French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was a nine-year conflict (1754-1763) in North America and was one of the conflict theatres of the Seven Years' War. The conflict was between Great Britain and its colonies on one side and France on the other. The major battles include French victories at Fort William Henry, Fort Ticonderoga and against the Braddock Expedition and British victories at Louisburg, Fort Niagara, Fort Duquesne and at the Plains of Abraham outside of Quebec City, in which James Wolfe defeated a French garrison lead by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm.The war resulted in the French loss of all French possessions in North America except for some Caribbean islands and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands off Newfoundland. The British acquired Canada while the Spanish gained Louisiana in compensation for its loss of Florida to the British. The result of the war is that Britain acquired a large Francophone population in Quebec and, near the beginning of the war in 1755, expelled French speaking populations in Acadia to Louisiana creating the Cajun population.
The war officially ended with the signing of the 1763 Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763. The treaty saw France cede Canada to Great Britain, preferring to keep the territory of Guadaloupe for its rich sugar crops.
The decisive result of the war meant that it was the last of the French and Indian Wars and thereby set the stage for the American Revolutionary War. The British colonists no longer needed British protection from the French and resented the taxes imposed by Britain to pay for its military commitments as well as limitation on colonial settlements imposed by the Proclamation of 1763 in the newly acquired French territories in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.
