The Seven Years’ War was a conflict which was primarily fought between Britain and France between 1756 and 1763. The war came about owing to clashes between the French and British in North America and their Native American allies there since 1754, while the immediate spark of the wider conflict in 1756 was owing to a diplomatic clash between Prussia and Austria in Central Europe, with France backing Austria and Britain allying with Prussia. The war lasted for seven years (though nine years in North America) and has been termed the first global conflict, as it involved fighting not just in Europe, but in North America, the Caribbean, across the Atlantic and east to India. It ended in stalemate in Europe, but the Treaty of Paris of 1763 saw France cede much of New France (Canada) to Britain.[1]
Seven Years' War chronology of events
The Seven Years’ War formed part of a wider period of rivalry between Britain and France which stretched across the entirety of the eighteenth century, beginning in some respects in 1688 with the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War and ending in 1815 at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. This rivalry was for the position as the pre-eminent political, military and economic power of Europe and included rivalry for colonial dominance in North America, the Caribbean and India. Several wars had already been fought between Britain and France in the eighteenth century and new clashes began in North America in 1754 as border skirmishes and raids were carried out between New France (the eastern parts of modern-day Canada) and the British Thirteen Colonies (the eastern states of today's United States).[2] These expanded into a pan-European war in 1756 when Britain backed Prussia in a diplomatic dispute with Austria, the latter of which was supported by France. Full scale war broke out in the summer of 1756.[3]
The war would last seven years. It was fought in numerous regions. In Europe itself battles were seen across the continent as other states like Portugal and several of the smaller German states supported Britain and Prussia, while Saxony, Russia, Spain and Sweden all allied with France and Austria. Much of it was actually a colonial conflict with the fighting at its most intense between the British and French in parts of North America and India. In both instances the two European powers used the native peoples there as proxies and auxiliaries in their conflicts. Britain generally had the better of it, winning a victory of wider historical significance at Plassey in India in 1757 under the leadership of Robert Clive and a series of striking victories against the French in North America in 1759 and 1760.[4] The war ended in 1763 in something of a stalemate in Europe, but the British had clearly won the wider colonial war and with the Treaty of Paris in 1763 France ceded its colony of New France in Quebec to Britain, which now became the basis for British Canada.[5]
Extent of migration after the Seven Years' War
The migration which occurred after the Seven Years’ War was complex. Some of it is easy to delineate. A clear example is in Canada. The war brought this vast territory under British rule. Some French administrators and settlers chose to leave what had been the northern parts of New France and to head either back to Europe or else to some of France’s other colonies, notably the sugar colonies in the Caribbean.[6] Others were forcibly removed, notably the 10,000 or so settlers across the Acadia region who were forced out by the British even while the war was still underway.[7] In tandem there was a movement of British administrators and then settlers into British Canada.
Similarly, the British emerged from the Seven Years’ War as a growing power in India, where it had been involved in a rivalry with France to become the pre-eminent colonial power there. This is more difficult to tie directly to the Seven Years’ War though, as the British were primarily arriving in the 1760s, 1770s and 1780s as their holdings in north-eastern India around Bengal expanded at the expense of the various Indian powers there.[8] Again, in a rather indirect fashion, the war could be said to have led to some shifts in population in Eastern Europe in the long run as in the final stages of the war in Europe Prussia and Russia came together as allies and began the Partitions of Poland a decade later.
Demographic impact of the Seven Years' War
The most significant demographic and cultural impact of war, by some degrees, was felt in North America in what became Canada. When the war began this was the French colony of New France, where French people made up the bulk of the European settler population and French was spoken. That all changed with the ceding of New France to Britain. Canada’s dual position as a country with both a British and French heritage was forged out of this. Colonial settlement also vastly expanded. The population of French Quebec, for instance, stood at just around 80,000 in the 1750s prior to the outbreak of the war, but it grew very quickly once the British, who had more of a culture of overseas migration by the late eighteenth century, became the controlling power here. The European population of Canada expanded to 150,000 by 1775. Thereafter, with the independence of the United States following the American Revolutionary War, and the manner in which this stopped the flow of British migrants to the British colonies there in the late eighteenth century, migration to Canada exploded. The population reached 380,000 by 1800, the overwhelming growth being in Lower Canada, while it more than doubled to 900,000 by 1825 as New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia became increasingly attractive centers of settlement.[9]
At the same time, the British takeover of New France, led to a notable increase in European settlement along the lower climes of the Mississippi River as settlers who once might have headed for Canada now gravitated towards the French colony of Louisiana and its central city, New Orleans. This occurred despite New Orleans coming for a time under Spanish rule from the mid-1760s onwards as the French continued to view it as an unofficial colony, one which the declining Spanish Empire exercised only a nominal control over and which returned to French ownership eventually. The population of New Orleans was only around 3,000 in the mid-1760s when the Seven Years’ War came to an end, but had expanded to upwards of 12,000 by the early 1800s when the government of Napoleon Bonaparte sold the Louisiana colony to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, while the wider Cajun population of Louisiana stood at nearly 60,000 by that time. It is debatable if it would have been so populated or if the Bayou would have retained such a strong Cajun character down to the present day had the French not lost Canada in 1763.[10]
See also
Explore more about the Seven Years' War
- United Kingdom, Royal Navy Officers’ Service Records, 1756-1931 record collection on MyHeritage
- Canada Newspapers, 1752-2007 record collection on MyHeritage
- Researching your French and Indian War Ancestor at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- How to Find Birth, Marriage and Death Registrations in Canada at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/seven-years-war
- ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/french-and-indian-war
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/seven-years-war
- ↑ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/seven-years-war
- ↑ https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1379594359150/1607905375821
- ↑ https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-ameriques/en/european-settling-french-caribbean-article
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-deportation-of-the-acadians-feature
- ↑ Suresh Chandra Ghosh, ‘The Social Condition of the British Community in Bengal, 1757–1800’ (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1966).
- ↑ https://www65.statcan.gc.ca/acyb02/1867/acyb02_1867001803-eng.htm
- ↑ Edna F. Campbell, ‘New Orleans at the Time of the Louisiana Purchase’, in Geographical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (July, 1921), pp. 414–425.