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French and Indian War · Saberian History Lectures

0:00
All right, wires on. Okay, so you have a handout
0:02
in front of you, which is a graphic organizer
0:05
on the French and Indian War. And so one of the
0:08
things that you want to do at the top is you
0:10
want to put French and Indian War, but there's
0:12
another phrase you want to use because you may
0:15
have noticed this in the reading. They use this
0:17
interchangeably. They use the term French and
0:25
Indian War. And another term you need to consider
0:35
using, and you use them interchangeably, is the
0:39
Seven Years' War. These are the same thing. Kind
0:49
of the way it's used is the colonists will refer
0:58
to it as the French and Indian War. Whereas most
1:01
of the people who do European history and most
1:03
of the people on the European continent will
1:05
call it the Seven Years' War. Anybody want to
1:09
take a stab at why the colonists would refer
1:12
to it as the French and Indian War? Who were
1:16
the colonists fighting? The French and their
1:21
Indian allies, right? They weren't very creative
1:23
on the name. One of the things that you have
1:31
to look at the conflict zone, and if you look
1:34
at the map, at the beginning of the war, what
1:40
the British colonized, they had only colonized
1:44
as far as the Appalachian Mountain Range. This
1:47
area west of the Appalachian Mountain Range,
1:52
all the way to the Mississippi, was nominally
1:55
under French control. So when you look at the
1:59
causes of the war, one of the causes of the war
2:03
in North America. And so we're going to actually
2:08
look at two sets of causes because the conflict
2:12
is for the colonists. It's a regional conflict
2:16
for the British. It's a global conflict. And
2:20
I'm going to get to that point in a moment. OK,
2:24
so one of the causes is. what's called the Ohio
2:28
River Valley. Okay, the Ohio River Valley. So
2:36
that is an area... I think I want the other one.
2:45
Yeah, okay. So that's this area from the Appalachian
2:50
Mountain Range to the Mississippi along the Ohio
2:54
River. So that Ohio River Valley is the area
2:58
that we would now call Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
3:02
and Kentucky. Now, remember that the British
3:09
colonists, you're still having new people show
3:11
up. Okay, those new people show up. What are
3:13
they planning on doing for a living? They're
3:15
trying to make a living as farmers, right? Okay,
3:17
so... They're settling west. Well, who lives
3:22
out in this Ohio River Valley? Not French people,
3:24
but who? Native Americans, yes. Now, the French
3:30
have laid claim to that area. By the way, is
3:34
the French system predatory to how the Native
3:38
Americans live their lives? No, because what
3:42
are the French doing? Why did the French come
3:46
to North America? We talked about this last week.
3:48
Fur trade. Okay, fur trade is a resource extraction.
3:52
By the way, okay, rather than just French fur
3:54
trappers, you don't suppose that some of the
3:56
French are just buying furs off the natives that
3:59
they themselves are trapping and trading European
4:02
goods such as firearms and other metal products.
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So the French and the natives have a very good
4:09
relationship, but now you have these... English
4:14
colonists that are trying to turn it into farmland.
4:16
They're encroaching on territory. And so there
4:18
are attacks back and forth. Now, that's regional.
4:27
There's also a global conflict going on. And
4:31
so to understand the global conflict, we need
4:33
to go to the other side of the world. Okay. So
4:43
here's England. England has been a rising power
4:50
since the 1650s. They fight a series of wars
4:55
with, first, their other Protestant rival, which
5:00
is the Dutch. And it's not an ideological conflict.
5:03
It's a commercial conflict. It's who's going
5:05
to be the great naval power of the North Sea,
5:09
but also of the world. So over the course of
5:14
several armed conflicts, the British will defeat
5:17
the Dutch in a series of Anglo -Dutch wars. You
5:20
may recall from the last chapter, this is how
5:23
New Amsterdam becomes New York, right? Well,
5:26
the British begin to take over colonies in other
5:30
parts of the world, running up against French
5:32
colonial possessions. So some of the places where
5:35
the British start colonizing, Africa. India,
5:47
and, of course, North America. So when you look
5:50
at it, you look at, in addition to the Ohio River
5:52
Valley, you look at imperial rivalries in Africa,
6:03
India, the Caribbean, and North America. Now,
6:17
when we look at the Seven Years' War, there are
6:21
theaters of combat in all of these places and
6:28
on the European continent. Okay, now, I want
6:34
you to think about this for a moment. and dying
6:45
on, let's count out how many continents we have,
6:48
North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. So at
6:54
least four, five, if you count the Caribbean
6:56
as a separate theater of action. You have at
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least four continents involved in this war. What
7:02
do you call a war that spans more than three
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continents? We've had two of them that we actually
7:08
called this. We call it a world war, right? So
7:11
when we talk about the scale of this war, it
7:14
is a global conflict between France and her allies
7:19
and the British and her allies. Now, by the way,
7:21
is fighting a war around the world cheap? No,
7:24
it's highly expensive. Now, what's interesting
7:28
is that the British, oops, so the colonists have
7:39
a little bit of a problem. Okay. So, some people
7:50
will pin the start of the conflict with Washington
7:54
and Fort Necessity. That's one of the major conflicts.
