6b Colonial Government and the Road to Revolution Colonial Wars Part II

0:02 okay welcome back this is colonial wars part two and in this lecture we focus on the french-indian war so this will be pretty brief and just goes over the main points of the war but for your information the effects of the war are more important that the military details of the war itself so we looked at a series of wars between England and France in the late 17th and 18th century the wards were in decisive territorial shifts were marginal and didn't really solve the contests of these territorial claims the last war and its treaty Exley Chapelle was more of a truce than a treaty as far as North America was concerned and the greater rivalries

0:48 continued the old rivalries for the fur trade of New York and the Great Lakes continued and the rivalry over control of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys continued the most volatile area that the the French and English are squabbling over is the Ohio Valley so let's look at the French and Indian War the French and Indian War erupted in what is now western Pennsylvania and Ohio and was largely caused by the fur trade the control of the fur trade in western Pennsylvania English fur

1:35 merchants s trap established a string of trading posts to trade pelts and goods with the Indians English traders at the same time began to encroach on the French alliance system the friending tribes Confederation that the French had previously previously had alliances with but offering them their superior and cheaper English goods at better prices so again the French Indian Indian War erupted in what is now western Pennsylvania due to control and disputes over the fur trade for instance speaking to the

2:21 tensions that I mentioned again the the greater of points of dispute in the president need were our control of the Ohio Valley and Mississippi to the west okay so here is basically what happened in Western PA the English establishing system of forts and began to challenge the French monopoly on the fur trade and Indian alliances and befriended tribes that were previously friendly with the French as a concrete example of that was the log town treaty in 1748 Conrad Weiser negotiated the logs town treaty with the Miami tribe they were an

3:09 Algonquin tribe who had moved to the Ohio Valley the area around the Ohio River Weiser Conrad Weiser negotiated this treaty he was a veteran Indian trader originally from Pennsylvania and in the treaty with the group of Miami Indians they promised to sell their furs to English traders and no longer to the French as previously why was this controversial well this was a direct challenge to the French Canadian fur economy their unofficial monopoly on the fur trade the way that they claimed to control it and as I mentioned before the French had had a long-standing alliance with the Miami and this treaty pulls the carpet out

3:55 from under it so this is a good example of how the French held the English challenged the French monopoly on the fur trade and challenged the French's previous alliances with Indians at the same time there was great land speculation and great sales in the West in this Ohio Valley area by influential colonial politicians in 1747 a group of land speculators from England and Virginia organized the Ohio company a land speculation company and this company received a land grant grant from the king for 2,000 acres and sold tracts of land to settlers so there was this influx of settlers into the West so what

4:44 was the French response in response to the English is obvious challenge to territory that they claim this area in green so that the map shows it very well this area was clearly British this area was clearly French and it is this green area that is in dispute so in response to the English challenge to bear territory in 1752 1753 the French begin to construct a new set of forts in western Pennsylvania in Ohio from Lake Erie to the forks of the Ohio River at what is now Pittsburgh one very important for it was to be at the fork the Forks of three strategic rivers

5:29 where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River of course the the French build the series of forts the forts in blue but the English have no intention of giving up its claims to the Ohio Valley its investment with the Ohio company these treaties with the Indians news of this new series of French forts alarmed colonial elites for instance it alarmed the governor of Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie was a colonial governor of Virginia during this period who was also an investor in the Ohio company didn't Witte sent a young Virginia country

6:16 gentleman named George Washington he sent Washington with a military expedition about 150 militia men and sent him West with a message to the French the message was to warn the French that they with this new series of forts here we're trespassing on English land and that they needed to leave so Washington's message was a warning get out or else he was trying to evict them the French response was to ignore Washington the French politely but firmly denied the English claim and instead of getting out they built Fort Duquesne at the sight of the street at the site of the three strategic rivers I mentioned the the Allegheny the

7:02 Monongahela and Ohio so they built a fort there in the spring of 1754 they built Fort Duquesne at the site of present-day Pittsburgh at the site of present-day Pittsburgh now back to Washington's role in this this expedition was Washington's very first military command he hat was young inexperienced and had with him about 150 Virginia militiamen Rock Washington promptly displayed his inexperience and youth despite the French is far superior numbers that were engaged building fort to Kane Washington foolishly attacked and destroyed a small French patrol so

