Relationship between Britain and France by 1700s

Question 1

British vs French reasons for diametric opposition:

Answer 1

• BRIT = preservation of colonial liberties through salutary neglect
  VS FRANCE = Absolutist and divine right monarchy
• BRIT = Diverse Protestantism (relative religious tolerance) VS FRANCE =Strict Catholicism (No other religious tolerance)
• BRIT = Economically prioritising large scale agriculture (Still indulging in bits of the fur trade additionally though) VS FRANCE = Economically prioritising the dwindling fur trade and some northern fishing
• BRIT = Made little effort to assimilate with Native Americans & had an antagonistic relationship with them (conflict over territory) VS FRANCE = largely good relationship (including intermarriages and alliances)

Question 2

Pressure points for French/British conflict?

Answer 2

• Acadia/Newfoundland - crucial for fishing rights & access to St Lawrence River
• Ohio Valley - key fertile farming land, as well as the connection between Louisiana and Northern French colonies (+beavers)
• Hudson’s Bay - crucial for fur trade

Question 3

Why did Britain and France both share the desire of expansion?

Answer 3

• The French were conscious of maintaining the interior, because this land enabled their continuation of the fur trade - the animals numbers were dwindling, so the French needed to search further afield (as far as Illinois)
• The British incentives were: immigration (higher population requires a larger landmass), More farmland, ‘Duty to civilise’ (converting Native Americans into Christians), Fear of encirclement by the French (& Spanish), Mercantilism (the need to provide raw materials to the metropole therefore requiring more land to supply more lumber, cotton, sugar etc.

Question 4

What was the relationship like between the Native Americans and the French?

Answer 4

• initial encounters in the 1530s/1540s were hostile, some indigenous people were kidnapped
• Then in 1608, with the 1st permanent settlement (in Quebec) - no natives were displaced & intermarriages became common
• Legal statement in 1627, outlined that Indians who converted to Catholicism were ‘natural Frenchmen’
• French-Iroquois War in 1642
• 1655 - Royal instructions emphasises that “all subjects treat the natives with kindness, justice and fairness, without harm or violence”, and that “the lands which the natives inhabit never be usurped under pretext that they are more suited to the French”
• The Native Americans were offended in 1713 by the ‘Treaty of Utrecht’ wherein the French gave away lots of Northern land to the British and didn’t consult the Native Americans
• Sign of respect in 1754 - General Daniel De Beaurjeu famously fought bare-chested and covered in war paint

Question 5

What was the relationship like between the Native Americans and the British?

Answer 5

• 1609 - 1st Anglo-Powhatan war - Jamestown residents stopped trading with the Indians and started seizing their food stocks
• 1622- 2nd Anglo-Powhatan war - encroached on their hunting grounds
• 1637 - Mystic Massacre
• 1646 - Peace treaty agreed but the British broke it
• 1675 - King Phillips war - bloddiest conflict in American history
• 1677 - ‘covenent chain’ - period of calm - chain is then broken with conflict over land ensuing in 1753