7:58
But let me go to the major players. Okay, so
8:00
you've got the major players. I will get that
8:05
marker cap in just a moment. Or maybe I won't.
8:08
I haven't decided. Okay. So, the major players.
8:14
So, you have the French and their native allies.
8:29
You have the British and their colonists. Now,
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When I talk about the French and the British,
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primarily, and I'm going to use a term that you
8:44
haven't probably heard before, I'm going to use
8:48
the term French regulars, British regulars, and
8:56
then you have colonial militia. Okay? Now, do
9:10
you recall how we talked about the difference
9:14
between militia forces and regular army? I believe
9:19
we had talked about it when we were talking about
9:21
James II keeping troops in times of peace. Or
9:24
did I forget to mention that to you all? I'm
9:27
going to recap this. Okay, when you talk about
9:30
a regular army, that was a time when... Okay,
9:37
how many of you have family members who have
9:39
been in the service? Okay, I'm going to pan the
9:43
room because the American way of doing military
9:47
service is very different than the way the Europeans.
9:49
Are they still in service right now, yay or nay?
9:53
Okay, I'm going to go for the ones not currently
9:58
in service. How long were they in service, if
10:00
you don't mind my asking? You don't remember?
10:08
So typically in the American military, terms
10:10
of service, if you're not going to retirement,
10:12
are intervals of four to eight years. So usually
10:15
about every four years, a person re -ups. In
10:19
the British and in the French system, a regular
10:21
soldier typically was a professional who was
10:24
in the service for 20 -year terms. Now, the reason
10:31
that is the case is at this point, Warfare has
10:36
become decently sophisticated, and here's what
10:38
I mean by decently sophisticated. Okay, how many
10:41
of you recall, perhaps from your eighth grade
10:45
learning, that you thought it was really stupid
10:47
that the British redcoats would line up in brightly
10:50
red -colored uniforms and line up in trade volleys
10:53
with the other side? How many of you thought
10:55
that that was kind of stupid? Okay, it wasn't,
11:00
but I'm going to explain why. Okay, so the tactics
11:03
of the time. Basically, it ties into the primary
11:13
weapon system. Your primary weapon system is
11:18
your smoothbore musket. I got to teach you some
11:24
physics, and I'm excited. You have the smoothbore
11:28
musket. Yeah, you probably want this part on
11:38
the back. So the smoothbore musket. Okay. The
11:43
smoothbore musket is useless as an individual
11:46
weapon. Okay. Now, let me distinguish between
11:52
a smoothbore musket versus most of the firearms
11:55
that you all would be familiar with today. Most
11:56
firearms today have what is called rifling. So
12:00
if you ever look down the barrel of most firearms,
12:05
make sure it's empty. you will see striations
12:11
on the barrel that put a spin on the bullet that
12:14
makes it go further and more accurately. How
12:16
many of you have ever thrown a football? Okay,
12:19
so you know how when you throw a football, you
12:20
want to put a spin on the football, yes? That's
12:22
the same principle with rifling on a firearm.
12:26
The problem with rifling on a firearm is while
12:30
it makes your fire more accurate, it slows your
12:34
reload time because in order for it to work,
12:37
the bullet has to fit the barrel snugly. And
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so when you're taking a ramrod and driving the
12:42
bullet and the powder and the wad down, you're
12:44
encountering resistance. And so a rifle was a
12:48
weapon used for hunting where if you've ever
12:51
been hunting before, you're not shooting a lot
12:53
of rounds off. You have to make your few rounds
12:56
count because after you shoot the firearm, okay,
12:58
what's the deer going to do if you miss? They're
13:01
going to run. Whereas, okay, if you shoot the
13:04
firearm off at a human being and you miss, they're
13:06
going to run towards you to attack you and disarm
13:09
you and kill you. Does that make sense? And so
13:11
what you're doing with a smoothbore musket is
13:14
you are marching in a complicated formation.
