French and Indian wars were four wars fought one after another in North America between 1689 and 1763. The wars were fought between France and England, which became part of Britain during the second war. Spain, at times, sided with the French. All fought with the support of Indigenous (native) allies, people who were then commonly known as Indians. In the end, France lost nearly all its land in North America. Britain gained most of the French territory, and Spain acquired the rest.
Causes of the French and Indian wars.
In 1689, England’s colonies in North America lay along the Atlantic coast. Spain controlled Florida. French settlements lay to the north and west, from what are now Maine and Nova Scotia to the St. Lawrence River Valley. France also had outposts in Newfoundland, the Great Lakes region, and the Mississippi River Valley. Both France and England claimed the inland territory between their settlements. Until about 1750, however, only the Indigenous tribes who lived in the inland territory actually controlled it. Both the English and the French traded with Indigenous tribes for furs. Both, too, had Indigenous allies, though the French had a greater need for such partnerships. Thinly populated Spanish Florida relied on Indigenous allies for labor. 
Beginning in 1690, the English repeatedly sought to conquer the French settlements. They wanted total control of North America. The French, on the other hand, had little intention of conquering the more numerous English. Instead, they fought to preserve their control of the North American interior, which rested on a vast network of alliances with Indigenous groups. The alliances depended on trading furs and fighting each other’s enemies.
Access to the fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland provided another source of conflict. In the South, the English and their Indigenous allies raided Spanish-allied Indigenous groups for slaves. Because the French and Spanish empires were officially Roman Catholic and the British Empire officially Protestant, religious hostility added to the tension.
King William’s War
(1689-1697) was named for King William III of England. It grew out of three separate struggles in Europe, New York, and New England.
In Europe, a union of nations fought against French expansion in the War of the League of Augsburg (see Grand Alliance). In New York, a confederacy of the Indigenous Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peoples allied with the English and challenged French control of the fur trade. In New England, the Wabanaki confederacy allied with the French to resist English expansion. In 1690, the French and their Indigenous allies attacked Schenectady, New York, and Salmon Falls, New Hampshire. The English responded that same year by seizing Port-Royal, the seat of government in the French region of Acadia. They also launched an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Canada. Border raids continued on both sides until the French war with England ended in 1697, with the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick. The 1701 signing of the Great Peace of Montreal ended the French war with the Haudenosaunee confederacy.
Queen Anne’s War
(1702-1713), named for Queen Anne of Britain, grew out of a conflict in Europe known as the War of the Spanish Succession (see Succession wars). It was also a result of continuing Indigenous resistance to New England’s expansion. Spain joined France against the English. The war began in the winter of 1704, when the French and their Indigenous allies raided the New England frontier, devastating Deerfield, Massachusetts. The English attacked Acadia in 1704 and again in 1707. Also in 1707, England became part of Britain, now the United Kingdom (see United Kingdom, History of the). In 1710, Britain seized Port-Royal. In the South, the British and their Indigenous allies devastated the settlements of Spain’s Indigenous allies, forcing many captured Indigenous people into slavery. They also took the town of St. Augustine, but they did not take the settlement’s fort and had to withdraw. Spanish and French forces attacked Charleston, South Carolina, but they failed to capture the city.
Queen Anne’s War ended in 1713 with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. By the terms of the treaty, France gave Britain Newfoundland, the Nova Scotia peninsula, the tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and the territory around Hudson Bay.
King George’s War
(1744-1748), named for King George II of Britain, grew out of the struggle in Europe known as the War of the Austrian Succession (see Succession wars). The fighting in North America began when the French tried to regain Nova Scotia. The greatest battle of the war occurred in 1745, when New England colonial troops under William Pepperrell captured the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war, gave back to Britain and France the territory each side had lost in the war.
The French and Indian War
(1754-1763) was the last and most important conflict in North America before the Revolutionary War in America (1775-1783). The French and Indian War broke out in America, and then spread to Europe in 1756. It was called the Seven Years’ War in Europe and Canada (see Seven Years’ War).
Territorial rivalries between Britain and France had intensified as their empires expanded into the Ohio River Valley. In 1753, the French built a chain of forts at the eastern end of the Ohio region to keep the British out.
The colony of Virginia led the British expansion westward. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Robert Dinwiddie, sent 21-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington to demand that the French abandon their new forts and return to Canada. But the French refused. In 1754, Washington led a small band of colonial troops to force the French to withdraw. A French and Indigenous force defeated Washington at Fort Necessity, in one of the first battles of the French and Indian War. Meanwhile, representatives of seven of the British colonies met in Albany, New York, to plan further military action (see Albany Congress).
French successes.
In 1755, General Edward Braddock led a band of British and colonial soldiers, including George Washington, against Fort Duquesne. A French and Indigenous force ambushed them shortly before they reached the fort, killing Braddock and many of his men. Washington led the survivors to safety.
The British also failed to take Crown Point or Fort Niagara. But they succeeded in seizing Forts Beauséjour and Gaspereau on the western edge of Nova Scotia. They then expelled the French Acadians and opened their lands to British settlement.
In 1756, the Marquis de Montcalm took charge of the French forces in North America and captured Britain’s Fort Oswego. The next year, the French and their Indigenous allies destroyed Fort William Henry.
British victories.
In 1756, William Pitt became the political leader of the British. He devoted tremendous resources to defeating the French in America. In 1758, British forces captured Louisbourg and Forts Frontenac and Duquesne (renamed Pittsburgh in Pitt’s honor). In 1759, the British took Crown Point and Forts Niagara and Ticonderoga. They also besieged (surrounded and tried to capture) the city of Quebec. After nearly three months, General James Wolfe’s army defeated Montcalm’s forces on the Plains of Abraham, outside the city (see Quebec, Battle of). British troops under General Jeffery Amherst completed the conquest of Canada with the capture of Montreal in 1760. The British then turned to the Caribbean Sea, conquering the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. When Spain allied with France in 1762, the British captured Cuba.
The war ended in 1763 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The treaty gave the British all of France’s holdings east of the Mississippi River except New Orleans. France had given New Orleans and its lands west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1762. The British received Florida from Spain in exchange for Cuba. France regained Martinique and Guadeloupe as well as St.-Pierre and Miquelon.
