Page 129 - American Stories, A History of the United States

During the early eighteenth century, English colonists came to believe that
4.1 the French planned to “encircle” them, to confine the English to a narrow strip of
land along the Atlantic coast. The English noted as early as 1682 that La Salle had
claimed for the king of France a territory—Louisiana—that included all the people
4.2 and resources located on “streams and Rivers” flowing into the Mississippi River. To
make good on their claim, the French constructed forts on the Chicago and Illinois
rivers. In 1717, they established a military post 200 miles up the Alabama River,

4.3 within striking distance of the Carolina frontier. In 1718, they settled New Orleans.
One New Yorker declared in 1715 that “it is impossible that we and the French can
both inhabit this Continent in peace but that one nation must at last give way to the
other.”
4.4
On their part, the French suspected their rivals intended to seize all of North
America. Land speculators and frontier traders pushed into territory claimed by the
French and owned by the Native Americans. In 1716, one Frenchman urged his gov-
4.5
ernment to hasten the development of Louisiana, since “it is not difficult to guess that
their [the British] purpose is to drive us entirely out . . . of North America.”

King George’s War and its Aftermath
In 1743, after many small frontier engagements, the Americans were dragged into King
George’s War (1743–1748), known in Europe as the War of the Austrian Succession, in
which the colonists scored a magnificent victory over the French. Louisbourg, a gigan-
tic fortress on Cape Breton Island, the easternmost promontory of Canada, guarded the
approaches to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Quebec. It was described as the Gibraltar of
the New World. New England troops under William Pepperell captured Louisbourg in
June 1745, a feat that demonstrated the British colonists could fight and mount effec-
tive joint operations.
The French were not prepared to surrender an inch. But the English colonies were
growing more populous, and the English possessed a seemingly inexhaustible supply of
manufactured goods to trade with the Indians. The French decided in the early 1750s,
therefore, to seize the Ohio Valley before the Virginians could do so. They established
forts throughout the region, the most formidable being Fort Duquesne, located at a
strategic fork in the Ohio River and later renamed Pittsburgh. (See Map 4.4.)

Lake Presque Isle
Erie NY.
Ft. Le Boeuf
Ft. Machault
Allegheny PENNSYVANIA
R.
Ft. Duquesne
Braddock's Defeat
RUSSIAN Ohio R. July 9, 1755
AMERICA Ft. Necessity
VA. MD.
Hudson
Bay French fishing rights
GRANT TO
HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY NEW FRANCE St. Pierre &
St. Lawrence R. Louisbourg Miquelon (Fr.)
Quebec
PA CIFIC Montreal AT L ANTIC
OCEAN Missouri R. OCEAN
LOUISIANA Ohio R. BRITISH
Mississippi R. Disputed British claims
COLONIES
French claims
0 500 1000 miles New Spanish claims
Orleans
Gulf of
0 500 1000 kilometers Russian claims
Mexico
map 4.4 NorTH amErica, 1750 by 1750, the French had established a chain of settlements southward
through the heart of the continent from Quebec to New Orleans. the british saw this as a threat to their own
seaboard colonies, which were expanding westward.
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