The French and Indian War!

1. The French and Indian War! The first global war. An original Power Point presentation by David Knapp

2. French and Indian War is the name given by historians to the colonial wars in the late 17th and the 18th cent. They were really campaigns in the worldwide struggle for empire. At the time the fighting in North America was viewed in Europe as only an unimportant aspect of the struggle. This was just part of a big fight all over the world that lasted from 1689 to 1763. Part of a bigger fight!

3. Other parts of this fight: • King William's War • The first of the wars, King William's War (1689–97), approximately corresponds to the European War of the Grand Alliance (1688–97). It was marked in America principally by frontier attacks on the British colonies and by the taking of Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, N.S.) by British colonial forces under Sir William Phips in 1690. (The French recaptured it the next year.) The British were unable to take Quebec, and the French commander, the comte de Frontenac, attacked the British coast. The peace that followed the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 was short-lived, and shortly the colonies were plunged into war again. • Queen Anne's War • Queen Anne's War (1702–13) corresponds to the War of the Spanish Succession. The frontier was again the scene of many bloody battles; the French and Native American raid (1704) on Deerfield, Mass., was especially notable. Another British attempt to take Quebec, this time by naval attack, failed. Port Royal, and with it Acadia, fell (1710) to an expedition under Francis Nicholson and was confirmed to the British in the Peace of Utrecht, as were Newfoundland and the fur-trading posts about Hudson Bay. • King George's War • Hostilities lapsed for years until trouble between England and Spain led to the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear, which merged into the War of the Austrian Succession. The American phase, King George's War, did not begin until 1744, when the French made an unsuccessful assault on Port Royal. The next year, a Massachusetts-planned expedition under William Pepperrell with a British fleet under Sir Peter Warren took Louisburg. Border warfare was severe but not conclusive. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) returned Louisburg to France, but the hostile feelings that had been aroused did not die. • The French and Indian War • Rivalry for the West, particularly for the valley of the upper Ohio, prepared the way for another war. In 1748 a group of Virginians interested in Western lands formed the Ohio Company, and at the same time the French were investigating possibilities of occupying the upper Ohio region. The French were first to act, moving S from Canada and founding two forts. Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, sent an emissary, young George Washington, to protest. • This was just part of a big fight all over the world that lasted from 1689 to 1763.

4. For more than a generation, the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, an alliance of several Native American nations from the Iroquoian language family, dominated a middle ground between the French and British colonies in North America. The Iroquois, originally centered in western New York, had gained control of a vast region in the interior of the continent by alliances with other Native American peoples and had successfully excluded the European nations from this territory. The Iroquois were able to maintain their power against that of both the British and the French, but this three-way balance of power began to break down during the 1740s. British traders penetrated deep into the Ohio country and established direct relations with tribal groups who previously had been controlled by the Iroquois or had traded only with the French. This was the last time that a group of Native Americans had as much power as the Europeans – and the Group was the Iroquois Nation The end of Native power!

5. The Ohio company, an association of land speculators based in Virginia, encouraged the British excursions. The company had received a grant of 500,000 acres from the British king and wanted to move traders and settlers into this interior region. In 1753 Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia, who was also a leading member of the Ohio Company, dispatched 21-year-old George Washington on his first military mission. Washington carried a message to the French, warning them to leave the region. In the following year Governor Dinwiddie ordered the construction of a fort at the forks of the Ohio (where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet), later the site of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The conflict started over land in the Ohio River valley. The conflict started over land!

6. The contest between the Ohio Company and the French was now joined and hinged on possession of the spot where the Monongahela and the Allegheny join to form the Ohio (the site of Pittsburgh). The English started a fort there but were expelled by the French, who built Fort Duquesne in 1754. Dinwiddie, after attempting to get aid from the other colonies, sent out an expedition under Washington. He defeated a small force of French and Native Americans but had to withdraw and, building Fort Necessity, held his ground until forced to surrender (July, 1754). The British colonies, alarmed by French activities at their back door, attempted to correlate their activities in the Albany Congress. War had thus broken out before fighting began in Europe in the Seven Years War. George Washington Starts the War! George Washington Starts the War!

7. 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. The British lose the first few fights. The War starts badly for the English

8. The Iroquois were the main Native American group that helped the English Most others thought that the French would be a better ally. Most Native Americans helped the French.

9. In 1758 the tide began to turn and the British started to take the upper hand. They launched a three part attack on the French. In July, Brigadier General John Forbes assembled a large force to move against Fort Duquesne. Despite an initial setback, Forbes had great success. He held a council with the Indian tribes, establishing peace between them and the British. When the French realized they would no longer have Indian allies, they quickly abandoned Fort Duquesne. Which the English soon rebuilt and renamed Fort Pitt. In early 1759 General James Wolfe and a fleet of 20 ships under Admiral Charles Saunders. The British lay siege to Quebec from June 27th until September 18th, when the French surrendered. This was the turning point of the war. After 1758 the English began having military success. Later the English began to Win!

10. Warfare ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and the peace terms reflected British military successes. Britain gained control over half the North American continent, including French Canada, all French territorial claims east of the Mississippi River, and Spanish Florida. In return, Britain gave Cuba and the Philippines back to Spain, and France compensated its Spanish ally for the loss of Florida by giving it title to all of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. In 1763 the English win control of most of North America. The War ends in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris