French and Indian War
The French and Indian War, 1754 to 1763, was a conflict in North America between Great Britain and France, along with their respective Native American allies. Historians generally consider it part of the global conflict 1756 to 1763 Seven Years' War, although in the United States it is often viewed as a distinct conflict unassociated with any larger European war.
Although Britain and France were officially at peace following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, tensions over trade continued in North America, which culminated in a dispute over the Forks of the Ohio, and the related French Fort Duquesne which controlled them. In May 1754, this led to the Battle of Jumonville Glen, when Virginia militia led by George Washington ambushed a French patrol.
In 1755, Edward Braddock, the new Commander-in-Chief, North America, planned a four-way attack on the French. None succeeded, while the Braddock Expedition ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, with Braddock himself dying of his wounds a few days later. From 1755 to 1757, further British operations in Pennsylvania and New York failed, but were offset by the British capture of Fort Beauséjour on the border between British Nova Scotia and French Acadia. Over the next nine years, French settlers were expelled and replaced by those from New England.
The Seven Years' War began in 1756, and a number of disastrous campaigns in 1757, including the Louisbourg Expedition and Siege of Fort William Henry led to the fall of the British government. The new Prime Minister, William Pitt, significantly increased British military resources in the colonies when France was struggling to support their limited forces in New France, preferring to concentrate their forces in Europe. Between 1758 and 1760, the British launched a campaign to capture French Canada, taking Quebec in 1759, then Montreal the following year. This largely ended fighting in North America.
In accordance with the Treaty of Paris, France ceded its Canadian possessions to Britain, along with its claim to territories east of the Mississippi River. France also gave Spain French Louisiana west of the Mississippi in compensation for their loss of Spanish Florida to Britain. The French presence in North America was reduced to the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, confirming Britain's position as the dominant colonial power.
Nomenclature
In British America, wars were often named after the sitting British monarch, such as King William's War or Queen Anne's War. There had already been a King George's War in the 1740s during the reign of King George II, so British colonists named this conflict after their opponents, and it became known as the French and Indian War. This continues as the standard name for the war in the United States, although indigenous peoples fought on both sides of the conflict. It also led into the Seven Years' War overseas, a much larger conflict between France and Great Britain that did not involve the American colonies; some historians make a connection between the French and Indian War and the Seven Years' War overseas, but most residents of the United States consider them as two separate conflicts—only one of which involved the American colonies, and American historians generally use the traditional name. Less frequently used names for the war include the Fourth Intercolonial War and the Great War for the Empire.In Europe, the French and Indian War is conflated into the Seven Years' War and not given a separate name. "Seven Years" refers to events in Europe, from the official declaration of war in 1756—two years after the French and Indian War had started—to the signing of the peace treaty in 1763. The French and Indian War in America, by contrast, was largely concluded in six years from the Battle of Jumonville Glen in 1754 to the capture of Montreal in 1760. Canadians conflate both the European and American conflicts into the Seven Years' War. French Canadians also use the term "War of Conquest", since it is the war in which New France was conquered by the British and became part of the British Empire. In Quebec, this term was promoted by popular historians Jacques Lacoursière and Denis Vaugeois, who borrowed from the ideas of Maurice Séguin in considering this war as a dramatic tipping point of French Canadian identity and nationhood.
Background
At this time, North America east of the Mississippi River was largely claimed by either Great Britain or France. Large areas had no colonial settlements. The French population numbered about 75,000 and was heavily concentrated along the St. Lawrence River valley, with some also in Acadia, including Île Royale. Fewer lived in New Orleans; Biloxi, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; and small settlements in the Illinois Country, hugging the east side of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. French fur traders and trappers traveled throughout the St. Lawrence and Mississippi watersheds, did business with local Indian tribes, and often married Indian women. Traders married daughters of chiefs, creating high-ranking unions.British settlers outnumbered the French 20 to 1 with a population of about 1.5 million ranged along the Atlantic coast of the continent from Nova Scotia and the Colony of Newfoundland in the north to the Province of Georgia in the south. Many of the older colonies' land claims extended arbitrarily far to the west, as the extent of the continent was unknown at the time when their provincial charters were granted. Their population centers were along the coast, but the settlements were growing into the interior. The British captured Nova Scotia from France in 1713, which still had a significant French-speaking population. Britain also claimed Rupert's Land where the Hudson's Bay Company traded for furs with local Indian tribes.
