From Colony to Country

In 1757, during the Seven Years' War, French forces captured Hanover. Rather than sending more troops to the continent to retake Hanover, William Pitt the Elder proposed an alternative strategy of attacking French colonial interests overseas: in effect, turning the periodic skirmishes between the British and French in the contested Ohio River Valley into a major war, now known as the French and Indian War. The British captured Fort Duquesne in 1758, renaming it Pittsburgh, and by 1760, all of French Canada was in British hands. By the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763), Britain received all of French North America east of the Mississippi (with the exception of New Orleans), and all of French India acquired after 1749; Britain also received Florida from Spain. France withdrew its forces from Hanover, Hesse, and Brunswick, though in exchange she received a few small (but, since their main product was sugar, extremely valuable) islands in the West Indies.

The French and Indian War, though a resounding British victory, was a costly one. The British national debt nearly doubled, going from 75 million pounds in 1755 to 133 million pounds in 1763. Britain hoped the North American colonists (who benefited most from the war) would help pay for the peace. The proposed tax burden in America would be lower than in Britain itself, but archaic electoral practices meant that the American colonists had no representation in the British parliament. This led to protests against “taxation without representation.” The protests and tax riots generally persuaded parliament to repeal or lower unpopular taxes, though invariably they imposed another tax to maintain the principle that the colonists could be taxed.