, the chances for armed conflict with other European empires, including the French and Spanish, as well as previously uncontacted, at least by the British, Native American nations concomitantly increased. British land surveyors began exploring areas west of the Appalachian Mountains, particularly in the Ohio River Valley, further pressuring Native Americans, including the Abenaki, Huron, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Shawnee peoples, and cementing their alliances with the French against the British.

In late May 1754, then Virginia Regimental Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, inexperienced in both combat and command, led a small contingent of British soldiers and Native American allies in a skirmish against French forces in southwestern Pennsylvania. While Washington’s forces may have won this initial skirmish, they were quickly driven back towards Fort Duquesne in what is now Pittsburgh. By early July 1754, Washington had surrendered to the French and their Native American allies at the hastily constructed Fort Necessity. This military defeat humiliated not just the inexperienced Washington but also Great Britain. Resolving to avenge this defeat and to expand their colonial empire, the British government sent its largest military contingent yet to North America under the command of Major General Edward Braddock.

A call for colonial unity

In the wake of the news of Washington’s surrender at Fort Necessity, and amidst fears of massed French and Native American retaliation, Benjamin Franklin, then a prominent Philadelphia printer and a delegate from Pennsylvania, called for the British colonies to increase their cooperation and coordination of financial, military and political affairs to resist French and Native American invasions. The Albany Plan of Union was ultimately rejected by colonial assemblies for not granting sufficient autonomy to the colonies and was repudiated by the British Parliament for proposing too much autonomy for the colonies.

Image 015/Unite or Die

Early French victories, Later British triumphs

General Braddock’s forces sought to expel the French from Fort Duquesne but the French and their indigenous allies routed the British at the Battle of the Monongahela (River), killing Braddock in the process; George Washington led a successful British retreat, saving both significant numbers of British and colonial soldiers and rehabilitating his incipient military reputation. In the succeeding months, British and colonial forces suffered more military defeats in New York and Pennsylvania; at the same time, though, British forces expelled the French settler population in Acadia near Nova Scotia. These expelled Acadians would then settle in the Louisiana colony and later become known as Cajuns.

British military defeats, coupled with mounting financial costs, compelled British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder to forcefully direct the war effort. Pitt understood that the North American colonies were increasingly economically and strategically important to the British empire, particularly in the context of a burgeoning global conflict that Europeans still call the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). During the second half of the war, British victories mounted, including the expulsion of the remaining French settler population in Quebec, effectively ending French colonization of Canada.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

French and Spanish authorities realized that they needed to extricate their countries from the war before their financial, military, and territorial losses mounted further. Sensing significant opportunities for imperial prestige and territorial gains, and anxious to offset its own mounting costs, Britain demanded major concessions from France and Spain, including all of New France to the Mississippi River and in Canada and the Spanish colony of Florida; to compensate its Spanish ally, France ceded control of the Louisiana colony, including the port of New Orleans, to Spain.

Image 016/Map of North America 1763

Impact on British colonial relations

While Great Britain and its colonies emerged victorious from the French and Indian War, bitter resentments developed throughout the war, ultimately spilling over in the months and years following the end of the war. British political and financial authorities blamed reckless colonists for heedlessly provoking the French and their Native American allies and for dramatically increasing British debts to pay for the war. British military leaders frequently disparaged the colonial militias as ineffective and unwilling to fight. Many colonists considered the British government and its military commanders to be arrogant and ignorant. Thousands of colonists fought in the war, many of whom felt that the British had long ignored their warnings about French and indigenous threats to the colonies.

As the French and Indian War ended, a series of sustained indigenous revolts erupted in the Great Lakes region. Frequently called Pontiac’s Rebellion in honor of the Ottawa leader credited with urging previously warring indigenous nations to band together to resist further colonial encroachments, these revolts lasted for several years and prompted the British government to issue the Proclamation of 1763, an attempt to forestall further armed conflict with the indigenous peoples by preventing colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. During the campaign to suppress Pontiac’s Rebellion, British military commanders infamously distributed blankets from smallpox victims to indigenous societies, prompting accusations of biological warfare by the British against Native Americans.

Impacts on Native societies

While many accounts focus on British territorial gains at the expense of their European imperial rivals as well as deteriorating British colonial relations, the impacts of the French and Indian War on indigenous societies was profound and enduring. Many Native American nations were dispossessed of their lands, including nations that had fought alongside the British and the colonists during the war. With the removal of the French from much of what is now the midwestern United States, Native societies lost their primary European ally and faced an increasingly assertive British empire and its growing, land-hungry colonial population.