The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War. The war was fought between the colonies of British America and New France, with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, as well as Native American allies. At the start of the war, the French North American colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 compared to 2 million in the English North American colonies.[3] The outnumbered French particularly depended on the Indians. Long in conflict, the metropole nations declared war on each other in 1756, escalating the war from a regional affair into an international conflict.
The name French and Indian War is used mainly in the United States and in English-speaking Canada, and refers to the two main enemies of the British colonists: the royal French forces and the various indigenous forces allied with them. British and European historians use the term the Seven Years' War, as do many Canadians.[4]French Canadians call it La guerre de la Conquête (War of Conquest).[5][6]
The war was fought primarily along the frontiers between New France and the British colonies, from Virginia in the South to Nova Scotia in the North. It began with a dispute over control of the confluence of the Allegheny andMonongahela rivers, called the Forks of the Ohio, and the site of the French Fort Duquesne and present-dayPittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The dispute erupted into violence in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in May 1754, during which Virginia militiamen under the command of 22-year-old George Washington ambushed a French patrol.
In 1755, six colonial governors in North America met with General Edward Braddock, the newly arrived British Army commander, and planned a four-way attack on the French. None succeeded and the main effort by Braddock was a disaster; he was defeated in the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, 1755 and died a few days later. British operations in 1755, 1756...