7:51 he did succeed in attacking a small French patrol what you might call a minor victory for Washington and killing French soldiers but this small patrol was only a small part of the French troops that were actually stationed at Fort Duquesne so understandably the French were upset being attacked by this upstart young Colonel and attacked back understandably upset understandably upset the main French force about five hundred men and their Indian allies about 400 Indians surrounded Washington's Kim Washington's camp was a hastily constructed fort built in a

8:36 swamp and was nicknamed Fort Necessity not a good name it was a dump it was a a badly built for it on a swamp so the French main forces attack Washington it began to rain heavily Washington soldiers are swallowed in water and the French and Indian allies fires on them from the hills in this battle what became known as the Battle of Fort Necessity in this battle of Fort Necessity Washington would be forced to surrender on July 4th 1754 this this battle did not actually begin the French and Indian War surprisingly he actually

9:21 received generous terms from the French Washington and his men were allowed to return to Virginia with no real consequences but nonetheless this small conflict in western Pennsylvania could not be contained the French were eager to sort of practice damage control and didn't want this conflict to escalate into a war but nonetheless the small conflict in Western PA could not be contained and in two years the conflict spread to Europe where it became a major European and indeed global war so this war that sort of was based in this battle of 1754 erupted into a general war from 1756 to 1763 called in Europe

10:08 the Seven Years War and called in America the French and Indian War so in America it involved the French and their Indian allies versus the English and their Indian allies so in terms of the Indian alliances the French were allied with most of the Native Americans with the exception of the Iroquois the French had the support of the Delaware the Shawnee the Algonquin her on people's various tribes and the English had a tentative shaky alliance with the Iroquois we'll discuss this a bit later so this is how the war played out in the

10:54 colonies but the French and Indian War was actually a global war fought in many theaters but it was proc thought primarily primarily over control of North America the Ohio and Mississippi Valley in Europe it played out as a pan-european struggle england and prussia versus france france spain russia austria i'm not going to really go into the european aspects of the war we're gonna focus on the american part but again it was a major european war but this time okay what you should know is that this time unlike previous wars the conflict in america was not a

11:39 sideshow to events in europe in this war america and the territory in America was now center stage and in this war Britain there wouldn't be like marginal indecision in this war there would be a decisive victory and who would fall for the British okay so in the French and Indian War ended in the French and Indian War the French and English both had distinct advantages and disadvantages the French had a more autocratic royal form of government which gave them greater control over the colonies the French definitely had a superior system of strategic forts and like I mentioned before the French had

12:26 the support of most Native American tribes like the Delaware Shawnee Algonquin etc England also enjoyed a number of advantages they had a bigger population perhaps a million and a half versus a much smaller prevent French population seventy or eighty thousand their army and navy was much more modern much more effective they did enjoy the well let's talk about the Indian Alliance in a second the disadvantages of England were that it had less Indian allies and it has to overcome the problem of colonial decentralization and division

13:11 okay the American seaboard colonies were completely disunited and were completely decentralized the colonies never cooperated and had no mechanisms for coordinating self-defense or military affairs they sort of jealously guarded it's their independence so going into the war the English government realized that it had two challenges to overcome it had to overcome first the disunity of the colonies in the previous Wars England had attempted to requisition men and supplies from each colony but the system proved slow and ineffective why each colony looked

13:57 at itself as its own state and the assembly the governor would typically clash about the number of men to sin and while they were quarreling the enemy would gain ground so the colonies were decentralized divided did not cooperate even for self-defense or military affairs that was the main challenge one challenge they had to overcome the disunity of the colonies second challenge was England realized they would have to break the stalemate in terms of relations with the Indians that they would have to break the French balances of power with the Indians and the fact that the French enjoyed more favorable alliances with more Indian groups so England strategy was to try to gain and retain the loyalty and

14:45 friendship of the Iroquois and get the Iroquois to abandon their long-standing neutrality so to skip ahead despite their numerous Indian allies the balance would be irreverently tipped against the French when the Iroquois do join the English side the Iroquois sort of joined the English side I would say in a non-committal way in the early stages of the war but the Iroquois joined the English side decisively in 1759 and after okay and I'll reiterate that idea

