- [Narrator] So we've been discussing the Seven Year's War
in North America.
Also commonly called the French and Indian War
but, as I mentioned in the last video
I think Seven Year's War is a better name
for this conflict because
it was the first global war
that happened more than 150 years
before World War I.
And this global war was
at its heart,
about who would be the dominant empire in the world.
Would it be England?
Or would it be France?
Now in the North American theater of this war,
England, France, their Native American allies
on both sides were vying for territory
and particularly territory along the
Appalachian mountain range
in upstate New York, Canada.
This kind of western territory that was
the border between
the English settlement and Indian country to the west.
In this video, let's talk about how the war
actually progressed
and what it's consequences were
for North America and later,
the United States.
All right, so we've got the English,
the French, and
a number of Native American tribes
all kind of jostling for position in North America.
Now what stresses the British out the most
is
the presence of the French
in the Ohio River Valley.
Both, the British and the French
have laid claim to this territory.
And they're both eager to strengthen their territorial
claims, by building forts,
and otherwise having a show of possession of the area.
They argue over who had a presence there first.
So to establish the English presence
in the Ohio River Valley
the English send a young officer
named George Washington
to build a fort.
George Washington is only
22 years old at the time.
And he and his men go out
to
this area and they run into some French with their
Native American allies
at Fort Duquesne
which is where the Alaganee,
Monhongahela, and Ohio rivers come together.
Which is today, Pittsburgh.
So George Washington and his allies
get the jump on the French.
But, that doesn't last very long.
They're overpowered and
they fall back and establish
Fort Necessity.
On account of it was necessary.
And they managed to hold out for a little while
but eventually the French, the Canadians, and their
Native America allies
forced Washington to surrender.
And he goes back to Virginia.
So that's 1754.
And we'll call that Fail number one.
All right, so then
a year later
1755, the British
try to displace the French from
Fort Duquesne once again.
And they send Major General Edward Braddock
with
George Washington, once again,
now he's 23.
Back to Fort Duquesne
and it's a complete disaster.
This time, the French and their Indian allies
get the drop on the English, and with
a much smaller force, completely
desinate the English troops.
And Braddock is killed.
And George Washington
has to take command
of the retreat.
So that's Fail number two.
In general, this war does not go terribly well
for the British at the beginning,
except in one area, Acadia, where
the British manage to
attain control
and they kick out the
French settlers,
the Acadians, who are transported
down to the French settlement of New Orleans.
In Louisiana.
Where eventually, their name becomes garbled
and they're known as the Cajuns.
Not the Acadians, but the Cajuns.
In 1756
England finally gets around to actually declaring
war on France.
But it's really not for another year
that the war starts to actually go well
in 1757.
And the reason that the war starts going well
for the English, finally,
is that the Prime Minister, William Pitt,
decides that he is going to
pour money into this endeavor.
So he thinks that the English have just not had
enough men, materials, money,
Indian allies, up until this point.
So he is really going to
commit the British empire
to
exiling the French from this area
of North America.
So between 1757 and 1760,
things really start looking up for the British.
They finally capture
Fort Duquesne.
And they capture
the Ohio Valley.
Nova Scotia.
Upstate New York.
And, Quebec.
So, by 1760
pretty much all the fighting is done in North America.
The English have more or less forced
the French
out of the eastern seaboard and Canada.
And in 1763,
the English and the French
sit down to hammer out
the Treaty of Paris.
So the Treaty of Paris, in 1763,
and I apologize, I cannot help the fact
that there are like a million treaties of Paris.
There's also the Treaty of Paris that ended the
Revolutionary War.
There's the Treaty of Paris that ended the
Spanish American War.
Paris was the place where you made treaties
and they're all called the Treaty of Paris.
But this is the one that happened in 1763.
In general, this was a big victory.
For the English.
The English
not only got
most of France's possessions
in the New World.
They got New France,
AKA Canada.
They got
Spanish Florida.
Spain was fighting on the side of
France.
So they lose that.
They got a bunch of Sugar Islands.
In the Caribbean.
And they pretty much
got recognized as
the premiere power in Europe.
And the premiere imperial power.
So, the largest and
most powerful empire
in the world.
And let's not forget that the colonial Americans
citizens of Massachusetts, and New York,
Pennsylvania, Virginia,
they were on the winning side here.
They fought alongside the British regulars.
They repelled the French and their Native American allies.
This was actually a pretty big confidence boost
for
young America.
But there were some other consequences of this war.
On the not so good side,
the Seven Year's War was not particularly good
for Native Americans, in general.
Both those who had allied with the British.
And those who had allied with the French.
They no longer had
two imperial powers
vying against each other in North America
that they could play off of each other.
Now, Native Americans were only dealing
with the British.
Who certainly were not giving them
a fair seat at the table.
Not long after the Seven Year's War,
they will institute what's called
the Proclamation
of 1763.
Which was basically a boundary line
along the Appalachian mountains
saying that that was going to be the
end of white settlement.
That they would reserve
all the lands west
of the Appalachians for Native Americans.
Well, you can imagine how much the
American white settlers respected that.
Which is to say, they completely
ignored this boundary line.
So, the Native Americans will continue to be
pushed farther west.
And to develop more of
what we call a race consciousness.
The idea that they were all in
one big group together
who had to combine forces
to repel English settlement.
The other major outcome of the
Seven Year's War was
taxation.
Remember that William Pitt won
the Seven Year's War
by pouring money into it.
At the end of the Seven Year's War
England is in a lot of debt.
And, they have just gone to a lot of trouble
to protect their North American interests.
Now, as they are looking for ways
to make revenue
to make up the deficit,
the Seven Year's War has placed on them,
they look at their North American colonists
and say, "You should pay your way."
And,
the American colonists, who have been used
to more than century of called salutary,
or benign neglect,
are shocked and outraged
that the British empire is now clamping down on them.
And the colonists reaction to those new taxes
will propel the colonies into revolution.