13:25
And you're firing in volleys. Now, the other
13:33
thing you've got going on is the reason they
13:36
went for smoothbore is they would actually make
13:38
the bullet slightly smaller than the barrel,
13:40
so that way you could reload more quickly. So
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what you lose in accuracy, you gain in volume
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of fire, and this is why you'd fire in formation,
13:47
because if I have a whole bunch of lead going
13:49
in a general direction, I will hit someone. Now,
13:53
there's another reason why you want to be in
13:55
your tight formation besides sending a wall of
13:57
lead. Once you get... And you may have heard
14:01
this expression, don't shoot until you see the
14:04
whites of their eyes. It's because the smoothbore
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weapon is highly inaccurate. And if they're any
14:09
further than that, you're not even going to hit
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them because your range is horrible. So you want
14:15
to think of a smoothbore musket having a range
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only slightly better than a modern shotgun today,
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which is about 25 meters. Now, how fast can someone
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run 25 meters? There are sprinters who can do
14:30
100 meters in 10 seconds, right? It takes about
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20 seconds to reload a musket. So you're not
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getting that many volleys off, and after you've
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gotten maybe two or three volleys off to tenderize
14:42
them enough, the enemy formation is already at
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you, and now you're doing the pointy stabby with
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the bayonets. Does that make sense? Because you're
14:52
doing these complicated maneuvers, because you're
14:54
training these people to march and shoot, it's
14:56
kind of a bit like, I use the example, if you
15:00
ever look at the marching band at a football
15:02
game, how many of you have friends in marching
15:04
band or how many of you have, okay, I have a
15:07
few of you in ROTC. Okay, remember when your
15:09
formation is first learning to march. They suck.
15:14
They're horrible at it. They're running into
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each other and whatnot. It takes a good three
15:18
to six months to get a human to march. to get
15:21
a group of humans to march in any complicated
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formation? You're thinking one month? Okay, throw
15:27
in, yes, but now throw in they're reloading while
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they're marching. Okay, now, by the way, and
15:37
you have travel time and whatnot. Anyway, so
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you have these regular army troops, okay? And
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the central feature is the smoothbore musket.
15:45
Okay, that's not how the natives fight, but we'll
15:47
get to those people in a moment. Okay. So you
15:53
have these very expensive regular forces. Now,
15:56
by the way, augmenting them, you have the Native
15:58
Americans who are serving as scouts. Now, the
16:03
scouts, they will engage in, shall we say, ungentlemanly
16:09
warfare. These are the sort that will do night
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raids. They'll do sneak attacks. They'll do melee
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fighting. They will use rifles, which have a
16:17
longer... Field of fire. They'll do ambushes.
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That's the tactics often used by the natives
16:23
against the British and the American forces.
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The thing that's awkward about the colonial militia
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is the colonial militia trains like regulars.
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But they're not as good. They're not as proficient
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because it's not their full time job because
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these are farmers who've been called up. OK.
16:47
Now, again, those of you who have people in the
16:49
service, there's kind of a disdain sometimes
16:52
between military forces, between professional
16:55
forces, and reserve forces. By the way, that
16:59
mode of joking persists even into our modern
17:02
military today. But anyway, okay, so. Everybody
17:13
good with this so far? Yes? Okay. Okay. Now,
17:27
so here's kind of the weird and funny thing.
17:32
Can I erase this bit? Yes? Is that good? Yes?
17:36
Okay. All right. So remember how you were reading
17:40
how... Each of these different colonies had their
17:44
own governments and they had their own legislatures
17:47
and they had their own things. You saw that,
17:48
yes? So on the French column, they had a unified
17:55
command. Because again, going back to the thing
17:59
we talked about the other week, who's ruling
18:01
over the French colony of Louisiana? Starts with
18:03
a V. Vice. Remember how they had the Viceroy
18:08
ruling over all things, ruling in the place of
18:10
the king. So the French have a unified command.
