What is the importance of the 7 Year War to the American Revolution?

Question

I have to write a 600 word essay on this topic and I really cannot find anything helpful. Any information big or small will be helpful. Thanks.

Answer 1

~Given the financial drain on the homeland, especially due to the war, Parliament decided that it was high time that the colonials began to foot some of the bill for their development, government, protection and other aid that the colonies had been receiving for years without contribution to the cost. To do this, Parliament revoked many existing taxes and imposed new, but lower ones. They then had the gall to, for the first time in a century, actually try to collect those taxes. In addition, to assist merchants and industrialists in the homeland and otherwise relieve the stress on the worldwide British economy, they imposed trade restrictions and regulations on all British subjects and they began to crack down on the rampant smuggling that had been engaged in by the colonials for decades. The trade restrictions were designed not only to revive the British economy (at home and elsewhere) but to keep certain goods and materials (particularly such as would be of use against the British in war) away from British enemies such as the French and Spanish.

Some of the colonials, those who stood to lose the most financially, having had reaped the benefits of the British military since the first settlements were established, having watched their commercial enterprises grow through trade and aid from their British brothers across the pond, took offense. About 1/3 of the colonists were in favor of war, 1/3 remained loyal and 1/3 pretty much sat the fence.

The bull about "no taxation without representation" is just that: bull. Anyone who knows anything about the parliamentary government of Great Britain at the time knows that a farmer in South Carolina had just as much representation as did a shopkeeper in London. True, there was no representative from the colonies, be it the 13 who joined the insurrection or those in Canada or the West Indies or anywhere else in the Empire. The thing to remember is the colonists never requested the right to appointment of one of their own to the Houses of Parliament. In the latter half of the 18th century, the British - at home and in the colonies - enjoyed the most freedom and liberty of any nation on earth. The oppressive, tyrannical British government at the time was the most just and fair the world had seen since the falls of Greece and Rome.

The military experience gleaned from the North American theater of the Seven Years War, and the arms and training the militias had acquired, gave some of the more radical of the hotheads the guts to get uppity. Since the natives had been pretty well beaten up and pushed back into the interior by the War, the colonials also saw the opportunity to grab free land. Parliament imposed restrictions on settlement over the mountains because the British couldn't protect the new settlements in the west from either the natives or the French. The British (which necessarily included the colonials) had made treaties with various tribes about not allowing land grabs by the colonials. The locals didn't care, they wanted the free land and didn't care what treaties they had to break or who they had to kill to get it. Thus began the American way that is with us to this day and which has rendered us so dear to the hearts of the rest of the world.

Due in no small part to the cost of the war, the homeland Brits couldn't really afford to spend more on keeping the colonials in place or in insuring that the treaties would be obeyed by disloyal British subjects in North America. As time passed, the French were again a threat in Europe. Given that only a small minority of the colonials were in favor of the movement it was thought ill-advised to send significantly more troops to the colonies when they might be needed at home. In any case, as generally happens at the end of a war, the British army had been downsized. The window of opportunity to quell the revolution (actually it was not a revolution, it was a civil war) closed.

The French still harbored their ancient animosity toward the British and they wanted to expand their lost North American empire back eastward. The colonials and French made agreements which, but for the Seven Years War, would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier and which would ultimately prove to be the deciding factor at Yorktown 14 years later. But for French aid, French trade and French troops, Cornwallis would never have been in the position of even considering surrender. Wars do make for strange bedfellows; Saddam was not so long ago a US ally, as was Osama and Iran. On the other hand, Germany and Japan were once enemies. The Seven Years War produced like results between the colonies and the French.

After the war started, Thomas Paine moved to the New World. Prior to that move, he had been a failure at just about anything he put his hand to. He saw the chance to make a few bucks. Based on what he was told by his buddies (like Ben Franklin) he began to pump out propaganda the likes of which Joseph Goebbels would have been proud. (The difference was, Goebbels lived through that of which he wrote and had first hand knowledge - Paine did not). Between the propaganda, the greed for land, the demand for open trade (adverse consequences to the homeland be damned) and the resistance to what were truly insignificant and fair taxes (the collection of which would not have defrayed the total cost of maintaining the colonies and the the folks back home would have still had to have paid some of the bills), a minority of colonists took up arms and the undermanned British military on the scene was unable to put down the insurrection quickly and completely (although the loyal Brits won most of the early battles over the traitorous terrorists who were fomenting the uprising.

Now, this is all true, factual and accurate, but I wouldn't suggest that you use it unless you are prepared to do the necessary research to back it up. The materials are out there - particularly in original documents- but you won't find them at Wikipedia or on YahooAnswers.

Answer 2

A few things worth looking into (in addition to what Plague wrote):

1. After the 7 Year War, the British closed off the Ohio Valley for the American colonists, so that the colonies couldn't expand.

2. The war left Britain in debt. To increase revenue, they tried to levy taxes (eg The Stamp Act), which the colonists didn't like.

3. Once the French left North America, the colonies were less dependent on Britain for protection.

Answer 3

The Seven Years War is known as the French and Indian War in the US. Many colonials who served with the British in the French & Indian War went on to fight in the Amerian Revolution--including George Washington. Washington requested being admitted into the regular British army as a senior officer, but the English looked down on Washington and most colonials, and his request was rejected. That rejection helped lead him away from the loyalists to the revolutionaries.

The French lost the war and were forced to surrender terroritories in canada and the US territories. This stung their pride, and the desire to get back at the British was part of the reason they decided to support the colonists against the British.

Answer 4

after the 7 years war the colonials expeted to be able to expand westward, king george did not allow them to do so. the cost of the war had already hurt england forcing them to put new taxes in place that colonials resented. the proposition of having to protect colonists who expanded westward from indians was yet another financial burden that the crown could not afford. the thirst for western land and englands denial of access to it provided a base for popular support for the revolution by poorer landless americans

Answer 5

In effect no, although the British allowed them to keep small pockets, the French gave these to Spain as compensation for ceding Florida to the British.