Key points
The chapter's argument: the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a historical turning point, what the chapter calls a war that might be regarded as the first "world war," which began in North America in 1754 and spread to four continents. Britain's triumph in North America revealed the political problems an expanded empire brought, and set in motion a rebellion that would have been inconceivable without it.
The war began small in the Ohio River Valley. In spring 1754 young George Washington's Virginia militia, sent by Governor Dinwiddie for the Ohio Company (a land-speculation outfit), skirmished with the French near Fort Duquesne; Washington surrendered on July 4, 1754 after his Native allies killed the French commander Jumonville.
At the Albany Congress (1754), Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson proposed a Plan of Union of the colonies, but no colony accepted it. The British war effort then suffered Braddock's defeat (July 1755) outside Fort Duquesne, where guerrilla-style woodland fighting and a lack of Native scouts cost Braddock his life and over 800 men.
War was formally declared in 1756. From 1757, Secretary of State William Pitt turned the tide with a global strategy and British naval supremacy: attacks on French West Africa (Senegal, Gambia), the Caribbean (Guadeloupe 1759, Martinique), and Spanish Havana and Manila (1762), plus India (Bengal, Madras, Pondicherry).
In North America, the British took Louisbourg (1758), Quebec (September 1759) (Wolfe and Montcalm both killed), and Montreal (1760). The North American theater was known as the French and Indian War (1754–1763). The Treaty of Paris (1763) made Britain the victor: it took Canada and the Ohio country and dislodged France from North America east of the Mississippi.
The First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s spread through much of British North America. Jonathan Edwards began the revival in Northampton, Massachusetts (1734), emphasizing direct experience of God's grace; the English George Whitefield (arrived 1739) preached to huge outdoor crowds. New Lights (revivalists) challenged the Old Lights (established ministers).
The Awakening reached enslaved people: Black evangelicals like George Liele established Methodist and Baptist churches in Savannah before whites did, and the poet Phillis Wheatley mourned Whitefield in an elegy. Among Indigenous people, the Delaware prophet Neolin preached a Master of Life message urging resistance to the English, helping inspire a pan-Indian "Indianness."
Pontiac's War (1763) followed: the Ottawa chief Pontiac organized a coalition that took nine British forts and besieged Detroit and Fort Pitt, trying to push the British out and bring the French back. The Paxton Boys answered with vigilante massacres of Indigenous people and marched on Philadelphia, where Franklin persuaded them to turn back.To prevent more costly wars, George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement west of the Appalachians to protect Indigenous people and the fur trade. It angered colonists and speculators (like the Ohio Company) who had expected to move into former French lands.
The war had doubled Britain's debt, and PM George Grenville decided the colonies should pay. After the Currency and Sugar Acts (1764), the Stamp Act (1765) placed a direct tax on paper (legal documents, newspapers, playing cards). Colonists resisted with riots, boycotts (women's homespun), and the Stamp Act Congress (October 1765), which insisted on "no taxation without representation" while affirming loyalty to the king and blaming Parliament.
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 but asserted it could "bind the colonies in all cases." The Townshend Acts (1767) were repealed in 1770 except the tax on tea; the Tea Act (1773) then strengthened the British East India Company's tea monopoly.
Boston became the center of resistance. The Sons of Liberty (1765), led by Samuel Adams, organized protests. The Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770) killed five, including Crispus Attucks; the Boston Tea Party (December 1773) saw Sons dressed as Mohawks dump over 300 chests of tea into the harbor, embracing symbols of North American resistance.
Parliament answered with the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts (1774), closing Boston's port, quartering troops, and putting Massachusetts under imperial control, plus the Quebec Act, which affirmed Catholicism and French civil law in Quebec and gave it the Ohio Valley. The committees of correspondence (1772–1773) spread the resistance across colonies.
The First Continental Congress (September 1774) brought 56 delegates from 12 colonies to Philadelphia. Radicals (John and Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee) pushed back; moderates (Galloway, Dickinson, Jay) wanted reform. The Congress ordered a boycott through the Continental Association with local committees of safety enforcing it.
On April 19, 1775, British troops sent to seize arms at Concord met militia at Lexington (eight Patriots dead) and were ambushed on the retreat; the militia took the hills around Boston (Bunker and Breed's). Colonists were now splitting into Patriots (for rebellion) and Loyalists (Tories) (for the crown).
The Second Continental Congress (May 1775) created the Continental Army under Washington and sent the king an Olive Branch Petition (July 1775), but George III rejected it, declared the colonies in rebellion, and hired German Hessians. Virginia's governor Lord Dunmore's Proclamation (November 1775) offered freedom to enslaved people who joined the British, which pushed many enslavers toward the Patriots.
In January 1776, Thomas Paine's Common Sense made the case for independence and a republic in plain prose; over 150,000 copies circulated among a colonial population of about 2.5 million, persuading many hesitant colonists, including delegates to the Congress.
With Franklin and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence ("all men are created equal"). Congress struck Jefferson's grievance blaming the king for slavery (Georgia and South Carolina objected) but kept the one denouncing "merciless Indian savages." The Congress ratified the Declaration on July 4, 1776.