The French and Indian War (1756-1763)-The French and Indian War (1756-1763) tied Great Britain more closely to its North American colonies. But the war also created resentments and political disputes that drove the British Empire and the colonies apart, contributing to the onset of the American Revolution. On the one hand, the war created stronger bonds between Britain and its North American colonies. Britain had defended the colonists by eliminating the military and political threat posed by the French presence along the Western frontier.

Ironically, though, the war also led to differences between Britain and America. Fighting wars is expensive, and the British government was deeply in debt after years of conflict. But, when the British government attempted to reduce its debt by raising and collecting taxes in North America, many Americans resented these taxes because they had no representation in Parliament, the British legislature. Also, because the French threat in the West had been eliminated, the American colonists no longer felt as much need for British troops to defend them.

In the 1750s, many Americans and British grew alarmed by the growing influence of the French Empire in North America. France had settled in North America beginning in 1608, and had established a trading relationship with Indians in the Great Lakes region and along major rivers. To protect its interests France had built a series of forts along waterways in Canada and in lands to the west of British North America.

In 1754, a Virginia militia commanded by George Washington tried but failed to drive the French out of Fort Duquesne, in present-day Pittsburgh. When the Virginians' effort failed, the British government decided that expelling the French was necessary in order to protect Britain's colonies. Britain sent thousands of soldiers to North America and, by 1760, had defeated the French. The war was officially concluded by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. By signing this treaty, France surrendered all of its land claims in North America.

The war had important effects on relations between Britain and its colonies. From the British perspective, Britain had sacrificed both troops and money to protect its colonies. Britain emerged from the war deeply in debt (the national debt had risen from 72 million pounds to 123 million pounds during the war), and was determined to reduce that debt by making the colonists pay their share of the war's cost.

Britain was also determined to control its colonies more tightly. King George III, who assumed the British throne in 1760, was eager to exert more authority over Britain's North American colonies. At the war's end, the British government issued the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited colonists from settling west of the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. Britain issued this proclamation for two reasons: first, it wanted to prevent further warfare by prohibiting colonists from moving to the West, where they would anger Indian tribes. Second, Britain wanted the colonists to remain near the Atlantic coast and to develop their commercial economies, instead of spreading westward in search of farmland. After defeating the French, Britain was more determined than ever to control its colonies.