The Clash of Empires: a Brief Background of the French & Indian War

The Clash of Empires: A Brief Background of the French & Indian War

England and France fought three wars against each other – King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and King George’s War, primarily in Europe during the 1600s and 1700s. As a result, the colonists played relatively minor roles. However, following the third, the French began to build forts in the rich lands of the Ohio Valley that they considered a vital link between New France (Canada) and Louisiana. Also, they wanted to protect their fur trapping and trading. At the same time, George II of England was granting large properties of land in the Ohio Valley to citizens in Virginia who saw the economic and financial potential of the area.

The French, alarmed by increased presence by the British, prepared to defend what they considered French territory. More forts were added along the Great Lakes. In 1752, the Marquis Duquesne was made governor-general of New France with instructions to remove the British from the Ohio Valley. In 1753, he sent troops to build forts in the part of the Ohio Valley that was claimed by the British Virginia colony.

When Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, learned the French had built more forts, he sent out a small party under the command of a young George Washington to deliver a letter of protest to French leaders, demanding that they leave the region. The mission was a failure, because the French refused to leave. However, as he passed through the region, Washington noticed a strategically-located site where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio River – one that would be an excellent spot for a fort. The British began to build a fort there, at what is now present-day Pittsburgh. They were interrupted by a larger French force which chased them off. The French ended up and completing the fort, naming it after Marquis Duquesne.

Governor Dinwiddie worried that France’s presence in the Ohio River Valley was a threat to the safety of the colonists and a barrier to westward expansion. To fight this threat, in 1754, he sent a second expedition to attack the fort named after Duquesne, again under the command of George Washington. On May 28, they advanced on the fort, ambushed a French scouting party, and took a number of captives. The colonial forces constructed Fort Necessity, a small and simple structure. On July 3, the French forces fought back and captured Washington’s entire force, but later released them. The French and Indian War had begun, even though there had been no formal declaration of war.

In North America the French and Indian War changed the future of the continent and impacted many cultures: English, American, French, Canadian, Huron, Algonquin, Iroquois, etc. Each side, French and British, found allies in Native Americans. The French usually got along with Native Americans because they did not threaten the Native American way of life. In fact, French traders had lived among the Indians for years and had married into their culture. They learned to respect native traditions and did not destroy the land where Native Americans hunted – because fur trade, not farming, was New France’s main source of income. They needed the Native Americans to hunt animals in order to keep them as trading partners. Many Algonquin-speaking tribes allied themselves with the French, including the Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwa, Menominee, Huron, Shawnee, and Delaware. These tribes are oftentimes known as the Algonquin nation. The British allied themselves with the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois nations: Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and later the Tuscarora, had formed a strong alliance in which each nation pledged to protect the others. This alliance made the Iroquois very powerful. It protected them from outside enemies but ensured them of internal peace. Once a year, each nation sent representatives to a council, where concerns were addressed and voted upon. The League’s constitution was written in symbols of unity on a beaded belt. The nations inhabited western New York, which included all the major trade routes of the region. The Iroquois had been enemies of the French since the French sided with their enemies, the Huron, in an earlier battle. In 1754, the British government asked the Iroquois to side with them. At first, the Iroquois refused. They pointed out that the British and French were fighting over Iroquois land, but when the French and British began to fight in their forests, the Iroquois were pulled in.

The British were able to get the aid of the Iroquois with the help of William Johnson, an English fur trader, who settled in the Mohawk Valley. The Mohawk called him Warraghiyagey (war-rag-ee-YAH- gay), which means “Doer of Great Things.” He was married twice to Mohawk women. Through his marriages, Johnson became so influential that he was made a British negotiator and commissioned “Colonel of the Six Nations.” Johnson called a meeting of the Iroquois Confederacy, where he promised the nations that their land would be protected. He tried very hard to honor that promise, but other British soldiers did not.

The Iroquois played a key role in helping Britain eventually win the war against France. Because of their knowledge of the land, they helped the British soldiers make strategic advances against the French. In 1758, the British captured Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt. This was an important victory for the British and helped to raise the confidence of the troops. The British were now able to focus on the French forts in Canada. The British took control of Fort Niagara, an important outpost for the French. From there, the British captured Quebec. After the British captured Quebec, the French were never able to recover. By 1760, the British controlled Montreal also. Once the British took Montreal, the fighting in North America was over. However, the Seven Years War continued to be fought in Europe and India, and the Treaty of Paris was not signed until 1763. When the treaty was signed, the British were given control over the area west of the 13 colonies to the Mississippi River, as well as Canada.

The war ended in 1763 with the total defeat of France, seemingly a profound triumph for the British and their Indian and American colonial allies. But the three groups of victors—British, Indian, American—emerged from the conflict with very different, and ultimately incompatible, understandings of what they had won. The British concluded the war with the belief that they had secured a glorious future; in vanquishing the French, they had conclusively established their claim to the North American continent, ensuring that their empire would unfold peacefully and profitably into the foreseeable future.

Britain's Indian allies, just as optimistically, believed that they had secured their political and territorial independence through their service in the war; by the war's end, they had won from the British recognition of their rights to control the interior of North America.

American colonists, meanwhile, concluded that by defeating the French and hostile French-aligned Indians, they had secured their western frontier.

These competing visions for the future of the continent laid the basis for future controversy; far from putting an end to conflict in North America, the triumphant conclusion of the French and Indian War produced, almost immediately, severe tensions in the Anglo-Indian-American alliance that led, eventually, to the American Revolution.