1. “The Great War for Empire”
The French & Indian War
(1756 to 1763)
“The Great War for Empire”
By the mid-1600s, it was apparent to England’s rulers that their North American colonies could generate tremendous wealth, and it moved to seize control of Atlantic trade, consolidate its hold over the continent’s eastern coast, and greater regulate its empire. It acted according to the theory of mercantilism, in which the English government regulated economic activity to manipulate trade to make sure that more gold and silver entered the country than left it. The export of goods, which generated revenue from abroad, should exceed imports, which required paying foreigners for their products. The colonies’ role was to serve the interests of the mother country by producing raw materials and importing manufactured goods from England.
The Navigation Acts of 1651 were intended to gain control over world trade from the Dutch. They required that valuable goods produced in the colonies, such as tobacco and sugar, first had to be shipped to and traded in English ships and ports and that most European goods shipped to the colonies had to be shipped through England. This enabled the government to collect revenues and allowed English merchants, manufacturers, shipbuilders and sailors to benefit from trade. American colonists’ ships were considered English, and in New England the acts stimulated its considerable shipbuilding industry.

2. Was 1763
a "turning point"
in British-colonial
relationships???

3. North America in 1750

4. 1754  The First Clash The Ohio Valley British French
In 1749, as white settlers began moving into the Ohio Valley, Virginia awarded an immense grant of land there to the Ohio Company, who could sell the land to settlers. The grant threatened the Valley’s Indians and caused the French to reinforce their presence. The Ohio Company’s demand for French recognition of its land claims inaugurated the Seven Years’ War (known in the colonies as the French and Indian War). We can also say that the American colonists felt that France was encroaching on land claimed by the Ohio Company.
The British had fought its rivals France and Spain in three inconclusive wars earlier in the eighteenth century, and to finance these wars Britain’s public expenditures, taxes, and national debt had greatly increased, inspiring discontent at home and in the colonies. It started in 1754 with British efforts to dislodge the French from forts in western Pennsylvania guarding the Ohio Valley. When a small force of soldiers led by George Washington entered the area, conflict ensued.
British
French
Fort Necessity Fort Duquesne * George Washington * Delaware & Shawnee Indians

5. 1754  Albany Plan of Union
Ben Franklin  representatives from New England, NY, MD, PA
Albany Congress  failed Iroquois broke off relations with Britain & threatened to trade with the French.

6. 1763  Treaty of Paris
France --> lost her Canadian possessions, most of her empire in India, and claims to lands east of the Mississippi River.
Spain --> got all French lands west of the Mississippi River, New Orleans, but lost Florida to England.
The English finally became successful in defeating the French in the Seven Years’ War under the leadership of William Pitt.
In the Peace of Paris in 1763, France ceded Canada to Britain, and received in return the sugar islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Spain ceded Florida to Britain in return for the Philippines and Cuba, which the British had seized during the war.
Spain also acquired Louisiana from the French. France’s empire in North America was finished.
But attempts to pay for the costs of the war led to events that precipitated the French and the American revolutions.
England --> got all French lands in Canada, exclusive rights to Caribbean slave trade, and commercial dominance in India.

7. North America in 1763

8. Effects of the War on Britain?
1. It increased her colonial empire in the Americas.
2. It greatly enlarged England’s debt.
3. Britain’s contempt for the colonials created bitter feelings.
THE END OF SALUTARY NEGLECT!!!!!!
Therefore, England felt that a major reorganization of her American Empire was necessary!

9. Effects of the War on the American Colonials
1. It united them against a common enemy for the first time.
2. It created a socializing experience for all the colonials who participated.
3. It created bitter feelings towards the British that would only intensify.

10. The Aftermath: Tensions Along the Frontier
1763  Pontiac’s Rebellion
The French defeat upset the balance-of-power diplomacy that had enabled Indian groups like the Iroquois to maintain a degree of autonomy, and they saw Britain’s victory and its colonies as a threat. The French conceded lands that Indians controlled to the British, without their consent, and the Treaty of Paris caused confusion about land claims, control of the fur trade, and tribal relations in general. In 1763, Indians in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions rebelled against British rule. Although named Pontiac’s rebellion after an Ottawa warrior, in fact Neolin, a Delaware religious prophet, inspired much of the rebellion with visions that urged Indians to reject European technologies, commercial relations, and alcohol, and to expel the British from their lands. He also encouraged Indians of different tribes to consider themselves all Indians, forging a pan-Indian identity for the first time.
Fort Detroit
British “gifts” of smallpox-infected blankets from Fort Pitt.

11. Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763)

12. British  Proclamation Line of 1763.
By the end of 1763, British forces had quelled the rebellion. But the British government tried to quiet tensions between white settlers in the colonies and Indians by declaring the Proclamation of 1763 prohibiting further colonial settlement in the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, which were reserved for Indians. It also banned the sale of Indian lands to private individuals, allowing sales only to colonial governments. The new policy enraged settlers and speculators who wanted these lands, and many colonists, including George Washington, ignored the policy and purchased land anyways, illegally. Not solving the issue of westward expansion, the act instead exacerbated settler-Indian relations
Map 4.4 Eastern North America after the Peace of Paris, 1763

13. Colonials  Paxton Boys (PA)
BACKLASH!
British  Proclamation Line of 1763.
The village of Paxton, a few miles east of Harrisburg in eastern Pennsylvania, became a hotbed of racial and political unrest during Pontiac’s Rebelion. Still part of the frontier in the 1760s, the area was populated by many rough-and-tumble Scots-Irish immigrants who had grown weary of the colonial assembly’s inattention to their vulnerability to attack. Requests for soldiers — or guns, powder and lead at the very least — were ignored by the legislators, many of whom were Quakers with strong pacifist convictions.
A group of Paxton men took matters into their own hands in December 1763 and raided a small settlement of Conestoga Indians in Lancaster County. The frontiersmen`s fury was misplaced, however, since those natives had long lived in peace with their neighbors and had not participated in any way in the current uprising. Six Indians were killed in the attack and 14 taken captive; all of the prisoners were murdered several weeks later.
Colonials  Paxton Boys (PA)