15:30 in a second now in response to both of these issues the colonial disunity and hopefully gaining favorable relations with the Iroquois something called the Albany Congress was called the Albany Congress was an inter colonial leap Union and intercolonial meeting with delegates of the different colonies the Albany Congress met in Albany in New York in June 1754 and consisted of representatives from New York Pennsylvania Maryland Connecticut Rhode Island Massachusetts and New Hampshire so it was trying to arrest address the

16:16 problem of colonial unity and the Indian issue with regard to the Indian issue the Congress attempted to regain or gain the support of as many Iroquois as possible em a fur trader named William Johnson who had married a mohawk woman carried on most of the negotiations with the Iroquois with the Iroquois this this English fur trader promised the Iroquois Confederacy that there at any complaints any grievances against the English regarding land would be fixed as long as they aided the English against the French in this war and in these negotiations Johnson paints the French as liars and says that the French are trying to take

17:02 advantage of Indian division and the Iroquois are also given a tremendous amount of gifts and trade goods they're given like 30 wagons of European manufactured goods the result well the Iroquois left the Congress without definitively committing themselves to an alliance but sort of gave the English favourable signs that they would be willing to enter into an alliance soon England felt that their support the Iroquois support had been won but it's not really firmly there yet so again it's complex the English were wrong in assuming that the Iroquois were necessarily going to support them they gave their hesitant support but the

17:49 Iroquois only definitively supported the English from seventh in 1759 onwards in other words they gave their hesitant support after this but only gave their full fledge support five years later in 1759 when it became clear that yes the English were definitely going to win the war up to that point the English the Iroquois support was in a minute meaning sometimes but was usually obtained through additional money additional Goods additional gifts so the English in a nutshell enjoyed a tenuous shaky alliance with the Iroquois with the Iroquois that came to be stronger after 1759 so that was one thing that the Albany Congress was responsible for

18:36 negotiating this alliance with the Iroquois the Congress was also responsible for the Albany plan of Union in a nutshell it was a plan for an inter colonial Union to manage Indian Affairs and manage mutual defense the plan was to promote colonial unity and cooperation the the plan was drafted by Benjamin Franklin and a committee and basically what it resulted what it would have resulted in was a form of government in which local affairs remained in the hands of colonial legislatures but would also have inter

19:23 colonial affairs dealt with by an inter colonial body so sort of a federal system and the inter colonial affairs would include common affairs like Indian Affairs and military defense so here's the nitty-gritty details of how it actually worked there was to be a Grand Council representing all of the colonies to be presided over by a president appointed by the king the the council would meet annually to deal with military defense and Indian issues and members of the council would be chosen by the colonial assemblies for

20:09 three-year terms nonetheless the president that presided over the council would have veto power over the council the delegates the representation of the delegates of the individual colonies would be awarded proportional to their financial contributions to this Grand Council that's sort of a small detail nonetheless the plan for Union this sort of federal system for administering the colonies never came to be it was rejected the plan was not acceptable to the English government because the Parliament in the crown feared a loss of power and the plan was likewise not acceptable to the colonial assemblies they felt that it deprived them too much

20:55 authority it might lead to higher taxes who knows so the plan was rejected and came to nothing okay um so as for the actual French and Indian War I'm gonna keep it as brief as possible um the first phase of the war was marked really by French victory and the use of Indian guerrilla tactics there are very few set-piece battles and by that I mean a traditional European battle waged on a battlefield in which strategy and decisive movement of troops is are important these many of these many of these battles are fought in the

21:41 wilderness using ambush guerrilla tactics so that's the first phase of the war and again we'll keep it very very brief okay so the main British commander in the early phase of the war is General Braddock so General Braddock was ordered to march on for takane from his base in Virginia and there were to be other expeditions from New York and New England to march on other French strongholds other French forts in the West here and here however Braddock soon realized the

22:27 futility of the albertine Congress when the Legislature's of the colonies of Virginia New York and Pennsylvania refused to vote him the men and the supplies he needed so um perhaps they should have gone along with the Albin II Congress in June 1755 Braddock set out for Fort Duquesne what is now Pittsburgh with an army of about 2,500 men including 250 Virginia militiamen under command of Washington so 2,500 British so British colonial soldiers meeting the French fort duquesne was commanded by

