French and Indian War

Fought from 1754 to 1763, the French and Indian War—known to some Canadians as the War of Conquest—was the North American component of a global conflict known as the Seven Years’ War and involved members of French, Canadian, British, Anglo-American, and Native American societies. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1763, recasting North America's geopolitical scene and impacting the continent's cultural milieu.

The Seven Years’ War reflected the growing imperial rivalry between Protestant Britain and Catholic France. In an ongoing series of conflicts, British nationalists critiqued French culture as inferior and corrupting and called on Britain to protect the safety and prosperity of overseas Britons. British and French commercial ambitions overlapped in the Ohio Country, where diverse interests competed. Tribes such as the Shawnee, Delaware, and Seneca had migrated to the area to escape Iroquois control, trading with New France and Pennsylvania while warding off speculators and squatters from Virginia. French forts constructed in 1753 and 1754 to link Canada and Louisiana and to supply Indian allies seemed to threaten Britain's coastal colonies. The Iroquois Confederacy also sought control of the region, hoping to reassert its dominance over former dependents and influence relations between European powers.

France and Britain mobilized in 1754 after a small Virginia force under George Washington, sent to evict the French from Ohio, instead surrendered to combined French and Indian forces. Britain's first official expedition fared even worse, General Edward Braddock's army suffering defeat by a smaller force utilizing Indian tactics and intelligence. Early French success relied on such alliances, Indian warriors attacking British back-country settlements, while a 1756 French offensive captured several British forts.