Practice questions: The Seven Years’ War (The French and Indian War)

Answer: (B) Colonial population growth and land speculation pushing settlement into the interior

1. The ban on western settlement is the Proclamation of 1763, thirteen years later, issued to limit further frontier wars rather than to send surveyors looking for farmland.
2. The British colonies held about 1.2 million people, mostly farmers pressing toward the mountains, and the Ohio Company, Virginia investors including the governor, held a 1749 Crown grant of 200,000 acres to settle the Ohio Country.
3. France held the Ohio Country with forts and the fur trade, the route between Canada and the Mississippi, and Native nations generally preferred those traders to British farmers.
4. At Albany in 1754, Pennsylvania's agents bought a tract from Six Nations leaders and read it as reaching toward the Ohio. That was not a sale to Virginia, and the Lenape who lived on the land did not sign.

Answer: (C) Ohio nations' balancing of rival empires to protect their land and trade

1. Britain courted the Six Nations as allies, and Hendrick came to Albany demanding British forts, not as a partner of France. In the Ohio Country, Tanaghrisson himself led Washington's men against the French.
2. The royal boundary is the Proclamation line of 1763. In 1753 Tanaghrisson was drawing the Virginians into a fight in the West, not backing a ban on colonial movement.
3. The Six Nations played Britain and France against each other, and Tanaghrisson, speaking for them at the trading town of Logstown, denied that either empire owned the Ohio Country even as he chose a side in the war.
4. Tanaghrisson denied ownership to both empires. He was not asking the Crown to govern Native communities in place of the colonial governors.

Answer: (D) Britain sent Braddock's regulars against Fort Duquesne

1. The Appalachian ban is the Proclamation of 1763, a response to later frontier war and postwar debt, not the immediate result of the July 1754 surrender.
2. Delegates at Albany drafted a plan of union in the same summer, and every colonial assembly rejected it. No joint colonial army came out of that plan.
3. France stayed in the Ohio Valley, built Fort Duquesne at the Forks after the Virginians' unfinished post surrendered, and held it until 1758.
4. In the spring of 1755 London sent General Edward Braddock with two regiments of regulars to take Fort Duquesne, the British army's answer to the 1754 defeats.

Answer: (A) A British rule that ranked colonial officers below regulars

1. London ranked any officer with the king's commission above any officer with only a colonial commission. Captain James Mackay therefore refused Washington's orders, and Washington resigned in November 1754 rather than drop from colonel to captain.
2. The rank rule ran the other way. A royal captain outranked a colonial colonel, so the Virginia assembly did not control promotions in the British army.
3. A demand for colonial members of Parliament belongs to the tax disputes of the 1760s. The 1754 quarrel was over military rank inside the empire.
4. Washington wanted a royal commission like Mackay's, and in 1757 he still demanded the benefits of a British subject. He was trying to rise inside the British army, not to leave the empire.

Answer: (B) set a precedent for congresses that later coordinated resistance

1. Delegates came from seven colonies, not thirteen, and every assembly rejected the plan. No permanent joint government was created.
2. The plan failed, but the meeting set a precedent. The colonies gathered again in 1765 and in 1774, this time to resist Britain. Franklin's 1754 cartoon Join, or Die had urged union against France.
3. The plan never passed, and it did not exchange seats in Parliament for taxes. The fight over colonial representation in Parliament came with the tax laws of the 1760s.
4. The Grand Council was to be chosen by the colonial assemblies. The Six Nations were at Albany for alliance talks and a land deed, not as voters in the proposed government.

Answer: (A) Assemblies guarded their power to tax, and London feared colonial unity

1. Each assembly refused to give up its own power to tax, which is what Franklin remembered as too much royal prerogative, while officials in Britain judged a joint colonial government too democratic and a threat to imperial control.
2. Independence was not the assemblies' aim in 1754. They rejected the plan from inside the empire, and London's objection was that the plan gave colonists too much power, not that it failed to unite them.
3. The assemblies did not accept a British-funded defense as the price of rejecting the plan. The dispute was over who would hold the power to tax, and after 1763 Parliament tried to tax the colonies directly.
4. The Six Nations' absence from the Grand Council was real, and the Lenape did not sign Pennsylvania's Albany deed, but Franklin's recalled objections were about royal power and colonial democracy, not about Native representation.

Answer: (D) why many Ohio Valley nations fought beside France early in the war

1. The Six Nations did not declare war on Britain. Britain courted them as allies, and Hendrick came to Albany asking for British forts, not to break with them.
2. The Proclamation came in October 1763, and its aim was to halt colonial settlement and private land purchases west of the Appalachians so as to limit wars with Native nations. France was already gone from the mainland, and the order was not aimed at French farmers.
3. Trade did not stop. In 1758 the Ohio nations said they wanted British traders, not a British fort, and the fur trade remained the basis of Native diplomacy with both empires.
4. Braddock told the delegates the English would inherit the land and that he did not need their help. That autumn Shingas went to war against the English, and Lenape war parties burned farms from Pennsylvania to Virginia, so Britain lost the Native support it needed against France.