23:14 only 900 French soldiers and a number of France's Native American allies so as I mentioned there were 2,500 British versus 900 French soldiers the French are vastly outnumbered the French decided that their only hope was to ambush the British Army so they waited until Braddock's troops were crossing the Monongahela River and then attacked them in an ambush not in a traditional set piece back battle the result was that Braddock's army was routed they were totally destroyed General Braddock was killed George Washington famously had two horses shot

23:59 out from underneath him in the battle so fort duquesne was a major French victory in the early phase of the war the French received a lot of criticism for their quote unquote uncivilized way of fighting in this war the way that they used in and allies and used quote-unquote uncivilized Indian tactics like this ambush technique in the early phases of the war there are very few notable British successes the French enjoy a number of victories the French commander the Marquis de Montcalm captured Fort Oswego on the southern shore of Lake

24:49 Ontario in 1756 and also captured Lake George I'm sorry also captured Fort William Henry on Lake George as well Fort William Henry was a English fort on Lake George in New York so on both occasions the English were horrified by the uncivilized way that the French and their Indian allies supposedly fought the French Indian allies collected scalps as trophies so just to give you a practical example of this quote/unquote uncivilized manner of the war the

25:36 surrender of Fort Henry so once again fort henry was the english fort on Lake George in New York so Fort William Henry was was once again a French victory the French took the fork the surrender of Fort Henry in 1757 the surrender fort henry by the british was followed by the massacre of fort henry which killed about 200 per say the terms of the surrender the english were supposed to surrender their fort to the french but the British soldiers were allowed to be allowed to have safe patches and they were supposed to be allowed to withdraw

26:22 safely under French escort they were allowed to keep their mustn't muskets but with no ammunition but with no ammunition and pledged to not participate in the war for a given period of time however what followed was confusion chaos and bloodshed the Indians felt betrayed by their French allies and did not want to agree to the terms of the treaty they had very different understandings of warfare so the agreement was was that the British soldiers who had surrendered were to be delivered given safe passions and be delivered back to British territory and not be killed however the Indians did not want to agree to the terms of the treaty Indians

27:08 entered the camp and butchered some of the wounded British soldiers left behind just just as French leaders were preparing to march the surrendered troop out the British were forced to hunt were forced to halt the march of the prisoners and to the next morning when they did the Indians renewed their attacks they harassed French troops that were protecting the British soldiers and killed and scalped the British soldiers as trophies what was the action reaction of the French some French troops tried to stop the attacks stung some stood idly by and some explicitly refused to protect the British this became known as the massacre of Fort Henry

27:53 an estimated 200 500 British troops died now the reason for this were complex but suffice it to say that the Indian allies weren't necessarily treated as equals in being consulted on the terms of the treaty streety right so the blame for this you know Falls also on the French Indian relations and the tensions between the French and the Indian allies okay um so basically the first phase of the war goes very poorly the English however things begin to change in 1758 from 1758 to 1760 there are a number of British victories they begin

28:40 to fight a more European style of warfare which the British excelled at this was also due to a new British prime minister in 1758 a new British Prime Minister as in 758 William Pitt the elder became prime minister he was a Whig a liberal and gave the American War top priority and basically the British began winning battles in terms of colonial policy he was in favour of competition compromise with the colonies and promised that they would be reimbursed for whatever contributions they made this becomes

29:26 important later in any case under Pitts leadership the English really start becoming successful within the year English troops captured Louisbourg recaptured louvered as I mentioned and captured a fort duquesne which would be renamed Fort Pitt Louie Berg was a matter of great pride and importance because remember the Massachusetts militia had seized it back in that previous war in King George's War but were forced to give it back so as for the details in fall of 1758 general john forbes resumed the british efforts to oust the French from Western PA general

30:16 Forbes led a large army of British soldiers into western and PA and seeing this to spread seamless display of military strength large numbers of Native Americans in Western PA and Ohio begin deserting the French when they saw this powerful army approaching by now only a small number of French soldiers soldiers remained at Fort de King but as we said before they had won the Battle of Fort Duquesne previously even though they were outnumbered but the difference is now that the French his Indian allies began the French and going over to the side of the British and this made all the

31:02 difference so in 1758 with only a small number of French soldiers remaining the soldiers decide to blow up the fort and flee and leave it to the British so fort decane was taken by the British in 1758 who renamed it Fort Pitt there are a number of other victories in 1759 fort niagara fort ticonderoga crown pauline all fell to the english and colonial troops we we don't have time for all of these details as we said the taking of fort duquesne in 1758 another major turning point was the siege of Quebec in 1759 General

