How Did The French And Indian War Made The Way To American Revolution

The French and Indian War Paved the Way to American Revolution
As Europeans settled the New World, they encountered difficulties that they had not perceived before. The first of which was the Native Americans who were not thrilled with the idea of giving up their ancestral land for European settlement. So, it was not a surprise when conflict arise between the Natives and the Europeans. Because the Europeans brought over diseases that were fatal to the Natives and had more developed weaponry, they were successful in pushing the Natives into the interior of North America. Most immigrants from Great Britain settled near the east coast and as the settlement began to grow, industries and plantations became the main source of wealth in the new colonies.

After the French and Indian War, Great Britain acquired all the land that stretched from the Appalachian mountains to the Mississippi River from the French. This land agreement was the result of the Treaty of Paris. The war officially ended French's control of land in North America because French gave the rest of their land west of the Mississippi to Spain as compensation for Spain's loss of Florida to the British. Even with the prosperous land acquired after the war, King George III passed the Proclamation of 1763 which forbidden colonial settlers from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The main reason the Proclamation of 1763 was passed was to fulfill the promise Britain made with the Indians to evacuate settlers to the eastern part of the Appalachian Mountain in return for their support in the war; however, it was also passed to prevent future conflicts between the Indians and the colonists. The Proclamation of 1763 was not popular among the colonists because the people strongly believed in their right to settlement after fighting so hard for their victory in the French and Indian war. George Washington showed his opposition in the Crown's decision, "I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians... Any person

What this argument failed to consider was that the colonists rebelled against their parent country because they believed Britain did very little in protecting the colonial rights and flatly used the colonies as a way to benefit themselves. Did the colonies rebelled because they were distant from their parent country? No. Americans wanted their individual rights protected under a government that was willing to listen to the people and protect their rights. Author Sowards states, "From these political treatises emerged the argument that the American colonists were unrepresented in the British Parliament and therefore denied their full rights as Englishmen." The quote explained that the main cause of independence was drawn from the lack of representation in Parliament and not the vast distance from England. Colonists wanted to grow out of the British's motherly protection that was actually inhibiting their economic growth as stated by Genovese, "The tightening of the system after midcentury clashed with the growing desire of colonists to exert greater control over their own economic activity. This clash exacerbated tensions that already existed in the system and led to the separation of the American colonies from England" (Genovese). In other words, the American Revolution was not the direct effect of how far the colonies