APUSH Chapter 6: The Duel for North America

Chapter Summary
Two dominant cultures emerged in the 1700s in North America: England controlled the Atlantic seaboard from Georgia to Maine, and France controlled the area of Quebec along the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River. New England consisted of towns made up by farmers. They cleared the land and pushed the Indians out. New France was made up of fur trading outposts. They were scattered and lived with and often worked with the Indians in the forests and streams. Like cats and dogs, England and France cannot live together in such a close proximity. While separated, they were fine, but the two cultures began to rub against one another in the Ohio Valley. This started the French and Indian War. The French and Indian War saw the English defeat France, kicking them out of North America.



Chapter Outline

 * Due to being convulsed in foreign wars and domestic strife, France was a latecomer in the race for colonies
 * In 1598, the Edict of Nantes was issued, allowing limited toleraion to French Huguenots
 * when King Louis XIV became king, he became interested in overseas colonies, and in 1608, France established Quebec
 * Samuel de Champlain became known as the Father of New France
 * He entered into friendly relations with the neighbiring Huron Indians and helped them defeat the Iroquois, though the Iroquois later hampered French efforts in the Ohio Valley
 * Unlike English colonists, French colonists didn't immigrate to North America by hordes, as peasants were too poor and Huguenots weren't allowed to leave
 * New France's one valuable resource was the beaver
 * Beaver hunters were known as the coureurs de bois
 * The French voyageurs recruited Indians to hunt for beavers, but Indians were decimated by the white man's diseases, and the beaver population was heavily extinguished
 * French Catholic missionaries zealously tried to convert Indians
 * In 1701, Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit to prevent English settlers from pushing into the Ohio Valley
 * In 1682, Robert de LaSalle founded Louisiana to halt Spanish expansion into the area near the Gulf of Mexico
 * Three years later, he returned but landed in Spanish Texas and was murdered
 * France established many forts in fertile Illinois county, making it the garden of France's North American empire
 * English colonists fought the French and their Indian allies in King William's War/Queen Anne's War
 * The French-inspired Indians ravaged some of the American northeast, while British tried to capture Quebec and Montreal
 * Although they failed, they did temporarily have Port Royal
 * The peace deal in Utrecht in 1713 gave Britain Acadia (Novia Scotia), Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and limited trading rights with Spanish America
 * The War of Jenkin's Ear, confined to the Carribean Sea and Georgia, consisted of English Captain Jenkins getting his ear cut off by a commander
 * This war was merged with the War of Austrian Succession (King George's War), where France allied itself with Spain and England still managed to capture the fortress of Cape Breton Island (Fort Louisbourg)
 * Even though the New Englanders captured Louisbourg, it was given back to France in the peace terms, outraging the colonists as they feared the fort
 * In 1754, George Washington was sent to Ohio country as a lietenant colonial, and his troops managed to kill the French leader near Fort Duquesne
 * Later, the French returned and surrounded Washington's Fort Necessity, forcing him to surrender
 * The French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) began with Washington's battle with the French
 * In Europe, England and Prussia (Germany) were fighting against France, Spain, Austria, and Russia, until Frederick the Great of Prussia repelled them
 * Many Americans wanted the American colonies to unite in hopes of strengthening them
 * In 1754, Ben Franklin' took the first step towards unity with his famous "Join or Die" cartoon that helped bring colonists to the Albany Congress, but it failed as the states were reluctant to give up their power
 * The British sent General Edward Braddock to lead a bunch of inexperienced soldiers with slow, heavy artillery, and they were ambushed by the French
 * As the British tried to attack a bunch of strategic wilderness posts, defeat after defeat piled up, so William Pitt came in and soft-pedaled assaults on the French-West Indies, concentrated on Quebec-Montreal, and replaced old officers with new ones
 * In 1758, Louisbourg fell, dwindling supplies in New France
 * James Wolfe defeated the French in Quebec and caused the city to surrender
 * This Battle of Quebec was remarkable because, when Montreal fell in 1760, it marked the last time French flags would fly on American soil
 * In the Peace Treaty at Paris in 1763, Britain received all of France's North American land, and the French were only allowed to retain some sugar islands in the West Indies and two islets in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
 * Spain was eliminated from Florida, but Louisiana was given to them to compensate for their losses
 * Great Britain became the leading naval power in the world, and a great power in North America
 * Friction developed between the British and the Americans when Britain refused to recognize American officers abive the rank of captain, as the American believed they were equals to the British
 * Brits grew concerned about American secret trade with enemy traders, and many American colonials didn't even want to hrelp fight against the French until Pitt offered to reimburse them
 * During the French and Indian War, Americans from different colonies realized that they had much in common, and disunity began to fade
 * Now that the French had been beaten, the colonists could roam freely, and became less dependent upon Great Britain
 * The French hoped that Britain would one day lose their great empire, just as France had lost theirs
 * The Indians could no longer play European powers against each other, as now only Great Britain was left
 * In 1763, Chief Pontiac led a few French-allied tribes in a bloody campaign through the Ohio Valley, but the whites quickly stopped them
 * Land-hungry Americans believed that they could now settle west of the Appalachians, but Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited any settlement beyond the Appalachians
 * Although this document had good intentions of preventing conflict with Indians, colonists saw it as another form of oppression
 * In 1765, ~1K wagons rolled to the Appalachians, in defiance of the Proclamation
 * The first French to leave Canada were the Acadians, as the British forcefull expelled them from the region in 1755
 * They fled to Louisiana and became known as Cajuns
 * They were largly isolated until the 1930s, when a bridge-building spree by Governor Huey Long broke the isolation
 * In 1763, a second group of French settlers in Quebec left to New England because of their poor harvests, though they hoped to return to Quebec one day
 * French culture remains strong in Quebec today