The Seven Years’ War

COLONIZATION AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION HIST 1301 | History The Seven Years’ War Global in scope, the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) started out as a struggle for supremacy between European countries, chiefly France and Great Britain, but it soon enlisted forces from the Americas, Africa, and India. The French and Indian War in North America and the Third Carnatic War in India were conflicts that took place at the same time as the Seven Years' War. New France started to expand gradually in the late 1600s and early 1700s. King Louis XIV converted the town into a royal colony in 1663 and revoked the royal charter with the Company of New France. From Quebec, French merchants and priests progressively extended their sphere of influence, traversing the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River before establishing New Orleans, close to the Gulf of Mexico, in 1718. Nonetheless, the English proved to be a significant barrier to New France's development. Prosperous agriculturalists in the English colonies of North America want to extend their reach into the Ohio River Valley, an area that was asserted by France and its Indigenous partners. Violent clashes between French soldiers and Virginia militia members occurred in 1754 close to what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania. At first, the French and their Native American allies did a great job of ambushing English forces and compelling George Washington, a young colonial militia officer from Virginia, to give up Britain's Fort Necessity. But the French's early success in driving the British back was short-lived. In 1758, the English were promised respect for Indigenous rights to disputed frontier territories in exchange for the Shawnee tribe, the Delaware tribe, and the strong Iroquoian Confederacy forging an alliance with them. A group of united Native American tribes known as the Haudenosaunee, or "people of the longhouse," formed the Iroquois Confederacy. The term related both to the rectangular dwellings in which they resided and their physical domain, which ran from what is now Vermont in the east all the way to Lake Erie in the west, an area about the form of a longhouse. By 1600, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes had united into an alliance for trade and military purposes, known as the Iroquoian tribes. In 1722, the Tuscarora tribe became a part of the Confederacy. Up to the war's conclusion in 1763, a number of Algonquin tribes and other non-Iroquoian Native Americans supported the French. The English conducted victorious offensives against New France with assistance from the Native Americans. With a string of triumphs that culminated in the conquest of French Quebec during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the British reversed the tide in 1759. Following Great Britain and Prussia's triumph over France and Spain in the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763, the French and Indian War came to an end. The pact required the French government to give up all of its possessions in North America, as well as its outposts in Africa, the Caribbean, and India. From the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Mississippi River in the west, and from Canada in the north to the Florida border in the south, Britain emerged as the unchallenged ruler of eastern North America. As part of a larger scheme to increase Prussian territory, Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Saxony in 1756, sparking the start of the Seven Years' War in Europe. In retaliation, Austria was opposed by France, Spain, and Russia. To keep rival countries' military might about equal, Great Britain sided with Prussia in order to preserve the status quo in Europe. Preventing any one country from dominating Europe was the main goal of British foreign policy, which included maintaining this equilibrium. Thus, military alliances turned what may have been a minor European border dispute into a huge conflict that swiftly expanded throughout the globe. The French outpost of Senegal in West Africa was conquered by a British expeditionary force in 1758, and more French outposts were taken in a succession of follow-up offensives. The French economy suffered from the loss of important commerce ports just as France was in dire need of cash to support the war effort. More significantly, it took away vital sites that the French military might have used to replenish their vessels and conduct raids on British trade. By this point, the British had a far stronger economic, military, and diplomatic base in Asia than their French adversaries thanks to the British East India firm, a joint stock firm that was established in 1600 with the primary objective of trading in the Indian Ocean. The French forged an alliance with the Mughal Empire in order to counter these British advantages and seize control of important territory in India. At its peak, this vast Muslim empire governed over 150 million people spread over 1.5 million square miles in what are now Bangladesh, India, and Afghanistan. But in 1761, the British overthrew the French when they took Pondicherry, the principal French settlement in India. Even after the French had fled India in large part, the Mughals resisted British rule. The British began attacking Spanish possessions in Asia and the Caribbean in 1762. They succeeded in seizing Manila, the port of the Philippines, and held it until the war's conclusion in 1763. Even with the support of native Filipinos who opposed Spanish authority, they had less success extending their dominance over the islands. However, in the Caribbean, Britain managed to seize and hold Havana, Cuba, one of the most significant ports in the Western Hemisphere, until the conflict's conclusion. In addition, the Spanish handed up Florida to the British, France ceded Spain sovereignty of the Louisiana Territory, and the French gave up their imperial conquests in North America and India to the British with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The Peace of Hubertusburg that followed established Prussian dominance over the region of Silesia in central Europe and reaffirmed Prussia's position as a powerful nation on the continent. In contrast, the British came out of the Seven Years' War as the most powerful nation in terms of politics, the military, and the economy.