The war that made America

The war that made America: a short history of the French and Indian War / Fred Anderson ; illustrations chosen and captioned by R. Scott Stephenson.— New York : Penguin, 2006.
xxv, 293 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 22 cm.
Bibliographic note: p. [267] – 275
Includes index.
ISBN: 0143038044

1. United States – History – French and Indian War, 1755-1763.

973.26

In the early1750s three nations struggled for control of a very strategic piece of North American real estate: the Ohio County. They had very different plans for it. For England’s colonies spread along on the eastern coast of the continent it was land to be settled and farmed. For France it was a link between its trading outposts on the Mississippi and St. Lawrence Valleys, a vital transportation and commercial link with its Native American trading partners. For the Iroquois Confederacy it was land to fall back on and protect their culture from the encroachments of the Europeans. Yet at the same time, trade was also important because it provided metal tools and weapons. European trading partners were far more welcome than European farmers.

Distrustful of the incursions and expeditions of Virginian land companies and Pennsylvanian traders, the governor-general of Canada, the marquis Duquesne, ordered a series of forts built between Lake Erie and the Forks of the Ohio River, a place now occupied by the city of Pittsburgh. The Virginia colonial government was incensed by the action, alerted London, and was given the authority, along with other colonial governments, to act against these encroachments. So an expedition led by a young but ambitious Virginia major, George Washington, was sent to the Forks of the Ohio to remove the French by force.

The results were disastrous for the English, both militarily and diplomatically. It was the first blood spilled in what would become The Seven Years War, a war that stretched from North America to the east across an ocean to Europe, Africa, India and the Philippines. English historian and Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to it as “the first world war.” The outcome in North America led first to English victory, and then, a decade later, to the revolt of its original colonies. A major theme of Anderson’s book is to show how the political and financial cost of the war with the French and Indians sowed the seeds of the war of revolution. This is a well written, well illustrated, and informative history.