18:15
Huh? We can put that in the major events because
18:17
we're going to get to the losses. All right.
18:20
The French have a unified command. The British
18:23
have a divided command between regular and militia
18:31
forces. Okay. What winds up happening is in North
18:37
America, the colonists are losing. They're losing
18:41
battle after battle. They're doing horrible.
18:43
And so one of the things that the colonial governments
18:47
decide to do is, wait, wait, we need some way
18:52
of unifying these disparate colonies. Otherwise,
18:55
we're going to lose this war and the French are
18:59
going to drive us off the continent. So one of
19:01
the things that comes out tail end of the war
19:04
is the Albany Plan of Union. I want to say it's
19:12
shortly before the end of the war. I don't remember
19:14
if it's 1761 or 1762. The war ends in 1763. Now,
19:20
the Albany Plan of Union is one of the most ironic
19:24
documents you'll ever hear. We'll just say it's
19:31
about 1763. This is about 13 years before the
19:35
Declaration of Independence. Here's what they're
19:37
asking for. They're asking for an overlord. They
19:41
want the British monarch to send a governor general
19:44
to govern all the colonies. Now, I want you to
19:48
think about the irony of this. What's going to
19:49
happen 13 years later when the British try governing
19:52
the colonies? Does it go well? No. And so. But
19:58
the genesis of a unified, of a union among the
20:02
colonies is actually forged in the Seven Years'
20:05
War. Okay. So the big major event, of course,
20:11
is the Paris Peace Treaty in 1763. But now I
20:17
get to tell you the funny story of how you get
20:21
to peace. This is hilarious. Okay, it's hilarious
20:31
to me. Okay. So, remember how I said the British,
20:38
they were fighting in Africa against the French.
20:40
They were fighting in India against the French.
20:42
They were fighting in the Caribbean against the
20:43
French. By the way, what's the major resource
20:45
in the Caribbean that is worth fighting a war
20:47
for? Not tobacco. Sugar. Sugar powers the ships.
20:53
Sugar controls naval commerce. That's the thing
20:56
that you fight and die for in this century. Okay.
20:59
North America, the British are losing. It's what
21:03
happens on the European continent that finally
21:06
gets the French to negotiate a very generous
21:10
peace treaty. And here's what happened. We're
21:27
in Berlin at a palace called Sanssouci, where
21:33
a Prussian, which was a German prince by the
21:38
name of Frederick the Great, allies himself with
21:42
the British. Now, a couple of things you have
21:45
to recognize. Okay, so here's Germany, right?
21:49
Here's Paris, right? Now, the French... had aligned
21:55
themselves with the Russians. Okay, the French
21:58
and the Russians have actually been traditional
21:59
allies against Germans. So here's tiny little
22:07
Prussia, tiny little poison. Attacks Russia and
22:13
France at the same time. Literally, he takes
22:16
his main army, he attacks the Russians, knocks
22:18
them out of the game, flip turns his army, attacks
22:21
the French. and starts applying pressure on the
22:25
French homeland. Wait, we haven't heard Germans
22:30
doing that before, have we? Von Schlieffen in
22:34
World War I, Hitler in World War II. In other
22:37
words, the two -front war that later historians
22:41
will say, well, Hitler was crazy for doing that,
22:43
it worked for Frederick the Great. Now, it worked
22:45
for Frederick the Great because communications
22:47
in the 18th century was horrible. But so now
22:49
here you have Frederick the Great knocking on
22:51
the door of Paris, and the French are like, okay,
22:54
this is a good time to negotiate a treaty. And
22:57
so they give the British some very generous terms.
23:01
Now, we'll get back to Frederick in just a moment.
23:06
Okay, so when you look at the outcomes for the
23:10
British. Okay, so when you look at the outcomes
23:20
for the British, they expand their access to
23:29
India, Africa, they get some sugar islands in
23:38
the Caribbean. Oh, wait, wait. What's the...
23:45
Primary export coming out of India. There are
23:49
two that are actually interesting, but one that's
23:52
really interesting for the American Revolution.
23:56
Tea. So this is where your tea comes from. Okay.
24:07
Now, they get the Ohio River Valley, but it's...
