What was the main reason of the tension between the colonists and the British colonial government?

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The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war’s expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American Revolution.

The French and Indian War resulted from ongoing frontier tensions in North America as both French and British imperial officials and colonists sought to extend each country’s sphere of influence in frontier regions. In North America, the war pitted France, French colonists, and their Native allies against Great Britain, the Anglo-American colonists, and the Iroquois Confederacy, which controlled most of upstate New York and parts of northern Pennsylvania. In 1753, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Great Britain controlled the 13 colonies up to the Appalachian Mountains, but beyond lay New France, a very large, sparsely settled colony that stretched from Louisiana through the Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes to Canada. (See Incidents Leading up to the French and Indian War and Albany Plan)

The border between French and British possessions was not well defined, and one disputed territory was the upper Ohio River valley. The French had constructed a number of forts in this region in an attempt to strengthen their claim on the territory. British colonial forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Washington, attempted to expel the French in 1754, but were outnumbered and defeated by the French. When news of Washington’s failure reached British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, he called for a quick undeclared retaliatory strike. However, his adversaries in the Cabinet outmaneuvered him by making the plans public, thus alerting the French Government and escalating a distant frontier skirmish into a full-scale war.

The war did not begin well for the British. The British Government sent General Edward Braddock to the colonies as commander in chief of British North American forces, but he alienated potential Indian allies and colonial leaders failed to cooperate with him. On July 13, 1755, Braddock died after being mortally wounded in an ambush on a failed expedition to capture Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh. The war in North America settled into a stalemate for the next several years, while in Europe the French scored an important naval victory and captured the British possession of Minorca in the Mediterranean in 1756. However, after 1757 the war began to turn in favor of Great Britain. British forces defeated French forces in India, and in 1759 British armies invaded and conquered Canada.

Facing defeat in North America and a tenuous position in Europe, the French Government attempted to engage the British in peace negotiations, but British Minister William Pitt (the elder), Secretary for Southern Affairs, sought not only the French cession of Canada but also commercial concessions that the French Government found unacceptable. After these negotiations failed, Spanish King Charles III offered to come to the aid of his cousin, French King Louis XV, and their representatives signed an alliance known as the Family Compact on August 15, 1761. The terms of the agreement stated that Spain would declare war on Great Britain if the war did not end before May 1, 1762. Originally intended to pressure the British into a peace agreement, the Family Compact ultimately reinvigorated the French will to continue the war, and caused the British Government to declare war on Spain on January 4, 1762, after bitter infighting among King George III’s ministers.

Despite facing such a formidable alliance, British naval strength and Spanish ineffectiveness led to British success. British forces seized French Caribbean islands, Spanish Cuba, and the Philippines. Fighting in Europe ended after a failed Spanish invasion of British ally Portugal. By 1763, French and Spanish diplomats began to seek peace. In the resulting Treaty of Paris (1763), Great Britain secured significant territorial gains in North America, including all French territory east of the Mississippi river, as well as Spanish Florida, although the treaty returned Cuba to Spain.

Unfortunately for the British, the fruits of victory brought seeds of trouble with Great Britain’s American colonies. The war had been enormously expensive, and the British government’s attempts to impose taxes on colonists to help cover these expenses resulted in increasing colonial resentment of British attempts to expand imperial authority in the colonies. British attempts to limit western expansion by colonists and inadvertent provocation of a major Indian war further angered the British subjects living in the American colonies. These disputes ultimately spurred colonial rebellion, which eventually developed into a full-scale war for independence.

The British won vast territory in North America after the Seven Years’ War, but with the land came numerous problems of how to govern it. Conflicts arose from the inability of British officials to balance the interests of colonists and Indians, which led to colonial dissatisfaction with imperial rule and, ultimately, to the causes of the American Revolution.

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 that ended the Seven Years’ War provided Great Britain with enormous territorial gains. Under the treaty, Canada and the entire present-day United States east of the Mississippi came under British control. With the official end of the war, Anglo-American colonists began to pour over the Appalachian Mountains in search of land. As the native population had made no land cessions, many of these settlers had no official claim to the land. In many cases, the land was claimed by private land companies, in which the Virginia elite had invested heavily in an attempt to diversify their holdings outside of the volatile tobacco market. Thus, they had an interest in pressing the British Government to address ensuing tensions.

The settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians brought inevitable tension and conflict between settlers and indigenous peoples. British military officials attempted to halt settlement, but eager settlers and land speculators ignored their directives. With the military unwilling to forcibly remove settlers from the lands, Anglo-American colonists continued to migrate west and lay claim these lands.

British officials made the situation worse by alienating American Indians who had been allied with France during the Seven Years’ War. The French Government had devoted significant resources to furnishing gifts to their Indian allies. When British forces arrived to take over former French forts, they halted the gift-giving practice, not realizing that doing so undercut the authority of any pro-British leaders within indigenous communities and antagonized the Indian leaders.

In response to British actions and western settlement, the leader of the Ottawa tribe, Pontiac, sent messages encoded in wampum belts to other communities throughout the present-day Midwest to coordinate an attack on British forts. Unaware of the depth of Indian anger and resentment, British forces were caught largely by surprise and lost all their western forts except for Fort Pitt and Detroit, where British military officials were tipped off and, therefore, able to prevent seizure.

When news of the rebellion reached London, the government decided to put into action a plan for creating a western Indian reserve, and produced the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbid colonial settlement beyond the line of the Appalachian Mountains. The act also created the provinces of Quebec, West Florida, and East Florida. The proclamation was largely ineffective in preventing western settlement, and served only to anger both settlers and the political elite who had invested in western land speculation.

War with the Indian tribes continued from 1764 into 1766. British officials managed to negotiate peace with the Senecas in the Niagara region and with Indians in the upper Ohio River valley, and, in 1766, Pontiac agreed to a formal treaty signed at Fort Ontario on July 25. Pontiac’s War is diplomatically significant because it was the first war between European settlers and American Indians where Indians had united broadly across tribal lines.

After the end of Pontiac’s rebellion, regulation of the western frontier was not significantly altered until Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774. With this piece of legislation, the British intended to preempt any dissatisfaction among the French Canadian population by restoring French civil law and allowing Catholics to hold office. It also imposed direct crown rule on Quebec and extended Quebec’s borders south to the Ohio River.

The Quebec Act angered the Virginia elite, since most of the western lands they claimed were now officially part of Quebec or in the Indian reserve. The act, which Parliament passed at the same time as legislation placing Massachusetts under crown control, also fueled resentment among Calvinist New Englanders, who saw in its autocratic, pro-Catholic provisions further evidence of an imperial conspiracy against colonial liberties.

When the American Revolution began in 1774, tensions between settlers and Indians became a part of the conflict. The Continental Congress’s attempts to secure Indian alliances largely failed, as most Indians saw the British military as the lesser of two evils in their struggle against settlers’ encroachments upon their land. However, the Oneida and Tuscarora Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy did side with the colonists.

The ultimate effect of British frontier policy was to unite frontiersmen, Virginia land speculators, and New Englanders against unpopular British policies. These groups, angered by British taxation policies, forged revolutionary alliances with other colonists.