Answer: (A) Doubt of British leadership, and pride in provincial troops

1. After the Monongahela, Washington praised the Virginians and blamed the regulars who broke. Many colonists came to see the regulars as arrogant and poorly suited to the woods, while remaining proud of their own troops.
2. No colonial independence movement existed in 1755. Washington was still an unpaid volunteer hoping for a royal commission, and in 1757 he demanded the benefits of a British subject.
3. The defeat did not humble British opinion of provincials. Braddock had already dismissed American militia, and in 1758 James Wolfe called American troops contemptible and unreliable in action.
4. The Ohio nations did not join Britain after the battle. Shingas went to war against the English that autumn. Their turn away from France came in 1758, with the Treaty of Easton.

Answer: (C) New colonial taxes and stricter enforcement of the trade laws

1. In the Treaty of Paris, France ceded Canada to Britain, along with nearly all French land east of the Mississippi, and gave Louisiana to Spain. Britain did not return Canada.
2. Britain kept about 10,000 regulars in North America after 1763, in forts such as Fort Pitt. The army stayed, and Parliament looked to the colonies to help pay for it.
3. Pitt's ships, regiments, and promise to repay the colonies helped nearly double the national debt, from about £75 million in 1756 to about £133 million in 1763. Parliament then taxed the colonies and ended salutary neglect, as customs officers began collecting duties in 1764.
4. The assemblies had already rejected the Albany Plan in 1754 because they would not give up the power to tax. They did not revive it after the peace to share costs.

Answer: (B) Growing distrust between British officers and colonial soldiers

1. These letters are about rank and respect during the fighting. The postwar argument over who would pay for defense came from the debt and from Parliament's taxes, and the colonies resisted those taxes.
2. Washington demanded a British subject's right to promotion and had already condemned regulars who ran at the Monongahela. Wolfe wrote that Americans could not be depended on in action. The war bred distrust on both sides even while they fought France together.
3. Washington's protest claims the benefits of British subjects and denies that being American should lessen them. Like most colonists, he still thought of himself as a loyal British subject.
4. Neither letter proposes seats in Parliament. That demand grew later, against the taxes of the 1760s, and British officers were not its sponsors.

Answer: (B) European rivals could wage their struggle on Native land without Native consent.

1. Ohio nations did deal with both empires. Tanaghrisson carried words to the French and then sided with Virginia, and in 1758 these same towns were hearing Pennsylvania's peace offer while French troops still held Fort Duquesne.
2. Britain and France were fighting the Seven Years' War on Native ground. At Kuskusky the council rejected the assumption that the empires could wage that war in the Ohio Country without the consent of the people who lived there.
3. The council named Europe and the sea as the places the two empires might fight. The objection was to a war fought in their country, not to the empires fighting each other elsewhere.
4. The speakers were asserting that claim, in a country Virginia, France, and the Six Nations were all trying to control. The assumption they attacked was imperial use of the land, not the Native claim to it.

Answer: (C) Native diplomacy and a shift of alliances changed control of the Ohio Valley

1. Forbes's 1758 advance was a British army campaign, and Braddock's 1755 force had been two regiments of regulars. Provincial troops served in both, but the Ohio campaign was not a militia war fought without the regular army.
2. Montreal surrendered in September 1760, and Quebec fell in September 1759. The Ohio nations accepted the Easton peace in November 1758, while France still held Canada.
3. At Easton in October 1758, Pennsylvania gave back its Albany purchase west of the mountains and promised no settlement there. The Ohio nations then left the French alliance, and the French destroyed Fort Duquesne and left before Forbes arrived.
4. Pennsylvania's offer was the return of western land and a promise against settlement, not seats in the assembly. The nations wanted traders, and Tamaqua told the soldiers to go back over the mountain.

Answer: (D) the 1763 attacks on British forts around the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley

1. The Albany Plan was a 1754 proposal for a colonial government. The assemblies rejected it, and it offered Native nations no part in that government.
2. The 1763 treaty transferred imperial claims: Canada and French land east of the Mississippi to Britain, Florida from Spain to Britain, and Louisiana from France to Spain. It did not open the West to settlers. The Proclamation that same year tried to close it.
3. Britain sent regular troops, not colonial militia, against the uprising, and colonial settlers were among the people attacked. Native nations were not allied with colonial militias against the regulars.
4. In 1763 the Odawa leader Pontiac attacked Detroit, and warriors from many nations, angry about settlers and the end of diplomatic gifts and many of them followers of the Lenape prophet Neolin, took eight British forts and besieged Detroit and Fort Pitt.

Answer: (A) stop western settlement and limit further costly frontier wars

1. In October 1763, after Pontiac's War had begun, the Crown drew a line along the Appalachians, reserved the west for Native nations, and barred settlers and private land purchases, in order to prevent more frontier wars.
2. By the Treaty of Paris that February, France had ceded Canada and nearly all its claims east of the Mississippi and had given Louisiana to Spain. The line was not a border with a remaining French colony.
3. The Proclamation forbade private purchases and settlement on the reserved land. It did not raise money by selling that land to companies, and Washington's June petition for 2.5 million acres fell on the wrong side of the line.
4. The order left Native nations in possession of western hunting grounds and told squatters to get off. It did not move Native nations east to make room for farms.

