Analyze+the+role+the+French+and+Indian+War+played+in+the+Revolution....Joe+Lofberg!

Without the French and Indian War there would've been no American Revolution, or at least not one as early as 1775. The war taught the colonies a lot. They learned how to unify the colonies and form a strong, effective militia. They learned a new form of fighting from the Indians, they learned how to organize and perhaps most importantly they learned that Great Britain, the worlds most powerful empire, was not invincible. Previous to the French and Indian War the colonies were mainly divided and colonies hardly interacted with each other, other than for trade purposes. They were independent colonies but many of the people within the colonies shared the same thoughts, beliefs and ideas as their neighbors, including a disgust with the current British government. When the war came though the colonies were forced to unite to fight against the French and their Indian Allies. The British helped to organize the colonies into a militia to aid them in their expansive Seven Years War (The French and Indian War was merely the North American front of the Seven Years War). After the war was won the colonies militia count stood at over 20,000 colonists. A good start for the army that would soon fight the mighty British empire. After the war was won there was more bad blood then ever before between the colonists and Great Britain. The colonists played a major part in aiding the British to win the war but after all was said and done, Parliament made colonies pay higher taxes than ever before to cover the cost of the war. Then they angered the colonists militia men by refusing to view them as anything higher than a captain and the militia fighters were looked down upon by the British red coats. The biggest injustice done unto the colonists though was the Proclamation of 1763. The British had acquired a massive tract of land from the French after the war that stretched from the Appalachian Mountains, south to part of Louisiana and north to northern Minnesota. But, the British didn't want to lose control over the colonists and they thought that if they kept migrating west eventually British soldiers wouldn't be able to control them anymore. The Proclamation said that no colonist could settle west of the Appalachian Mountains. This caused outrage in the colonies because they viewed it as just another law passed by a far away government meant to regulate their every move. The war also gave the colonists experience. They learned Guerilla warfare from the indians which was one of their main fighting tactics later on in the revolutionary war. The British were unaccustomed to this type of fighting and were unable to effectively defend it, colonists recognized this and would later use it to their advantage as it was a big chink in the armor of the British army. They also learned, perhaps most important of all, the British empire was not invincible. They had witnessed first hand British General Braddock retreat from the opposing army only to have nearly his entire troop of soldiers killed, including himself. Another main thing they learned from the war was simply how to fight in a war. Nearly all the militia men had never been in an armed conflict before and with the French and Indian War they simply learned how to fight a war. Were it not for the French and Indian War there would not have been a revolution in 1775, nor a Declaration of Independance, Boston Tea Party or any other significant uprising in the colonies that led to the American Revolution. The British didn't realize that by eliminating the French threat in North America the British had in fact removed one of the strongest incentives the colonies had for retaining their links with Great Britain.