1740 - Franco-British Rivalry
By the 1740s Franco-British imperial rivalry was nowhere more apparent than in the North American interior. French colonial authorities claimed sovereignty over a vast area comprising about one-third of the continent, including Canada, the Great Lakes region, the Ohio Valley, and all lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. British claims were no less extensive, but were asserted through the various colonies, which were quite autonomous and to some extent competed with each other. Virginia and Pennsylvania both claimed rights to the Ohio Valley; Massachusetts (which then included present-day Maine) had a disputed border with Canada; and Carolina claimed both Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.
From the perspective of the authorities in France, New France hardly influenced their overseas economic goals. Beaver skins from Canada and cotton and tobacco from Louisiana were far less profitable than the sugar produced on the plantations of Saint-Domingue and Martinique. But New France was nonetheless of considerable geopolitical importance as it gave the French sovereignty over nearly two-thirds of North America and blocked British expansion into the interior.
France and Britain both laid claim to North America’s vast interior. The chief battleground for their struggle over the continent was the Ohio Valley. In the 1740s French authorities were alarmed by the activities of British traders from Pennsylvania and Virginia among the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley and the building of a fort at Oswego on Lake Ontario and a military base in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1748 with the establishment of the Ohio Company, British colonists from Virginia signaled their ambitions for trade and settlement in the Ohio Valley.
French and British diplomats, meeting in Paris during 1750, failed to resolve the Ohio problem. Subsequent actions on both sides made war all but inevitable. In 1752 French authorities promoted the marquis de Duquesne (1700-1778) to governor general of Louisiana, with orders to take possession of the Ohio Valley. The following year, Duquesne ordered fortifications built in western Pennsylvania, at present-day Erie and Waterford. Meanwhile, Robert Dinwiddie (1693-1770), lieutenant governor of Virginia and a shareholder in the Ohio Company, stepped up British settlement in Ohio by issuing land grants.
In early 1754 at the suggestion of a young officer named George Washington (1732-1799), the British commenced construction of a large fort at present-day Pittsburgh. Sited at the crossroads of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers, this was a highly strategic location. Whoever controlled this fortification could potentially control the Ohio Valley.
The French responded immediately, setting in motion a series of events that became known as the Seven Years War (or the French and Indian War). Before British engineers could complete their fort at the mouth of the Ohio, French forces overran the fortification, completing it and renaming it Fort Duquesne. In May, Washington’s ill-considered ambush of a French detachment led by ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville (1718-1754), carried out in coordination with refugee Iroquois warriors led by Tanaghrisson (the real leader of the operation), resulted in the massacre of Jumonville and a dozen of his men. French authorities took this as an unmitigated act of war.
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