Download A.P. U.S. History Chapter 6: The Duel for North America 1608-1763

 3 Nations vied for world
domination in the 17th and
18th centuries: Spain, France,
and England
 The French established
Quebec in 1608 as their first
colony (New France) in the
new world.
 New France was under total
control of the French crown
and the colonists enjoyed
much less freedom and selfrule than the British colonies
in America.
 By 1750 only 60,000 colonists
inhabited New France
compared to over 2 million in
the 13 British American
colonies.
 The French were allied with
the Huron Indians, and helped
them fight the Iroquois
Confederation in the upper
N.Y. area.
 So the Iroquois allied
themselves with the British.
 New France’s one valuable
commodity was furs,
especially beaver.
 See map of fur posts in North
America on pg 108
 The fur trappers trapped the
beaver to near extinction and
exposed Native Americans to
white culture, disease, trade
goods, and alcohol.
 Antoine Cadillac founded
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Detroit in 1701
Robert de La Salle floated
down the Mississippi to the
Gulf of Mexico in 1682 and
named the interior basin
Louisiana in honor of Louis
XIV. Controll of this river was
vital to this American regon.
The French founded New
Orleans in 1718.
They wanted to Compete with
the Spanish Empire
The French founded trading
posts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia,
and Vincennes in the Ohio
River area.
 King William’s War (1689-1697) and
Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) were
early clashes between British
colonists and French in North
America.
 Neither France nor Britain
committed any troops to these as
they didn’t see these colonies worth
the expense.
 The real money was coming from the
Caribbean at that point.
 Spain sided with France in these
early wars.
King William III of Prussia
 The War of Jenkin’s Ear (1739) was
fought between the British and
Spanish in the Caribbean and
Georgia, where James Oglethorpe
earned his reputation as a soldier.
 British captain Jenkins was captured
by the Spanish and had his ear cut
off and his captures sent him
packing with the ear and threatened
to do the same to his king.
 The War of Jenkin’s Ear merged with
the larger War of Austrian
Succession in Europe and was called
King George’s War in America.
 France allied itself with Spain again.
 New England colonists
invaded New France and took
the French fort at Louisbourg
(see map on pg 112) but the
peace settlement gave it back
to the French.
 Importance: American
colonists resented politics in
Europe dictating politics and
life in America
• American (British) colonists
had been pushing into this
area to expand their land
holdings, especially the
Virginia planters.
• The French wanted it to link
their Canadian land with that
of the lower empire.
• Control of the Ohio Valley
meant control of all of North
America. This became the
region that England and
France would fight over
 The French built Fort
Duquesne at the site of
present day Pittsburg, which is
where the Allegheny River and
the Monongahela River join to
form the Ohio River.
 In 1754 the Governor of VA
sent 21 year old George
Washington and 150 VA
militiamen to secure Virginia’s
claim to this land.
1754  The First Clash
The
Ohio Valley
British
Fort Necessity
* George Washington
French
Fort Duquesne
* Delaware & Shawnee
Indians
 His party and a group of
Indians ambushed a French
scouting party.
 The Indians killed the French
commander, a number of
French troops and took even
more prisoner.
 Washington probably had
little command over the
situation and the French and
Indian War had begun.
 Washington quickly built Fort
Necessity and asked for
reinforcements, which never
came.
 The French did come with
reinforcements,
surrounded the fort and
pounded it in a torrential
downpour for 10 hours
before Washington
surrendered.
 The French allowed him
and his men to march away.
 With the war underway, the
British uprooted some 4,000
French Acadians in 1755
(because they had acquired
the land in 1713 in an earlier
squirmish) and deported them
in Louisiana- the original
Cajuns.
 The French and Indian War
was the 4th Anglo-French
colonial war and the only one
which started in America, in
1754.
 It was an undeclared war
for 2 years until it spread
to all corners of the globe,
but especially in America,
Europe, the West Indies,
the Philippines, Africa,
and the open seas.
 The French and Indian
War is also known as the
Seven Years’ War.
 In Europe it was mainly
Britain and Prussia
against France, Spain,
Austria, and Russia.
 France spent most of its
troops in Germany
instead of America, where
Frederick the Great
earned his title fighting
for the British.
• The British bought the
Iroquois loyalty against
the French.
• Seven of the 13 colonies
sent representatives.
• the long-range purpose of
the Albany Congress of
1754 was to achieve
Colonial unity in a
common defense against
the French
1754  Albany Plan of
Union
Ben Franklin  representatives from
New England, NY, MD, PA
A
Albany Congress  failed Iroquois
broke off relations with
Britain & threatened to
trade with the French.
 The British sent General Braddock
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to capture Fort Duquesne.
