Great Britain France Wabanaki Confederacy Westphalia, Hesse and Lower Saxony Electoral Saxony Brandenburg Silesia East Prussia Pomerania Iberian Peninsula Naval Operations in Europe The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was a theater of the Seven Years' War, which pitted the North American colonies of the British Empire against those of the French, each side being supported by various Native American tribes.

[11] In 1755, six colonial governors met with General Edward Braddock, the newly arrived British Army commander, and planned a four-way attack on the French.

[12] The British Pitt government fell due to disastrous campaigns in 1757, including a failed expedition against Louisbourg and the Siege of Fort William Henry; this last was followed by the Natives torturing and massacring their colonial victims.

In Quebec, this term was promoted by popular historians Jacques Lacoursière and Denis Vaugeois, who borrowed from the ideas of Maurice Séguin in considering this war as a dramatic tipping point of French Canadian identity and nationhood.

The French population numbered about 75,000 and was heavily concentrated along the St. Lawrence River valley, with some also in Acadia (present-day New Brunswick and parts of Nova Scotia), including Île Royale (Cape Breton Island).

British settlers outnumbered the French 20 to 1[17] with a population of about 1.5 million ranged along the Atlantic coast of the continent from Nova Scotia and the Colony of Newfoundland in the north to the Province of Georgia in the south.

To the north, the Mi'kmaq and the Abenakis were engaged in Father Le Loutre's War and still held sway in parts of Nova Scotia, Acadia, and the eastern portions of the province of Canada, as well as much of Maine.

In 1758, the Province of Pennsylvania successfully negotiated the Treaty of Easton in which a number of tribes in the Ohio Country promised neutrality in exchange for land concessions and other considerations.

Most of the British colonies mustered local militia companies to deal with Indian threats, generally ill trained and available only for short periods, but they did not have any standing forces.

[citation needed] New France's Governor-General Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière was concerned about the incursion and expanding influence in the Ohio Country of British colonial traders such as George Croghan.

Its objectives were: Céloron's expedition force consisted of about 200 Troupes de la marine and 30 Indians, and they covered about 3,000 miles (4,800 km) between June and November 1749.

On June 21, the French war party attacked the trading center at Pickawillany, capturing three traders[27] and killing 14 Miami Indians, including Old Briton.

[36] Washington left with a small party, picking up Jacob Van Braam as an interpreter, Christopher Gist (a company surveyor working in the area), and a few Mingos led by Tanaghrisson.

"[39] He told Washington that France's claim to the region was superior to that of the British, since René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had explored the Ohio Country nearly a century earlier.

[42] Even before Washington returned, Dinwiddie had sent a company of 40 men under William Trent to that point where they began construction of a small stockaded fort in the early months of 1754.

[47] They killed many of the Canadiens, including their commanding officer Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, whose head was reportedly split open by Tanaghrisson with a tomahawk.

It was attacked by French regulars, Canadian Militiamen, and Indian warriors ambushing them from hiding places up in trees and behind logs, and Braddock called for a retreat.

The British government initiated a plan to increase their military capability in preparation for war following news of Braddock's defeat and the start of parliament's session in November 1755.

Vaudreuil had been concerned about the extended supply line to the forts on the Ohio, and he had sent Baron Dieskau to lead the defenses at Frontenac against Shirley's expected attack.

Colonel Monckton captured Fort Beauséjour in June 1755 in the sole British success that year, cutting off the French Fortress Louisbourg from land-based reinforcements.

To cut vital supplies to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia's Governor Charles Lawrence ordered the deportation of the French-speaking Acadian population from the area.

Following the death of Braddock, William Shirley assumed command of British forces in North America, and he laid out his plans for 1756 at a meeting in Albany in December 1755.

He built on Vaudreuil's work harassing the Oswego garrison and executed a strategic feint by moving his headquarters to Ticonderoga, as if to presage another attack along Lake George.

When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indian allies attacked the British column because they were angry about the lost opportunity for loot, killing and capturing several hundred men, women, children, and slaves.

Pitt's plan called for three major offensive actions involving large numbers of regular troops supported by the provincial militias, aimed at capturing the heartlands of New France.

The new foreign minister was the duc de Choiseul, and he decided to focus on an invasion of Britain to draw British resources away from North America and the European mainland.

Included in its provisions was the reservation of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to its Indian population,[78] a demarcation that was only a temporary impediment to a rising tide of westward-bound settlers.

These attempts were met with increasingly stiff resistance, until troops were called in to enforce the Crown's authority, and they ultimately led to the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Minister Choiseul considered that he had made a good deal at the Treaty of Paris, and Voltaire wrote that Louis XV had lost a few acres of snow.

[86] France returned to America in 1778 with the establishment of a Franco-American alliance against Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, in what historian Alfred A. Cave describes as French "revenge for Montcalm's death".