what was pitts plan to defeat the french

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) is the name given to the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), a global disharmonize involving the major powers of Europe. Though war was non formally declared until 1756, armed disharmonize began in 1754 equally disputes over country claims in the Ohio Valley lead to a series of frontier battles between the French and British. Both received support from diverse Native American tribes, though the outnumbered French became far more dependent on these allies as the war progressed. The French saw a number of early victories, most notably over George Washington and Edward Braddock in Western Pennsylvania. Washington quickly became a primal figure in the conflict, maturing during his tenure in the Virginia militia from an inexperienced immature major to the commander in main of the colony's regiment. Washington'south involvement during the war'southward early stages provided the time to come President with invaluable military feel while also gaining him positive notoriety that helped to launch his future political career. The tide turned in favor of the British in 1757 when King George II appointed Secretary of State William Pitt to commander of wartime operations.  Pitt believed that securing victories in Northward America would ensure U.k.'due south global success, and reinvigorated the war attempt past reorganizing military leadership and strengthening the Crown's relationship with its colonists in America. British assaults on strategic outposts such as Ticonderoga, Niagara, and Quebec in 1759, followed by the successful siege of Montreal in September of 1760, prompted the French surrender. Though Britain's victory in the French and Indian War expelled French republic from North America and secured massive territorial gains for the empire, subsequent Crown policies apropos revenue enhancement and westward expansion resulted in widespread colonial discontent. The disharmonize and its aftermath produced substantial ideological divisions betwixt Britain and her North American colonies that ultimately contributed to the outbreak of the American Revolution.

The French and Indian State of war was one of many French-British conflicts fought during the Second Hundred Years' War (1689-1815), a historical era that included Male monarch William'due south State of war (1689-1697), Queen Anne'due south State of war (1702-1713) and King George's War (1744-1748). The struggle for control over North America that developed into the French and Indian War materialized in the mid-eighteenth century due to a dispute over French land claims in North America. Betwixt 1700 and 1750, the colonial populations of Canada and Louisiana increased significantly, forcing expansion into the Ohio River Valley region. Equally settlement in this area and the Lower Mississippi Valley increased, New French republic increased her agricultural output and invested heavily in Louisiana's sugar economic system. During this period, the French strengthened military ties and existing trade relationships with numerous Indian societies, sparking contest with the British for Ethnic allies. By 1749, population growth in the E and a desire for landed wealth from colonial elites prompted the Virginia House of Burgesses to issue large grants of territory in the West to private land companies, such as the Ohio Company. However, competing claims from the French challenged the Ohio Company's plan for future sale of these lands, prompting the colony of Virginia to initiate efforts toward halting the construction of French forts in western Pennsylvania and removing these rivals from the region. In late October of 1753, twenty-one-year-former George Washington, a major in the Virginia Militia, volunteered to deliver a bulletin to the French on behalf of the colony'south governor, Robert Dinwiddie. The ultimatum ordered that the French halt construction on Fort LeBoeuf in Western Pennsylvania and evacuate lands in the Ohio Valley, or else face an armed attack.

George Washington'southward experience in the French and Indian War was a formative one, allowing him to develop from a determined, yet inexperienced, leader, to a distinguished commander of the Virginia militia. Washington did not manage to miscarry the French on his expedition to Fort LeBoeuf, and his lack of a formal military machine education revealed itself in a number of tactical blunders during the war'southward early years. Washington's most infamous mistake took identify in July of 1754 post-obit the Battle of Fort Necessity, where his surrender unwittingly included an admission that British troops had assassinated the French officer Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. While these events prompted Washington to resign his committee from the Virginia militia, his errors gained the attention of officials in London, who before long afterwards dispatched two regiments to N America nether command of Major General Edward Braddock. Furthermore, the publication of Washington's journals from the LeBeouf expedition, titled The Periodical of Major George Washington , illuminated the importance of controlling the Ohio Valley, and the necessity of this region in securing Britain's North American Empire. This account convinced governmental officials that armed services force was necessary to remove the French from the Western borderland and gained acclamation for Washington on both sides of the Atlantic. This notoriety prompted Washington to return to armed forces service in 1755 as an aide-de-campsite for Braddock's summer expedition to Fort Duquesne. Though this mission concluded in defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela, his distinguished services earned Washington a promotion to Commander in Chief of the Virginia Militia Forces, a post he held until his resignation in 1758.

