France Finds a Foothold in Canada

New France Fans Out

The Clash of Empires

George Washington Inaugurates War with France

Chapter 6: The Duel for North America (1608-1763)

• France was another latecomer to the New World because of war and internal religious struggle, ex. the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in which Catholics slaughtered Huguenots

• But 1598 the Edict of Nantes granted limited tolerance to Protestants, and France was subsequently well-led by King Louis XIV (1643-1715)

• 1608 the first successful French colony was established at Quebec under Samuel de Champlain, who allied with the Hurons and made enemies with the Iroquois

• After multiple commercial companies failed, the French government gained autocratic control of New France (AKA Canada)

• Population growth was slow because landowning peasants and Huguenots had no economic or religious motives to move, respectively, and the government favored its Caribbean colonies

• New France was populated by beavers with valuable pelts, so French fur-trappers and the Indians they enlisted pushed deep into unexplored land, but decimated the beaver population and killed many Indians through disease and alcoholism

• French Catholic missionaries, esp. the Jesuits, tried to convert the Indians, but were more successful as explorers and geographers

• 1701 Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit to block the English from advancing in to the Ohio Valley

• 1682 Robert de La Salle claimed the Mississippi/Gulf area and named it Louisiana to block Spanish penetration, but 1687 was killed by his men while attempting to establish a colony

• French officials continued to establish posts in the Gulf area, ex. 1718 the strategically located New Orleans on the mouth of the Mississippi River

• The first struggles for control were the 1689-1697 King William's War (AKA the War of the League of Augsburg) and the 1702-1713 Queen Anne's War (AKA the War of Spanish Succession) in which the French and Spanish and their Indian allies fought the English and their Indian allies through guerrilla warfare, because it was not worth it to send in troops

• The French and Spanish lost badly, and the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave Britain Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay area and limited trading rights in Spanish America

• But English-Spanish trade was tense because of smuggling, so Spanish authorities sliced off British captain Jenkins' ear, so 1739 the War of Jenkins's Ear between the British and Spanish

• The small War of Jenkins's Ear merged with the War of Austrian Succession (AKA King George's War) with France and Spain against the British, in which New Englanders captured the secure and strategic French fortress of Louisbourg, but the 1748 peace treaty returned Louisbourg to the French

• The French and British fought primarily over the strategic Ohio Valley• 1749 some British speculators secured legal “rights” to land in the Valley where the French

were building a chain of forts, so 1754 the governor of Virginia sent surveyor George Washington with some troops

• Washington was successful at first but had to surrender in July 1754 at Fort Necessity• 1755 the French Acadians were evicted from British-owned Nova Scotia for fear of retaliation,

and some settled in Louisiana and became the Cajuns

Global War and Colonial Disunity

Braddock's Blundering and Its Aftermath

Pitt's Palms of Victory

Restless Colonists

Americans: A People of Destiny

• Unlike the previous three Anglo-French wars, the French and Indian War (see above) was started in America and spread to Europe and elsewhere with Britain and Prussia against Spain, France, and Russia, becoming the Seven Years' War

• France's power in the New World was weakened by the war in Europe• Previously, Americans were extremely disunified, so 1754 the British government called an

intercolonial congress in order to retain alliance with the Iroquois and to achieve greater unity in order to better resist the French

• Benjamin Franklin was a leader in the congress, creating a plan for home rule that the delegates supported, but the colonies and crown rejected because it gave too little or too much freedom

• At first, the French and Indian War went badly for the British with their troops under the leadership of General Braddock

• Was badly defeated by Indians, who went on to attack the frontier from North Carolina to Pennsylvania

• 1756 the British unsuccessfully invaded Canada

• 1757 talented orator and popularly supported William Pitt became a leader in London government and shifted focus from attacking the French West Indies to attacking the Quebec-Montreal area, and gave power to young, energetic leaders

• 1758 the British took down the fortress of Louisbourg, the first significant victory of the war• 1759 Battle of Quebec under James Wolfe was another significant victory• 1760 the falling of Montreal was the end for the French in the New World• 1763 in the Treaty of Paris, France lost all New World possessions except for a few islands in

the West Indies and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Spain received trans-Mississippi Louisiana and with Britain exchanged Florida for Cuba

• So Britain ended up as the leading power in North America and on the seas

• The wars in America boosted the colonists' confidence and showed that the British were not invincible

• The British officers thought that the American troops were inferior and societal scum• Americans were still disunited, with some trading with the Spanish and French in the West

Indies and others refusing to provide troops and money until promised a reimbursement by Pitt• The disunity was caused by distance, geographic barriers, and differences in religion,

nationality, socio-economic status, and type of colonial government• But the French and Indian War brought together soldiers and delegates from all over, helping

to begin the process of unification

• The removal of France's powerful hold on the New World gave English colonists a new sense of independence

• Additionally, the Spanish were mostly relegated to the West, and the Indians lost the ability to play off the rivalries of the European powers and had to negotiate only with the British

• So 1763 Ottowa chief Pontiac tried to drive the British out of Ohio, and was nearly successful, but was defeated through biological warfare

• So now Americans could venture past the Appalachians, but then Britain issued the

Makers of America: The French

Summary

Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited settlement past the Appalachians for fear of Indian uprising, but the Americans did not like and settled there anyway• The colonists now had a sense of potency and progress, while the Britons were annoyed at

their unruliness

• After the “Sun King” Louis XIV lost Canada to Britain, many of the French there wanted out• The first of these were the Acadians:◦ 1713 France ceded their area to the British, and 1755 they were expelled in Le Grand

Derangement and settled in the bayous of Louisiana◦ They became the Cajuns and kept a tradition of Roman Catholicism and French language,

and until the 1930s lived in isolated, tight-knit communities• 1763 Quebec fell under British rule, and by 1840 Quebecois were steadily emigrating mostly

to New England because of poor harvests, but still kept close ties to their past through Roman Catholicism and the French language

• French influence still remains strong in Quebec today

• The French began colonizing the New World only after settling religious conflicts and coming under the rule of the “Sun King” Louis XIV

• After a slow start, France's colonies grew because of their economic and strategic value• But France lost nearly all its possessions in the New World mostly to Britain in the 1713

Treaty of Utrecht that ended the War of Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War) and the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)

• But French influence remained in French-occupied areas and where displaced French settlers resettled

• The wars helped to reduce the extreme disunity of the American colonists and gave them a new sense of independence, which British rulers disliked