6.2.1 The Seven Years’ War

The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that began as a fight for dominance between European powers, primarily Great Britain and France, but it quickly involved groups from India, Africa, and the Americas (Figure 6.10). Conflicts that overlapped with the Seven Years’ War were the French and Indian War in North America and the Third Carnatic War in India.

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, New France grew steadily. In 1663, King Louis XIV canceled the royal charter with the Company of New France and transformed the settlement into a royal colony. French merchants and priests gradually expanded their reach from Quebec through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River, founding New Orleans near the Gulf of Mexico in 1718.

The English proved a serious obstacle for the growth of New France, however. Wealthy farmers in the English colonies of North America wanted to expand into the Ohio River Valley, territory claimed by France and its Native American allies. In 1754, violence broke out between French soldiers and members of the Virginia militia near what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Initially the French and their Native American allies performed well, launching skillful ambushes on English troops and forcing George Washington, a young officer in the Virginia colonial militia, to surrender Britain’s Fort Necessity.

However, the early success of the French in forcing the British to retreat did not last. In 1758, the Shawnee tribe, the Delaware tribe, and the powerful Iroquoian Confederacy agreed to ally with the English in exchange for their promise to respect Indigenous rights to contested lands on the frontier. The Iroquois Confederacy was a collection of allied Native American tribes who called themselves Haudenosaunee, which means “people of the longhouse.” The name referred both to the rectangular homes in which they lived and their geographic territory, which extended from what is now Vermont in the east all the way to Lake Erie in the west, an area roughly the shape of a longhouse. The Iroquoian tribes had formed a military and economic alliance by 1600 that consisted of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes. The Tuscarora tribe joined the confederacy in 1722. Other, non-Iroquoian Native Americans, including several Algonquin tribes, remained loyal to the French until the end of the war in 1763. With Native American help, the English launched successful offensives against New France. The British turned in the tide in 1759, with a series of victories culminating in their capture of French Quebec after the Battle on the Plains of Abraham (Figure 6.11).

The French and Indian War ended with the victory of Great Britain and Prussia over France and Spain in the Seven Years’ War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763. Under the treaty, the French government surrendered all its territory in North America, as well as outposts in the Caribbean, India, and Africa. Britain became the undisputed controller of eastern North America, from Canada in the north to the Florida border in the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Mississippi River in the west.

The Seven Years’ War had begun in Europe in 1756 when Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Saxony and annexed the area as part of his broader plan to expand Prussian territory. In response, France, Spain, and Russia joined forces with Austria to oppose him. Great Britain allied itself with Prussia to maintain the balance of power in Europe, a situation in which competing nations have approximately equal military power. Maintaining this balance was a key feature of British foreign policy meant to prevent the domination of Europe by any one nation. Military alliances thus transformed what could have been a small border dispute in Europe into a major war that quickly spread around the world (Figure 6.12).

In 1758, a British expeditionary force captured the French outpost of Senegal in West Africa, and other French outposts were taken during a series of subsequent offensives. The loss of valuable trading ports damaged the French economy at the very moment France desperately needed money to fund the war effort. More importantly, it deprived French military forces of strategic bases they could have used to raid British shipping and resupply their warships.

In Asia, the British East India Company, a joint stock company founded in 1600 with the original goal of trading in the Indian Ocean, was by now providing the British with a much stronger economic as well as military and diplomatic foundation than their French rivals had. To thwart these British advantages and gain control of valuable territory in India, the French formed an alliance with the Mughal Empire. At its height, this powerful Muslim realm had once ruled more than 150 million people living across 1.5 million square miles in what is now Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh. The British defeated the French forces in 1761, however, when they captured Pondicherry, the most important French outpost in India. The Mughals continued to resist British domination even after the French had largely withdrawn from India.

In 1762, the British launched attacks on Spanish colonies in Asia and the Caribbean, capturing the port of Manila in the Philippines and occupying it until the end of the war in 1763. They were less successful in expanding their control over the islands, despite the assistance of Indigenous Filipinos who disliked Spanish rule. In the Caribbean, however, Britain succeeded in capturing Havana, Cuba, one of the most important ports in the Western Hemisphere, and held it until the end of the conflict.

Furthermore, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the French surrendered their imperial possessions in North America and India to the British, while the Spanish surrendered Florida to the British and France gave control of the Louisiana Territory to Spain. The subsequent Peace of Hubertusburg guaranteed Prussian control of Silesia, an area in central Europe, and confirmed Prussia’s status as a major force in Europe. The British, for their part, emerged from the Seven Years’ War as the world’s leading economic, military, and political power.