Answer: (C) Britain ended salutary neglect and enforced taxes and trade laws

1. In 1757 Washington still demanded the benefits of British subjects, and most colonists still thought of themselves as loyal subjects. A separate national identity was not an accomplished fact in 1763.
2. Britain kept about 10,000 regulars in North America after the peace, in posts such as Fort Pitt. The army stayed, and the colonies were asked to help pay for it.
3. Before 1763 London loosely enforced its trade laws and let the assemblies run local affairs, later called salutary neglect. After the debt nearly doubled, customs officers collected duties and the first new colonial taxes came in 1764.
4. The Albany Plan had failed in 1754, and the colonies did not form one government after the peace. The meetings of 1765 and 1774 coordinated resistance. They did not replace royal government.

Answer: (B) Raising a colonial revenue to support troops kept in North America

1. Britain did not return continental defense to the assemblies. It kept about 10,000 regulars in North America and expected the empire, not each colony on its own, to hold the new territory.
2. Parliament decided that the colonists, who had gained most from the victory, should help pay for the troops guarding them. The nearly doubled debt, and the interest on it, drove that demand for colonial revenue.
3. London did the reverse of a reward. Salutary neglect, the loose enforcement of the trade laws, ended, and customs officers began collecting duties.
4. The Crown did not hand the West to land companies. The Proclamation of 1763 reserved that land for Native nations and barred private purchases and settlement.

Answer: (D) Rank disputes fed resentment among colonists who still felt British

1. Shared service did not produce a separate nationality during the war. Washington's own letter insists on the benefits of British subjects, and our account is that most colonists still thought of themselves as British.
2. Seats in Parliament became a colonial argument against taxation in the 1760s. In 1757 Washington was asking for rank and promotion inside the British service.
3. Every assembly rejected the Albany Plan in 1754. It never became a wartime government.
4. The king's commission outranked a colonial one, Washington resigned rather than drop to captain, and he still demanded a British subject's right to preferment. Resentment of regulars grew inside a British identity, years before independence.

Answer: (A) War between Britain and France, begun in North America in 1754

1. Whoever fired first at Jumonville Glen on May 28, 1754, the skirmish began the war between Britain and France in North America. Formal declarations came in 1756, and the fighting spread to Europe, Africa, and India.
2. France ceded Canada to Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. Britain did not give Canada back.
3. The Albany Plan was written in July 1754 and rejected by the assemblies. The glen did not produce a joint colonial government.
4. The Proclamation line of 1763 reserved land west of the Appalachians for Native nations, to limit further frontier wars. France no longer held the mainland, so the line was not a border between French and British settlers.

Answer: (C) Speculators' western claims, which the Proclamation of 1763 then blocked

1. The Proclamation kept Native nations on western hunting grounds and ordered squatters off that land. It did not move Native people east of the mountains.
2. France left the mainland in the peace, ceding Canada and the east bank of the Mississippi to Britain and Louisiana to Spain. Its Ohio presence had been forts and trade, not a plan to fill the valley with French farmers.
3. On June 3, 1763, Washington joined a company asking the Crown for 2.5 million acres west of the mountains. In October the Proclamation reserved that country for Native nations and barred private settlement and purchases, and speculators were furious.
4. The restriction was a royal proclamation, not a grant of the West to the assemblies. Private land companies could not buy or settle the reserved land without the Crown's license.

Answer: (D) Resentment that fed the Native attack on British forts in 1763

1. Amherst cut the gifts back sharply. The French had kept their alliances with yearly presents of powder, cloth, and food, and he treated that practice as a bribe rather than expanding it.
2. Native leaders did not accept the forts. Tamaqua told the British to go back over the mountain, the Ohio nations wanted traders rather than a garrison, and Minweweh said Britain had not conquered his people.
3. The Albany Plan was a 1754 colonial proposal, already rejected by the assemblies, and it gave Native nations no seats. Amherst's gift policy has nothing to do with it.
4. The end of the gifts, together with settlers on Native land and the preaching of the Lenape prophet Neolin, fed the 1763 rising in which Pontiac attacked Detroit and allied warriors took eight British forts.

Answer: (A) Native leaders defended their land and alliances against both empires

1. Hendrick told Albany that Virginia and Canada were quarreling over Six Nations land. Tanaghrisson denied that either empire owned the Ohio Country and still chose a side, Shingas refused to fight for land his people could not live on, and Minweweh later said the defeat of France was not the defeat of his people.
2. The choices ran in more than one direction. Tanaghrisson sided with the Virginians against the French in 1754, and the Ohio nations left the French alliance after Easton in 1758. That is not a fixed preference for French rule.
3. No Native nation signed the Treaty of Paris, and the Lenape who lived on Pennsylvania's Albany purchase did not sign that deed. European agreements did not decide Native policy.
4. An alliance was not acceptance of an empire's title. Tanaghrisson fought beside Virginia while denying both crowns the land, and Shingas's delegation walked away when Braddock said the English would inherit it.