Posted on 06/19/2004 7:29:42 PM PDT by Savage219
TICONDEROGA, N.Y. --In history-challenged America, the French and Indian War is that brief grade school lesson between the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock and the Shot Heard `Round the World.
To get a grasp on the nation's birth, however, Americans must first realize how the war triggered the events leading to the American Revolution, said Fred Anderson, professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"If you start thinking about American history with the Revolution, you lose the fact that that's really the midpoint of American history," he said. "If you lose what comes before that, then you lose the period when Indians made the most difference in American history."
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the start of the war that pitted the British and some of their North American colonists against the French and their Indian allies. It's being commemorated with lectures, re-enactments and other events from Virginia to Maine. "George Washington Remembers," a new book on Washington's reflections of his French and Indian War experiences, was recently published in conjunction with a new exhibit at the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The action in North America was not so significant. Perhaps more important was Sir Clive's victory in the Battle of Plassey, 1757, which drove the French out of Bengal and captured India for the British Crown.
Americans are generally ignorant about history, true, but it's hard to call the French and Indian War an especially neglected chapter. Montcalm and Wolfe (the climactic volume in the monumental France and England in North America) is considered to be the greatest work by the greatest American historian, Francis Parkman ("The American Gibbon").
Uh, duh, that 250th anniversary was for the third and final F&I war, there were two earlier ones.
The French did not leave much of a foot print except for place names, they limited colonization and stuck with exploitation for furs.
The French won this battle and won that one, on & on adnauseam. But there is only one battle that matters, the last one that ends the war & defeats the enemy, and the Brits won that one, again.
IHMHO the best movie ever on early North America transires in 1600's New France, "Black Robe" Is brutally realistic in cast, makeup, costumes, and mans inhumanity to man.
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1991/11/678497.html
Just re-read the article and enjoyed it more the second time around, sometimes just just changing the angle of approach can make things so much more interesting.
The CORRECT statement would be "Louisiana CREOLES and Acadians". Creoles being those of French ancestry who resided in Louisiana BEFORE the Acadians (Cajuns) made their way down from Nova Scotia.
And the French Revolution.
Well technically speaking the most important battles in the Seven Years War, its formal title were fought in Germany...
Yes the British colonial forces smacked the French around...but it was tiny Prussia fending off the French, Austrian, and Russian hordes that saved the win for the British side.
Had Frederick the Great folded, the French probably would have gotten to keep much of their colonial empire.
I live in the area (Ohio Valley) and as a kid went to Ft. Necessity, Ticonderoga. The mutual hatred described in the article for Indians and settlers was very real, indeed. I have two great, great cousins (if there is such a thing) who were brothers and also missionaries to the Indians just northwest of Pittsburgh in Gnaddenhutten, OH. They, along with several hundred Indians, were slaughtered by a raiding party of an ad hoc militia of white settlers from out of Pittsburgh. There's a quaint museum there now with pictures, literature, etc...
The significance not reported in public school and college history texts?
The English colonists (Americans) fought wars almost every other year with the French and/or Indians from the late-1600's onward. The Americans were getting better fighting, instituting the best of Indian and European tactics. And they were slowly cooperating with each other. History shows, however, that we'd capture major French forts and outposts, only to have the Brits give them back in some treaty hammered out on the Continent.
The colonists also had trouble with the Spanish in Georgia as the Spanish would raid from their bases in Florida. Again, the Brits would hammer out a treaty with Madrid and give back what the colonists conquered.
Quebec and Montreal was not only a triumph to the Brits but it was the end of that French checkmate towards the English colonists. The Brits had a built-in buffer to American independence with the French and Spanish raids. The French and indian War was not only the end of French dominance to America's north and west but it signified the beginning of the end of British dominance in the 13 colonies. It's no secret to discerning historians why the Revolution of 1774 (1776) started just a decade or so after France was removed.
The French and Indian War, The American Revolution, and later the Napoleonic Wars made the Brits dominate the Caribbean, effectively starving Florida and Lousiana from the French and Spanish bases of operation.
You see, the French and Indian War was not only the beginning of American independence, it was the beginning of the end of European control of South America. Further, the F&I War also gave rise to the single greatest/richest/most powerful country to ever exist in the history of the world. On the other side of the world, Britain was given the go-ahead to become the greatest empire the world has ever seen, an empire in which the sun never set, covering nearly 3/4 of the world's surface. Ancient and modern history has never witnessed so great a combination of empire and republic that sprang from the same seed.
But the NEA and the libs don't want us to know our heritage. And they sure don't want us to think that it was Providence.
"History's First World War shaped America's destiny"
Some historians recognize the Seven Years War (1756-1763 in Europe) / French & Indian War (1754-1760 in America) as the real First World War -- W.W.I -- since it involved many countries & battles on nearly every continent. Deaths totaled in the tens of thousands.
By the way, the French & Indian War began when a small British unit under the command of young George Washington fired on a French unit near Pittsburgh.
If our French & Indian War was part of the real W.W.I, then the real World War II came with the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. This World War lasted a generation, included the US War of 1812, and deaths totaled in the hundreds of thousands.
By the way, the French Revolution began because the French king was bankrupted by his military aid to the American revolutionaries under General George Washington.
That would make our World War I the real W.W.III (deaths in the millions), and our World War II the real W.W.IV (deaths in the 10s of millions).
Which brings us to the Cold War = World War V. Here, if we count the all the deaths resulting from the loss of Eastern Europe & China to communism, the Korean & Vietnam Wars, the mass murders in Cambodia & other communist countries, then Cold War deaths totaled at least in the 10s of millions.
Now we come to the current war -- the War on Terror. I would call it World War VI, and so far, mercifully, the deaths have been relatively few.
But with threats of WMDs in the hands of terrorists, the possibility is clear that this war, like previous World Wars could easily end up counting its dead in numbers that boggle the mind and sober the spirit.
My point is, the world has come a long way since young George Washington fired the first shots in the real First World War.
Montcalm and Wolfe:
The French and Indian War
by Francis Parkman
foreword by C. Vann Woodward
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