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 a decisive victory for Great Britain in which it captured all French possessions in North America except for Saint Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands off Newfoundland. The result of the war is that Britain acquired a large Francophone population in Quebec and 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 also forced France to cede Canada to Great Britain.
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.