31:49 James Wolfe besieged Quebec which was the capital of New France and Quebec would surrender to the English despite the fact that the French commander Montcalm's thought that the city was untaken impregnable so the fall of Quebec Quebec the Battle of Quebec was definitely a turning point in the war it was a battle in which both the main British and French commanders died this is an image of General Wolfe dying on the battlefield but definitely the fall be turning points in the war so Quebec would would be besieged and fall to the

32:37 English in 1759 this would be followed by the siege of Montreal in 1760 and basically after the fall of Quebec Montreal other Western forts fell like Detroit this effectively ended the French presence in new Canada now the so the siege of Quebec the fall of Montreal the French and Indian War was a global war playing out in other areas of the world the Caribbean India in the West India in England also conquered the French colonies of martinique and guadeloupe so in a nutshell the most important thing about the war is the effects and the

33:26 peace treaty so the war was ended with a peace treaty signed in Paris it came to be known as the Peace of Paris so if you look at the map the English basically win the war have the just decisive victory and get all of the disputed lands if you see that the stripy area this was the land that was in dispute and almost all of this comes to the English so what were the territorial ships please make sure that you know these per se the Peace of Paris France ceded Canada so Canada in all lands east of the Mississippi River to England so

34:13 the land between the Mississippi the land between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains is seated to England the England also acquires several islands in the West Indies but I'm not going to really go into this in exchange the English do have to return some territory in the West Indies the English English have to give back Martinique and Guadeloupe not so important but the main shifts that we are concerned with is North America as a result of the war Spain seeds Florida to England this was a huge game in return Spain would receive Louisiana and

34:58 Louisiana is defined as America west of the Mississippi from France so what is Spain doing in this so once again England receives us Florida from Spain and Spain would receive Louisiana the territory west of the Mississippi from France what a Spain have to do do with this Spain had entered the war and 1762 on the French side Spain was an ally of France so the Spanish lose Florida because they are on the losing side but the territorial shift of Louisiana the fact that they gain Louisiana which

35:44 previously belong to the French was to make up for the loss of Florida okay here's a taste of what's to come the results were a different and new era of relations with Great Britain so here's another map showing you the new British claims all of this area this is Spanish the map now looks very different with Canada and Florida now under English control the mainland colonies were no longer under date danger of attack from France or Spain and because Britain now controlled most of North America some American colonists no

36:31 longer felt the need to cling to Britain for military protection I don't mean to suggest that Americans suddenly wanted to be independent after 1763 many Americans were very proud of the British victory and what the victory in the French and Indian War meant to the British Empire but with the mainland colonies no longer under the danger of attack from France or Spain some colonists felt less dependent on Britain and more willing to consider independence another effect of the French and Indian War was an era of mutual dislike and distrust between the English and the colonists the colonies

37:18 and the English had never come into such close and prolonged contact remember the English tended to practice this traditional this tradition of salutary neglect they more or less left the colonies alone the English were furious when stubborn colonial assembly used to grant money for supplies and personnel in the war and there were tensions between English troops and colonial troops English the English resented the fact that colonial troops were sometimes unenthusiastic poorly trained even dirty so the English British troops shipped to the colony for the war looked at the colonists and their militia as ragged second-class citizens so there was a lot of tensions

38:10 between British military leaders and American military leaders American military leaders were annoyed by the supposed arrogance of English naval and army RF officers who treated the American commanders as little better than barbarians so the first thing we talked about was no no more danger of attack from France or Spain then we talked about this new era of distrust and dislike between England and the colonists the third result that I wanted to think about was economic development so we talked about the Navigation Acts England's mercantilist Ames this whole idea of England having a monopoly of

38:56 trade with the colonies and shipping finished English goods to the colonies in exchange for raw materials for the duration of the conflict the navigation acts really weren't strictly enforced the laws against colonial manufacturing were not enforced and the English army really needed supplies so the war really supported America's independent economic development manufacturing boomed the shipbuilding industry boomed and the fishing in the American fishing industry cook took the control of the Grand Banks away from the English so essentially the French and Indian War showed Americans

39:42 how prosperous they might be if they weren't hampered by the Navigation Acts and English mercantile directions so we'll continue within the effect