French and Indian War

The French and Indian war also known as the Seven Years war lasted from 1754 to 1763. The French and Indian war altered relations between the British and American colonies through political, economical and ideological aspects. The war was fought between the English and the American colonists in what was called the New World.The war that raged in North America through the late 1750's and early 1760's was but one part of the larger struggle between England and France for dominance in world trade and naval power. The British victory in that struggle, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War , ended the long struggle among the three principal powers in northeastern North America: The English, the French, and the Iroquois Confederacy, it confirmed England's commercial supremacy and cemented its control of the settled regions of North America.

The French and the English had coexisted relatively peacefully in North America for nearly a century. But by the 1750's, as both English and French settlements expanded, religious and commercial tensions began to produce new frictions and new conflicts. The French had explored and claimed a vast region of the continental interior, ranging from Louisiana in the South to the Great Lakes in the North. To secure their hold on these enourmous claims, they founded a whole string of communities, missions, trading posts, and fortresses. The region was enclosed by the four major cities: Montreal, Detroit, New Orleans, and Quebec, the center of the French empire in North America.

The English, meanwhile, were preparing for the great population leap accross the Appalachians into Ohio and beyond. In 1749 a group of Virginian businessmen secured a grant of 500,000 acres of Ohio valley land for settlement purpose...

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...y the French, now saw themselves stopped by the British in their surge west.

For the Indians of the Ohio Valley, the third major party in the French and Indian War, the British victory was disastrous. Those tribes that had allied themselves with the French had earned the enmity of the victorious English. The Iroquois Confederacy, which had allied themselves with Britain, fared only slightly better. The alliance quickly unraveled and the Confederacy began to crumble from within. The Iroquois continued to contest the English for control of the Ohio Valley for another fifty years; but they were never again in a position to deal with their white rivals on terms of military or political equality.

Sources

Brinkley, Alan, et al., eds. American History. A Survey. 8th ed. New York:McGraw-Hill, 1991.

McNaught, Kenneth. The Penquin History of Canada. London:Penquin Books, 1988.