Weak leadership and disagreements inside the British army plagued Washington'south armed forces tenure in the ii years post-obit the Braddock expedition. Proposals to attack forts in Canada, including Quebec, Niagara, and Duquesne, were dismissed by colonial governors, who often voiced concerns over their commanders' collective lack of agile military feel, particularly when compared to their French counterparts. Between 1755 and 1757, these disputes allowed French forces, along with their Indian allies, to capture numerous British forts in New York and Pennsylvania, while wreaking havoc in the Southern backcountry. Upon taking function in 1757, Secretary of State William Pitt assumed control over British military machine operations, developing a plan to reinvigorate the North American war try. Pitt's strategy called for the British to finance the expansion of Prussia's ground forces, increasing hostilities in Europe and diverting French attention from the colonies.  By weakening France's military machine effort in the colonies and bolstering the number of regular soldiers fighting in North America, the British to regained control of the war by 1759, swaying many Ethnic groups from their French allegiances and capturing well-nigh of the vital outposts protecting Canada. Furthermore, between 1760 and 1762, the British Empire seized nearly every French territory in the Caribbean, adding Cuba in August of 1762 post-obit Spain'due south official annunciation of war. Faced with imminent defeat, French republic and her allies agreed to negotiations with the British, signing the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763. Past the conditions of the treaty, France ceded all North American land claims e of the Mississippi River to Cracking Uk, along with a number of her West Indian islands and Canada. Kingdom of spain, France'due south marry by the Family Compact, received trans-Mississippi Louisiana equally well as control over New Orleans. The Castilian in plough ceded Florida to Great Great britain in return for Cuba, which the British had seized in June of the previous year. While these territorial shifts put the whole of eastern N America nether British command, much of the populace criticized the terms of the treaty. Objectors argued that by restoring to France the valuable saccharide islands of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadeloupe, Great britain had given her the opportunity to recover, rebuild, and potentially emerge equally a armed forces threat in the future. Supporters, however, praised Britain's treaty negotiations, declaring her empire in N America to finally exist secure and complete.

Britain's extensive territorial gains often overshadow the complicated legacies and consequences of the French and Indian State of war. These geographic shifts triggered an era of social and political modify that estranged the Crown from much of her colonial citizenry. The British had clustered a substantial amount of debt in fighting the war, and consequently implemented a number of taxation measures upon the colonies to alleviate the Empire's financial burden. These parliamentary taxes, including the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, incited protests throughout North America and lead many colonials to assert that the British Empire threatened their basic rights and liberties. Accompanied past discontent over the Proclamation Line of 1763 and changes made to the direction of Indian diplomacy, tensions between colonists and the Crown evolved into outright acts of opposition and rebellion. For the continent's Native populations, French removal contradistinct carefully crafted diplomatic practices, particularly the residue-of-power strategy that had come to define Ethnic-European political relations over the grade of the eighteenth century. The British-French rivalry had previously provided North American Indians with opportunities to play European nations off of ane another and control cross-cultural merchandise relationships. All the same, in an attempt to limit Native autonomy and increment Indigenous dependence following the Treaty of Paris, the British government used their nearly unchallenged control over North American merchandise to force Native land cessions and adherence to British governmental interests. Such measures eroded relations between the two groups, leading to an alarming increase in Anglo-Indian violence in the years following 1763.

Washington'southward service in the Virginia Militia during the French and Indian War provided him with an invaluable education in leadership and military strategy, lessons he relied on in the American Revolution. Notwithstanding, Washington'due south French and Indian State of war experience did more than than just teach the future president about commanding troops; it reshaped his manner of thinking nigh the relationship betwixt United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and her colonies. Washington had defended his career in the Virginia Militia toward achieving an equal commission in the British Army, an aspiration that never came to fruition by the time of his resignation in 1758. Washington's armed services experience led him to believe that his commission rejection was not due to a lack of adequacy, but rather considering the British Military regarded colonial militia men equally inferior. Similar many of his Virginia counterparts, Washington's political and economic beliefs connected to clash with Crown policies throughout the 1760s, particularly following the establishment of Announcement Line. His French and Indian War experience reveals the early on stages of ideological divergence between specific groups of colonials and the mother country, a partitioning that ultimately atomic number 82 to the outbreak of American Revolution.

Jennifer Monroe McCutchen

Texas Christian University

Sources:

Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 . New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2000.

Anderson, Fred, ed. George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War . Lanham, Doc: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

Calloway, Colin. The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Fowler, William One thousand., Jr. Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for Northward America, 1754-1763 . New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005.

Ward, Matthew C. Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years' War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765 . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Washington, George, and Robert Dinwiddie. The Journal of Major George Washington: Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq ; His Majesty's Lieutenant-Governor, and Commander in Chief of Virginia, to the Commandant of the French Forces on Ohio. : To Which Are Added, the Governor's Letter, and a Translation of the French Officeholder's Reply . Williamsburg [Va.]: Printed by William Hunter, 1754.

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Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/french-and-indian-war/

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