America Revolution

The link between the French and Indian War and the might seem unexpected, but the French and Indian War paved the way for the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian Wars on the American Revolution is even greater due to the success of the British in the colonial wars between Great Britain and France. The French and Indian War is the name used for the colonial wars that took place between Great Britain and France from 1754 until 1763 over the control of the territory in North America.

The French and Indian War began on the basis of the rivalry between France and England which eventually began over the territories of the New World. The territory of North America was soon divided between British North America and the French North America, distribution of power that caught in the middle the Native Americans (Bell, 2003). The French and Indian War ended with the win of Great Britain, which by that time had already established itself as the world’s greatest empire, fact confirmed by the 1763 Treaty of Paris (Bell, 2003).

However, the victory of Britain meant that its colonial empire increased and along with it the deficit of Great Britain. This deficit was passed on to the colonists in North America and later became the one of the reasons that led to the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian War on the American Revolution is noticeable especially due to the victory of the British which were faced with several problems that were among the reasons for the outbreak of the American Revolution.

The American Revolution refers to the moment when the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States gained independence from Great Britain. Although the fighting started twelve years after the end of the French and Indian War, the period that followed the Seven Years War represented the preparation for the American Revolution and the beginning for the revolutionary era (American Revolution). After the end of the French and Indian War American Colonies were faced with only one ruler, Great Britain, and gained an important ally for their revolutionary movement, France.

“France played a key role in aiding the new nation with money and munitions, organizing a coalition against Great Britain, and sending an army and a fleet that played a decisive role at Yorktown” (American Revolution). If it wasn’t for the French and Indian War and if Great Britain wouldn’t have won over France, perhaps the American Revolution wouldn’t have occurred or it would have had a hard chance gaining any powerful ally in a battle against two colonial empires.

While France became an ally in the American Revolution, Great Britain ended the French and Indian War with a great deficit, a deficit that it asked to be covered from the American colonies as a price of defending them from the French threat. These taxes imposed by Britain were considered to be illegal and caused great dissatisfaction in the colonies, eventually leading to the outburst of the American Revolution.

The most obvious link between the American Revolution and the French and Indian War is that of the taxes imposed by the British for the defense of the colonies from the French threat. The problem with the taxes, which eventually led to the American Revolution, was not that they were high or that they existed at all, it was that the colonists were not consulted about these taxes because they had no representative in the British Parliament (American Revolution). Since there was no representation of the American colonies in the British Parliament, how could there be taxation.

The subject of “no taxation without representation” became one of the reasons why the colonies desired independence from the British government. Particularly this desire for equal rights and representation was the basis of the fight for independence from Great Britain. Taxation was not the only problem between the British and the Americans. In 1764, the Parliament passed two acts that upset the colonists even more (Sugar Act and the Currency Act), leading to a boycott of British goods (American Revolution).

Confronted with a common enemy, the colonies began to collaborate and from that moment on the road to the American Revolution began. The American colonies benefited greatly from the French and Indian War because this war left the victorious Britain in debt and exhausted so that it was a less threatening adversary by the time the Revolution began. “The war exposed the weakness of British administrative control in the colonies on various fronts” (1756-1776) .

Through their attempt to cover war losses, the British “violated what many American colonists understood as the clear precedent of more than a century of colonial-imperial relations”. The taxation issue therefore became the symbol of hoe the relation between the colonies and Great Britain will continue and the necessity of independence occurred. Of course, taxation was not the only reason in the American Revolution, but it contributed greatly in setting a common cause in the colonies.

The end of the French and Indian War had a significant influence on the American Revolution because until the end of the war, few British North America colonists revolted against their role in the British Empire. Bibliography: • Bell, Sandra, Savoir Faire: the French and Indian War, May/June 2003, available at http://www. collectionscanada. ca/bulletin/015017-0303-05-e. html; • American Revolution, available at http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/American_Revolution; • 1756-1776: The Seven Years War to the American Revolution, available at http://www. tax. org/Museum/1756-1776. htm.