24:14
Not quite a win. And I'm going to get to that
24:16
in just a moment. Okay. For the French, they
24:28
lose the territories. They lose territory in
24:34
India. They lose territory in... They lose the
24:37
Sugar Islands and the Caribbean. For them, it
24:38
is a horrible setback. They are taken down a
24:40
peg as... in this great power struggle between
24:44
the English and the French. Okay. The natives,
24:48
they lose French protection. So they lose access
24:56
to French manufactured goods. It's specifically
25:00
metal tools and arms. But when the French leave,
25:07
they leave. many of their weapons behind. They
25:11
have a going -out -of -business sale. Okay, what
25:13
does that do to the situation in the Ohio River
25:16
Valley if the French have cleared out their bases
25:18
and have given the weapons to the natives? What
25:21
do you think the natives are going to do? They're
25:24
going to attack. So you'll read, if you haven't
25:26
done so already, you remember reading about Pontiac's
25:29
Rebellion, and so, again, you have this uprising
25:32
among the natives, and the... british don't want
25:36
to fight the natives half a world away so they
25:39
sign this proclamation line the royal proclamation
25:47
line that prohibits settlement west of appalachia
25:52
now this is a really bad thing for the colonists
25:55
because the colonists fought in the war They
26:00
thought they were going to get access to the
26:03
Ohio River Valley, and now the monarch, in the
26:06
name of peace and quiet, says, no, you can't
26:08
settle there. So for the colonists, you have
26:11
life loss, lives lost, and no territorial gain.
26:24
They thought they were going to get the Ohio
26:25
River Valley. They didn't. Does that make sense?
26:28
Everybody good so far? And now the real kicker.
26:35
You got the taxes. Because, well, it may seem
26:42
like the Germans would, you know, go knock over
26:44
the French for free. No, they're not going to
26:46
go knock over the French for free because gunpowder
26:49
and firearms and all of those things cost money.
26:51
And so part of the war debt, in addition to...
26:55
All the money they had to front for all the ships
26:57
to go fight a war around the world. They also
27:00
had to go pay off the Germans for going knocking
27:02
over the French. And so now you have this desperate
27:08
need for money. And to the British idea, the
27:15
war was for the colonists, and the colonists
27:20
should pay for it. Okay. Now you have to come
27:25
up with a way to pay for it. We're going to get
27:30
more into this next time. This is something that
27:35
we have a lot of trouble with. How many of you
27:39
have worked a job? How many of you have actually
27:45
looked at your pay stub and seen how much money
27:47
the government takes from you? The rest of you
27:51
should start. It'll make you angry. For most
27:58
of American history and for most of the history
28:01
of the world, you don't tax wage workers. Because,
28:04
by the way, do any of you make that much? No.
28:09
I mean, at best, you were making $12 an hour,
28:13
right? At best. Some of y 'all may be a little
28:16
more, some of y 'all may be a little less. Currently,
28:18
the federal minimum wage is $7 .25 an hour still,
28:21
but nobody pays that. You're welcome. But no,
28:25
so typically the taxation, you tax imports and
28:33
exports. And so what you do is that previously
28:38
taxes were levied at ports. on imported goods.
28:50
Now, there was also a certain logic to this because,
28:53
okay, you use the money from the tax on the imported
28:57
goods to pay for the Navy that protects the global
29:00
oceans from piracy. This is on the back. Which
29:05
one did I not? I think I hit the outcome for
29:07
the natives. I did the outcomes for France, and
29:09
I think I did the outcomes for the colonists.
29:13
Also, it's a lot easier to tax ports because
29:16
okay, you only have a set number of ports versus
29:21
going into the hinterland to find people. By
29:23
the way, the only reason we can collect taxes
29:26
on y 'all as wage workers is because the government
29:30
of the United States employs a small army of
29:33
about 4 million literate people in various regulatory
29:37
agencies. If you don't have a large body of literate
29:39
people and you don't have the bureaucracy to
29:42
tax wage work, you can't tax wage work. Whereas
29:44
it doesn't take that many bodies to go tax 12
29:46
ports. Does that make sense? And so the things
29:49
that they tax are the things that people need.
29:51
So it would be the sugar. T is later. Sugar,
29:58
paper, and other imported goods, which would
30:04
include largely metal goods. And so the taxation
30:13
schema to pay... back, pay down the war debt
30:18
from the Seven Years' War, is one of the main
30:22
drivers of the enmity between the British home
30:26
island and their colonists. And so I think that's
30:30
a good place to stop. I'm going to stop the tape
30:33
and see what else we got.