For the next five years, tensions between the English and the French increased, until in the summer of 1754 the governor of Virginia sent a militia force (under the command of an inexperienced young colonel named ) into the Ohio valley to challenge French expansion. Washington built a stockade called Fort Necessity and staged an unsuccessful attack on a French detachment.(Lois, 181) The French countered with an assault on Fort Necessity, trapping Washington and his soldiers inside. After a third of them died in the fighting, Washington surrendered. This clash marked the beginning of the French and Indian War.
The French and Indian War lasted nearly nine years, and it moved forward in three distinct phases. During the first of these phases, from the Fort Necessity debacle in 1754 until the expansion of the war to Europe in 1756, it was primarily a local, North American Conflict. The English did not do well these first years. There were few British naval reinforcements and so the colonists managed the war largely on their own. Virtually all Indian tribes were now allied with the French. Only the Iroquois had seen themselves forced to the British side and they kept themselves as neutral as possible.(Crooks, 83)
The second phase of the struggle began in 1756 when the governments of France and England formally opened hostilities and a truly international conflict began. The fighting now spread to the West, Indies, India and Europe itself.(Folkraft,65) But the principal struggle remained the one in North America where so far England had suffered nothing but frustration and defeat. Beginning in 1757, , the English secretary of state, began to transform the war effort by bringing it for the first time fully under British control. He did this at first by forcing supplies, equipment, shelter, and manpower from the colonists. This was cause for much resentment among the colonists, who resisted these new impositions and firmly, at times even violently, resisted them. By early 1758, the friction between the British authorities and the colonists was threatening to bring the war effort to a halt.
Through out the French and Indian conflict Great Britain had appealed for help from the colonists living throughout North America. In fact, many decided to fight for the British and formed Colonial militias. However these militias were often mistreated and not well respected through out British ranks. Too often they were committed to front line charges and other questionable tactics because they we’re seen as “expendable”. Although there were no recorded open revolts of colonial regiments widespread unrest was a reality. (Boorman, 71)
Eventually as more colonials resisted enlistment in the British army the crown took a hard-line stance. A new policy of forced enlistment was used. This made it a requirement for certain colonists who were living in certain “Threatened” regions to fight in a militia regiment. (Carper, 126)
The forced enlistment policy was seen as an arrogant and particularly vile prospect for colonists as many felt that they were being forced to die for a country that they were not a part of. (Crooks, 125) That feeling of separation was a seed planted that would later mature into full rebellion.
Beginning in 1758 therefore, Pitt initiated the third and final phase of the war by relaxing many of the policies that Americans had objected to. This resulted in an immediate increase in American support for the war and a dramatic increase in American enlistment. Pitt also dispatched large numbers of additional troops. Almost immediately the tide of the battle began to turn in England's favor. The French, now even more outnumbered then before and plagued by poor harvests, could no longer offer enough resistance to the British troops and American militias. In July 1758, the fortress of Louisbourg was captured by two brilliant English generals (and their armies), Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe.(Glemmer,217) And on September 13 1759, the supposedly impregnable city of Quebec fell to the army of General James Wolfe. This marked the beginning of the end of the American phase of the war. A year later, in September 1760, the French army formally surrendered to Amherst in Montreal.
The French and Indian War had profound effects for both the British Empire and the American colonists. It is often seen as the source of much of the resentment between the English government and the colonists that eventually led to the American Revolution of 1775. (Boorman, 197)
The British victory in the French and Indian War had a great impact on the British Empire. First, it meant a great expansion of British territorial claims in the New World. But the cost of the war had greatly enlarged Britain's debt. Also, the war generated substantial resentment towards the colonists among English leaders, who were not satisfied with the financial and military help they had received from the colonists during the war. All these factors combined to persuade many English leaders that the colonies needed a major reorganization and that the central authority should be in London. The English leaders set in motion plans to give London more control over the government of the colonies and these plans were eventually a big part of the colonial resentment towards British imperial policies that led to the American Revolution.
The war had an equally profound but very different effect on the American colonists. First of all, the colonists had learned to unite against a common foe. Before the war, the thirteen colonies had found almost no common ground and they coexisted in mutual distrust. But now they had seen that together they could be a power to be reckoned with. And the next common foe would be Britain.
With France removed from North America, the vast interior of the continent lay open for the Americans to colonize. But The English government decided otherwise. To induce a controlled population movement, they issued a Royal Proclamation that prohibited settlement west of the line drawn along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains. (Yortle, 234) To enforce that measure they authorized a permanent army of 10,000 regulars (paid for by taxes gathered from the colonies; most importantly the "" and the ""). This infuriated the Americans who, after having been held back by the French, now saw themselves stopped by the British in their surge west. It was this arrogance by the British that would lead to eventual open revolt in the colonies.
It could be said that England really had a loss in the victory over the French. Their intense dislike for the French and a driving need for victory in the colonies lead them to mistreat and discount the British citizens that lived in the colonies. These oversights lead to an eventual loss of the land they fought so hard to control It was truly a loss in Victory.