SCHOOL OF FREEDOM 104A THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

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The French and Indian War set the stage for the Revolutionary War which caused England to go heavily in debt. The resulting taxation without represenation helped foment the colonists to revolt against their mother country. It would mark the last time colonists would work cooperatively with their homeland, England.

Before the colonists declared themselves independent of the British though, they helped England beat the French and Indians in The French and Indian War. Some of the Indian tribes helped the French while others helped the British. The war lasted from 1754 to 1761. England wanted the French out of America because they wanted it all to themselves. In this war the American colonies worked in harmony for the first time to help England defeat the French. However, 15 years later the colonists wanted to be free of England and declared their independence from Great Britain.

Before the French and Indian War was declared, Virginia's Governor, Robert Dinwiddie, sent a 21-year-old surveyor, who knew the land well, on a diplomatic mission to the French to warn them to leave America or they would declare war on them. This young and trusted surveyor's name was George Washington. Two years earlier, General Dinwiddie had made Washington, at age 19, a major over one of the four Virginia militias. On October 31, 1753, at age 21, Washington took an Indian guide and an interpreter and traversed more than 500 miles of a pathless, wintry wilderness to find the French General St. Pierre at Fort Erie. When Washington delivered the message to the French general, he refused it. In fact, General St. Pierre said he would not leave, and that he had been ordered to drive out every Englishman from the Ohio Valley. Washington returned to Williamsburg, Virginia on January 16, 1754 to deliver the message from General St. Pierre. His superiors were profoundly impressed by the boldness and dedication to duty of the 21-year-old George Washington. This courageous young man attempted to avert war on the French.

Because of his bravery and dedication to duty, Washington was promoted to a lieutenant colonel in April 1754. On May 1, 1754, Colonel Washington set out with an army of 400 men to capture an area the French named Fort Duquesne (this is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today). Washington was badly outnumber compared to the 1,200-man army the French had to safeguard the fort. When Washington was within 60 miles of the fort, he heard that the French were coming to attack them. Washington had his men quickly build a fort. He named it Fort Necessity. The battle was fierce so, Washington, with his much smaller army, was forced to retreat to Virginia and report their battle to England.


When England heard about the Battle at Fort Necessity, they sent General Edward Braddock with two regiments of English regulars to drive out the French from America. Braddock dropped anchor at Hampton Roads, Virginia on February 20, 1755 and laid out his plans of war with the colonial governors who also supplied him with colonial enlistments. This set the stage for the greatest defeat England had every had on American soil at the Battle of the Monongahela.

Not everyone uses the label of French and Indian War; some call this conflict part of the Seven Years' War, a broader European power struggle involving Great Britain, France, Austria, and Prussia in fighting that spanned much of the globe. There are good reasons for doing this. The conflict in America was certainly influenced by events in Europe, and vice versa. But viewing the French and Indian War as merely one small part of Europe's larger Seven Years' War undervalues the significance of events as they unfolded on this continent--in particular, the critical role that Native Americans played in determining the course of the North American war.

Most contemporaries recognized the central importance of the Indians in the French and Indian War, and those that did not--like British general Edward Braddock, mortally wounded when Indians ambushed his army at the Battle of the Monongahela--paid a huge a price.

But if the war's participants had a clearer understanding than some historians of the significance of Indians in the conflict, they could have used the benefit of hindsight when it came to understanding the broader significance of the war itself to America's future. The war ended in 1763 with the total defeat of France, seemingly a profound triumph for the British and their Indian and American colonial allies. But the three groups of victors--British, Indian, American--emerged from the conflict with very different, and ultimately incompatible, understandings of what they had won. The British concluded the war with the belief that they had secured a glorious future; in vanquishing the French, they had conclusively established their claim to the North American continent, ensuring that their empire would unfold peacefully and profitably into the foreseeable future.

Britain's Indian allies, just as optimistically, believed that they had secured their political and territorial independence through their service in the war; by the war's end, they had won from the British recognition of their rights to control the interior of North America.

American colonists, meanwhile, concluded that by defeating the French and hostile French-aligned Indians, they had secured their western frontier; they had won .

These competing visions for the future of the continent laid the basis for future controversy; far from putting an end to conflict in North America, the triumphant conclusion of the French and Indian War produced, almost immediately, severe tensions in the Anglo-Indian-American alliance that led, eventually, to the American Revolution.

Perhaps the only participant in the French and Indian War that truly read the situation at war's end correctly was France. In their humiliating defeat, the French saw a crushing blow to their imperial ambitions and national pride. Over the next decade, they would look for an opportunity to exact their revenge. And when Americans declared independence in 1776, they saw their chance.

In other words, only the French really recognized that 1763 wasn't the end of the American story, but only the beginning.
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Scott Swain is president of Roots of Freedom, an educational company focused on increasing patriotism among youth. He has developed four product lines to do this: freedom galleries, freedom bowls, Cries of Freedom curriculum and simulated experiences including Milestones of Freedom. He is actively involved in educating and inspiring both youth and adults to return to their roots of freedom.

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