hist.g5.f.his.french_indian_war_seven_years_war
Analyze the French and Indian War (1754-1763, the North American theater of the global Seven Years War 1756-1763) — causes, course, outcomes for British, French, Indigenous nations, and colonists
Analyze the war's (a) CAUSES: imperial competition between France and Britain for control of the Ohio River Valley; Iroquois Confederacy diplomatic positioning; the 1754 Battle of Jumonville Glen (Washington's first command — a French diplomatic envoy killed by Indigenous allies during a parley, escalating the conflict); the 1754 Albany Congress and Benjamin Franklin's 'Join, or Die' cartoon and Plan of Union (modeled on Iroquois Confederacy); (b) COURSE: the 1755 Braddock's Defeat (Washington recovered the wounded British force); the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham (Quebec falls to British); the war's spread to a global Seven Years War 1756-1763 (Europe, India, Caribbean, Philippines); (c) OUTCOMES — the 1763 Treaty of Paris: France cedes Canada and all territory east of the Mississippi to Britain; Spain cedes Florida to Britain in exchange for Cuba; Britain emerges as dominant North American imperial power; (d) OUTCOMES FOR INDIGENOUS NATIONS — Pontiac's War 1763-1766 (an Indigenous resistance movement led by Pontiac/Obwandiyag Ottawa with multiple allied nations attempting to expel British from the trans-Appalachian west); the Proclamation Line of 1763 (British attempt to limit colonial settlement west of the Appalachians to reduce Indigenous-colonist conflict); (e) OUTCOMES FOR COLONISTS — Britain's enormous war debt motivates Parliament to tax the colonies starting 1764 — this is the immediate cause of the Road to Revolution. CRITICAL: this is the war that made the American Revolution possible — without British war debt there would have been no Stamp Act. Apply MG-7 routine to George Washington's 1754 journal, the 1763 Proclamation, and Pontiac's 1763 speech to British (Native Knowledge 360°).
- Analyze colonial-Indigenous relations across the 17th and 18th centuries — alliances, treaties, dispossession, and three major conflicts: the Pequot War (1636-37), King Philip's War (1675-78), and the Powhatan Wars (1610-1646)
- Compare and contrast the four major European colonial projects in North America — Spanish (from 1492), French (from 1534), Dutch (from 1609), English (from 1607) — across motivation, practices, religious institutions, economic models, and relationships with Indigenous nations
- Analyze the 12-year Road to Revolution 1763-1775 — Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Tea Act and Boston Tea Party, Coercive Acts, First Continental Congress — including Patriot organizing AND Loyalist perspectives
- Analyze the Declaration of Independence (July 4 1776) — its principles AND its contradictions — using the Founding Contradiction T-chart MG-13
- Believing the Revolution started in 1775 — its immediate causes start in 1763 with the British war debt from the French and Indian War.
- Treating the French and Indian War as a 'background' to the Revolution — it is the FOUNDATIONAL event for both Indigenous nations (Pontiac's War, the Proclamation Line) and the colonists (taxation begins).
- Missing that Pontiac's War (1763-1766) was a coordinated multi-nation Indigenous resistance to British post-war policy — Indigenous nations were not passive at the war's end.
- Missing that George Washington's role in the war (starting at Jumonville Glen 1754, recovering Braddock's force 1755) made him the obvious choice for Continental Army command in 1775.