by Jerry Curtis

Created on: July 30, 2008

The French and Indian War had major repercussions in France, England and the American colonies. After seven years of struggle on a world-wide front, France finally succumbed to superior British power in an American war theater that ranged from Canada in the north to the western frontier of the American seaboard colonies.

The French loss meant the end of their power and possessions in the New World. They lost all of Canada and territory south along the Mississippi, except for New Orleans. American territory west of the Mississippi and north of Mexico was ceded to Spain, who would be coerced in 1804 by Napoleon Bonaparte to cede the land back to France. Napoleon, in turn, would sell the vast territory as part of the historic Louisiana Purchase.

The defeat would render the French impotent until their own republican revolution later in the century. However, the French would not soon forget their humiliation; and before their own revolution that would depose their monarchy, the French would lend American colonists a hand in throwing the British out of America.

The British victory established them as the world's preeminent naval and military power. Projecting that power thousands of miles in the colonies proved to be an expensive venture. British politicians at home faced the unhappy prospect of raising taxes on an already over-taxed public, and saw no alternative but to require their colonies to help foot the bill. The British, then, would institute a series of revenue schemes that would include the hated Townshend and Stamp Acts that would increasingly alienate their subjects in America.

Colonists, on the other hand, were deeply disappointed with the aftermath and outcome of the French and Indian War. Westerners particularly looked forward to the departure of the French, who, with their Indian allies were obstacles to further settlement. Americans were shocked to learn of the King's Proclamation of 1763 forbidding white settlers west of the Alleghenies. Colonists saw the proclamation as poor payment for fighting the French and the very Indians who would not benefit from this hated proclamation.

Despite the Proclamation of 1763, Native Americans were unable to resist the growing pressure of the American colonies, whose population continued to grow. Although the British forbade settlement on Indian lands or any land deals and honestly tried to establish good relations with the Indians, they were unable to replicate the good relations enjoyed by the previous French colonists and trappers. Moreover, the British continually adjusted the settlement boundary to accommodate influential individuals. Indians were eventually squeezed out of the Ohio Valley and moved west, only to be confronted years later by Americans in pursuit of "Manifest Destiny."

The French and Indian War, then, forever changed Britain's view of her American colonies, who before the 1750's the Mother Country treated with "benign neglect." Wars in the colonies required soldiers, equipment, supplies and the money to pay for it all. The colonists, who regarded themselves as loyal British subjects, were nevertheless deeply offended by what they saw as cavalier treatment and unjust restriction of their freedom to expand. The slogan "No taxation without representation" would develop into open rebellion and a break with Britain.

What of the Indians? The original inhabitants of the continent, who mostly supported the French, would shift their loyalties to the British - again, backing the losing side - and setting in motion a century and a half of struggle and loss.

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