- [Instructor] When we're talking about major wars
in colonial North America,
we tend to think about the American Revolution,
not its earlier iteration, the Seven Years' War,
and I think that's a shame
because the Seven Years' War was incredibly influential
not only on the American Revolution,
but on the complexion of the world.
Thanks to the Seven Years' War,
Canada became a British country,
not a French country.
The Acadians moved down to Louisiana
and became known as the Cajuns,
and most importantly, England became the world's
preeminent empire.
So if you've been following along this far,
you may have noticed two things.
One, that the people who named this war
seem to be very bad at math
because 1754 to 1763
is nine years, not seven,
and that this war seems to have two names,
both the Seven Years' War
and the French and Indian War,
which is a name you perhaps have heard before.
Well, lemme tackle those two oddities
in reverse order.
So not only does the Seven Years' War have two names,
it has a whole number of names.
It's called the Seven Years' War,
the French and Indian War,
the War of the Conquest,
the Pomeranian War,
the Third Silesian War,
the Third Carnatic War.
This is a war with a whole bunch of names,
and the reason that it has a whole bunch of names
is that it was fought in a whole bunch of places.
The Seven Years' War was really
the first global war,
and we're talking 150 years before World War One.
Aspects of the Seven Years' War,
as you can kinda see from this map,
were fought in Europe,
in South America, the coast of Africa,
in India, the Philippines,
and of course, in North America.
The many different names come from
the many different fronts of this war,
and I would say that French and Indian War
is actually the name for the North American front
of this war, or theater of this war.
So there are two reasons why I think
Seven Years' War is a better name
than French and Indian War.
One is that Seven Years' War gets at the idea
that it was not just happening in North America.
It was happening all over the world,
so it shows that it was a global war,
but I also think Seven Years' War is a better name
than French and Indian War
because I think French and Indian War
is kind of confusing because you would think
that it means that the principal parties
in this war were the English
versus the French and the Indians,
when in fact it was the English
and their Indian allies versus the French
and their Indian allies.
Native Americans fought on both sides of this conflict,
so rather than the English and Indian
versus French and Indian War,
let's go with the shorter Seven Years' War,
which brings us back to our awkward date range.
So the reason that it's called the Seven Years' War
is because the English didn't actually declare war
on the French until 1756.
So even though fighting started a little bit earlier
in North America,
the true range of dates, at least in legal terms,
is from 1756 to 1763,
or seven years.
It's a complicated name for a complicated war,
but really what it came down to
was England and France
duking it out over who was going to be
the supreme imperial power in the world,
and they were concerned about who was going to have
the most territory
in the world,
therefore, their concern over who was going
to control North America
and their competing claims here,
and also access to trade.
So who was going to be able to trade with North Americans?
Who was going to be able to trade with the lucrative
Indian subcontinent,
and who would be the leading power in Europe?
So let's dial in a little closer
on the North American theater of this war,
which will have the most effect
on the future United States.
Alright, so here is map of territorial claims
by European powers
in North America before the Seven Years' War.
Now you can see that there are some places
where they overlap,
which is really gonna be the heart of the problem
in this conflict.
So England, shown here in red,
I'm gonna outline it a bit,
was, as you know from your early American history,
here along the eastern seaboard
of what's today the United States,
and also up into Canada.
France claimed this interior region of Canada
and today of the territorial United States,
and Spain was in the mix here.
Remember Spain has still been a fairly influential
colonial power in Florida
and in contemporary Mexico,
and also down here in Cuba and South America.
Alright, so we've got three major European powers
in the mix here in North America,
England, France,
and Spain,
but what this map doesn't show is
the American Indian powers,
who are also in this area.
So most of this region really west
of the Appalachian mountains,
is Indian country,
and the majority of inhabitants were Native Americans,
and they really held the majority of power
in this region as well.
So major Native American groups that are in play
in this conflict are Iroquois Confederacy,
and also Cherokees,
Hurons,
Algonquians,
Abenakis,
and Mi'kmaqs,
and that's just a small sampling.
So you can see that there are a number
of important Native American tribes
who are specifically in this area of Canada,
which is disputed,
and also moving in
the greater Appalachian region.
So what does each of these groups want?
Well, England definitely wants territory.
They want to make sure that they're English settlers
along the eastern seaboard,
whom we'll soon be calling Americans,
have room to expand.
The French wanna make sure that they still
have access to trade with Native Americans
because their main concern is fur,
which is a very valuable commodity in Europe,
and Spain wants to make sure that they
have access to their sugar islands
and also their precious metals
in the Caribbean
and in South America.
Now it's worth noting,
'cause I think this is really interesting to students
of American history,
that all of this territory,
all of North America,
was way less valuable than all of this territory
because we're not talking about just value in land.
We're talking about value in commodities,
and what the Caribbean had was sugar,
and sugar is the most valuable crop
in this time period.
So a tiny island down here in the Bahamas
is probably worth more to a European power
than the entire interior of North America,
and what do these Native American groups want?
Well, some of them want help with revenge
on each other.
Many other smaller Native American groups
have been displaced by the Iroquois,
who are here
in upstate New York, kind of Quebec region.
So the Iroquois is actually expanding
and really defending their claim
as the largest Native American empire,
but the other thing that they want
is to make sure that their territory
is no longer encroached upon
by English settlers in particular.
Now one mistake I see early students
of U.S. history making is thinking that
all Native Americans kind of shared
a cultural and political bond, right?
That they saw themselves as one larger people
who had to unite against the encroachment of Europeans,
and that was definitely not the case.
Native Americans had been living in this territory
for thousands of years,
and they had enemies and beef
with other groups that went back
way longer than the arrival of Europeans in North America.
So when nations like England and France
arrived with their weapons and their trade goods,
the American Indians didn't look at each other
and say, "Oh wait, now we're all one race.
"We need to join together against
"the encroachment of whites."
They saw England and France and Spain
as possible avenues to getting one up
on their older enemies.
So when an English trader sold a gun
to, say, a Huron,
he was way more likely
to go after, say,
the Iroquois with that gun than he was
to go after a French trader.
So another reason why
the Seven Years' War is a better name
for the French and Indian War
than French and Indian War is because
these Native American groups did not ally
all with France.
In fact, the Iroquois and Cherokee
ended up allied with England,
and most of the other Native American groups
ended up allied with France,
but they were fighting each other
in addition to fighting England.
Alright, so the stage is set for this conflict
with all of these competing groups
in this unclear territory,
and how this turns into a war,
we'll get to in the next video.