Summary Of Seven Years War By Fred Anderson

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Beginning his book with a recounting of a July 1776 letter by George Washington in which he recalls his involvement in the “late French war,” Fred Anderson reveals the intricate connections between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution (Anderson xix). As he uses Washington’s letter to set up his position, Anderson argues that the Seven Years War set the stage for the American Revolution as it caused colonists’ and Parliament’s conflicting ideas of colonial sovereignty to collide. As such, Anderson frames the Seven Years War as a cautionary tale as British forces, complacent in their colonial victory, failed to heed their Anglo-American subjects. Furthermore, Anderson contends that the Seven Years War was far more complicated than …show more content…

Although the Seven Years War began as a colonial conflict over French, British, and Native American rights to land in the Ohio Valley, it quickly spread across the globe as the war progressed. Even in North America, Anderson argues that the war stemmed from the French-British hostilities that had long determined the two countries’ relationship in Europe. For example, Anderson notes that although France had no set plan for their holdings in the Ohio Valley, their enmity with Britain pushed them to keep the region out of British hands (25). When French and British colonists competed for land, resources, and trade with Native Americans near the Great Lakes in the mid-eighteenth century, old Anglo-French hostilities turned the colonial conflict into a war as each European power mobilized troops to defend their claims (Anderson 34, 39, 57). Open warfare in the colonies exacerbated the Anglo-French rivalry in Europe as France and Britain built up their navies and landed military alliances with Central European nations like Austria and Prussia, culminating in British and French declarations of war in 1756 (Anderson …show more content…

Lord of the Treasury and Stamp Act establisher George Grenville’s decision to pursue a robust British presence in the colonies flew in the face of politician Edmund Burke’s caution that the colonies were too accustomed to salutary neglect to accept Parliamentary-imposed British authority (Anderson 243). Even after the failure of the Stamp Act, Parliament refused to rescind its total authority over the colonies as it restated dominance in the 1766 Declaratory Act and issued more unwanted taxes in the Townshend Acts and Tea Act (Anderson 247-8). Blinded by their recent victory and belief in their superiority, the British failed to take colonial discontent and protests seriously in the fallout of the Seven Years War, which Anderson argues laid the groundwork for the destruction of their own empire. Anderson’s analysis of the Seven Years War reveals the true complexity of the war’s nature, outcomes, and defining relationships. By analyzing the role of colonial conflict in the global spread of the war, Anderson shows that the Seven Years War was the first world