Braddock hacked a road through
the wilderness, which wasted a lot
of time, money, and resources.
The French and Indians ambushed
the British redcoats and the
American militia and slaughtered
them.
George Washington was in charge
of the militia and had 2 horses
shot from under him and 4 bullets
pierced his clothing, but he was
one of the few who lived.
After this defeat, the French and
Indians ravaged the frontier from
Pennsylvania to North Carolina.
 The British invaded
Canada in 1756.
 The British tried to attack
a number of French forts
in the wilderness all at the
same time with small
forces and failed at nearly
every attempt instead of
concentrating on the
larger forts at Quebec and
Montreal.
 William Pitt became Prime
Minister in 1757 and changed
the tactics of the war.
 He put the Caribbean on the
back burner and focused on
taking Canada with the
capture of Quebec and
Montreal.
 Pitt chose young and energetic
generals instead of the old and
cautious ones that favored
European tactics that proved
not to work in America.
1758-1761  The Tide
Turns for England
* By 1761, Sp. has become an ally of Fr.
 In 1758 the British took the
Fort at Louisbourg.
 The British attacked Quebec
under the dashing General
James Wolfe who sent a
detachment to scale the cliffs
surrounding the city.
 The French and British duked
it out on the Plains of
Abraham outside of the city.
Both Wolfe and the French
commander were killed, but
the British took Quebec in
1759.
 The British took Montreal in
1760.
British-American
Colonial Tensions
Colonials
Methods of
Fighting:
British
• Indian-style guerilla • March in formation or
bayonet charge.
tactics.
Military
• Col. militias served
Organization: under own captains.
• Br. officers wanted to
take charge of colonials.
Military
Discipline:
• No mil. deference or
protocols observed.
• Drills & tough
discipline.
Finances:
• Resistance to rising
taxes.
• Colonists should pay
for their own defense.
Demeanor:
• Casual,
non-professionals.
• Prima Donna Br.
officers with servants
& tea settings.
 France ceded all of its land
west of the Mississippi
(Louisiana) to the Spanish,
and lost almost all of it’s North
American land claims, except
for a couple of islands in the
St. Lawrence and a few in the
West Indies.
 The Treaty of Paris 1763 settled
the French and Indian War.
 England becomes the
dominant power in North
America
 20,000 American colonists
fought for the British in the
war.
 British officials were disturbed
by the lukewarm support of
the colonists (who's interests
they were fighting to protect)
 During the war the British
regular army showed
contempt for the American
militia as raw, and
unrespectable.
 The British refused to
recognize any American milita
commission above the rank of
captain, which was
humiliating to Colonel George
Washington.
 Many American shippers
broke British blockades during
the war and exported food to
besieged French and Spanish
islands in the Caribbean.
 Overall, the American colonies
were not united in the French
and Indian War and didn’t
take up the cause for the
British empire.
 American ambivalence during
the French and Indian War
was caused by:
 Geographical barriers like rivers,
 Conflicting religions, from
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Catholic to Quaker,
Varied nationalities: German,
English, Irish, Scots-Irish, etc
Differing types of colonial
governments
Many boundary disputes,
The resentment of crude
backcountry settlers against the
aristocratic bigwigs.
 However, soldiers and statesmen,
brought together during the war
found that they were all fellow
Americans who generally spoke the
same language and shared common
ideals.
 With the French threat gone,
Americans felt much more
confident. Started idea of
independence
 The Spanish were forced to give up
Florida to Britain.
 Native Americans were no longer
able to play off the Europeans
against one another after 1763.
 Led by the Ottawa chief and a
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handful of French traders.
They tried to drive the British
out of the Ohio country.
Overran all but 3 British posts
and killed 2,000 soldiers and
settlers.
The British spread smallpox
infected blankets to the
Indians, which brought a
truce.
Pontiac died in battle with
another Indian tribe in 1769.
 Pontiac’s rebellion convinced
the British that they needed to
spend more money and
attention on stabilizing Indianwhite relations and keep the
Indians subdued along the
western frontier, they also
wanted the colonists to pay for
it.
 The Proclamation of 1763forbade settlement west of the
Appalachians.
 The British intention was to work
out Indian problems in the area
fairly and prevent another
Pontiac’s Rebellion.
 The Proclamation of 1763
prohibited colonial settlement
west of the Application
Mountains
 American’s saw the western
land as their birthright and
deeply resented (and ignored)
the British proclamation.
 In the end, they defied the
Proclamation and moved west
anyway.
Theories of
Representation
Real Whigs
Q-> What was the extent of Parliament’s
authority over the colonies??
Absolute?
OR
Limited?
Q-> How could the colonies give or
withhold consent for parliamentary
legislation when they did not have
representation in that body??