File:5NationsExpansion.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Iroquois expansion, 1711. By the mid-18th century, the Iroquois Confederacy had expanded from Upstate New York to the Ohio Country.
Between the French and British colonists, large areas were dominated by Indian tribes. To the north, the Mi'kmaq and the Abenakis were engaged in Father Le Loutre's War and still held sway in parts of Nova Scotia, Acadia, and the eastern portions of the province of Canada, as well as much of Maine. The Iroquois Confederation dominated much of upstate New York and the Ohio Country, although Ohio also included Algonquian-speaking populations of Delaware and Shawnee, as well as Iroquoian-speaking Mingos. These tribes were formally under Iroquois rule and were limited by them in their authority to make agreements. The Iroquois Confederation initially held a stance of neutrality to ensure continued trade with both French and British. Though maintaining this stance proved difficult as the Iroquois Confederation tribes sided and supported French or British causes depending on which side provided the most beneficial trade.
The Southeast interior was dominated by Siouan-speaking Catawbas, Muskogee-speaking Creeks and Choctaw, and the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee tribes. When war broke out, the French colonists used their trading connections to recruit fighters from tribes in western portions of the Great Lakes region, which was not directly subject to the conflict between the French and British; these included the Hurons, Mississaugas, Ojibwas, Winnebagos, and Potawatomi.
The British colonists were supported in the war by the Iroquois Six Nations and also by the Cherokees, until differences sparked the Anglo-Cherokee War in 1758. In 1758, the Province of Pennsylvania successfully negotiated the Treaty of Easton in which a number of tribes in the Ohio Country promised neutrality in exchange for land concessions and other considerations. Most of the other northern tribes sided with the French, their primary trading partner and supplier of arms. The Creeks and Cherokees were subject to diplomatic efforts by both the French and British to gain either their support or neutrality in the conflict.
At this time, Spain claimed only the province of Florida in eastern America. It controlled Cuba and other territories in the West Indies that became military objectives in the Seven Years' War. Florida's European population was a few hundred, concentrated in St. Augustine.
There were no French regular army troops stationed in America at the onset of war. New France was defended by about 3,000 troupes de la marine, companies of colonial regulars. The colonial government recruited militia support when needed. The British had few troops. Most of the British colonies mustered local militia companies to deal with Indian threats, generally ill trained and available only for short periods, but they did not have any standing forces. Virginia, by contrast, had a large frontier with several companies of British regulars.
When hostilities began, the British colonial governments preferred operating independently of one another and of the government in London. This situation complicated negotiations with Indian tribes, whose territories often encompassed land claimed by multiple colonies. As the war progressed, the leaders of the British Army establishment tried to impose constraints and demands on the colonial administrations.
Céloron's expedition
New France's Governor-General Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière was concerned about the incursion and expanding influence in the Ohio Country of British colonial traders such as George Croghan. In June 1747, he ordered Pierre-Joseph Céloron to lead a military expedition through the area. Its objectives were:- to reaffirm to New France's Indian allies that their trading arrangements with colonists were exclusive to those authorized by New France
- to confirm Indian assistance in asserting and maintaining the French claim to the territories which French explorers had claimed
- to discourage any alliances between Britain and local Indian tribes
- to impress the Indians with a French show of force against British colonial settler incursion, unauthorized trading expeditions, and general trespass against French claims
Céloron's expedition arrived at Logstown where the Indians in the area informed him that they owned the Ohio Country and that they would trade with the British colonists regardless of the French. He continued south until his expedition reached the confluence of the Ohio and the Miami rivers, which lay just south of the village of Pickawillany, the home of the Miami chief known as "Old Briton". Céloron threatened Old Briton with severe consequences if he continued to trade with British colonists, but Old Briton ignored the warning. Céloron returned disappointedly to Montreal in November 1749.
Céloron wrote an extensively detailed report. "All I can say is that the Natives of these localities are very badly disposed towards the French," he wrote, "and are entirely devoted to the English. I don't know in what way they could be brought back." Even before his return to Montreal, reports on the situation in the Ohio Country were making their way to London and Paris, each side proposing that action be taken. Massachusetts governor William Shirley was particularly forceful, stating that British colonists would not be safe as long as the French were present.