The French and Indian War (1754 to 1763) was the last great colonial conflict waged between Great Britain and France in North America. Often considered a theater of the global Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763), it was sparked over a territorial dispute in the Ohio River Valley but escalated into a full-scale war of conquest and imperial domination. The war reached its climax at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, which led to the British capture of Quebec City and the fall of New France. In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France ceded Canada to Britain, ending the century-long struggle between the two empires for control of the North American continent.

In the first half of the 18th century, the colonial empires of Great Britain and France struggled for dominance in North America. This imperialistic rivalry had already given rise to three almighty wars: King William's War, Queen Anne's War, and King George's War. Villages had been destroyed and farmsteads razed, while rivers of blood – English, French, and Indigenous alike – had watered the rocky fields of New England as well as the dark soil of the Virginian and Pennsylvanian backcountries. But the great appetites of the colonial powers were still unsatiated, and it was clear that another storm was coming, that one final, great war that would engulf Colonial America in its fury.

The trouble would begin along the banks of the Ohio River, a lush and fertile valley lusted after by both colonial powers. Of course, the Ohio Country was not unoccupied but was, at least nominally, controlled by the powerful Iroquois Confederacy and was home to several Indigenous peoples living under Iroquois protection; these included the Algonquin-speaking Delawares and Shawnees, and the Iroquoian-speaking Mingos. By midcentury, British traders had begun to operate in the Ohio Country, building commercial ties with various Native American villages. This activity threatened the French, who had spent decades weaving a delicate web of Indigenous alliances that could quickly unravel should the British gain too much influence.

The British, however, did not only want to establish a trading presence along the Ohio but were interested in something more permanent. The British colony of Virginia was particularly interested in expanding westward. Not only did Virginia already claim the Ohio Country – indeed, its colonial charter grandly proclaimed that its western border reached all the way to the shores of the Pacific – but it desperately needed the fertile lands along the river. Virginia's economy centered around the production of tobacco, a crop that depleted the nutrients of the soil it was planted in. As such, Virginian planters were in constant need of fresh lands and naturally turned toward the untouched soil of the Ohio Valley. Wealthy investors pooled their funds to form land speculation companies, like the Ohio Company, that quickly bought up land.

The French looked on this development with apprehension, for they had every reason to fear Anglo-American westward expansion. So long as the British colonies were contained to the east of the Appalachian Mountains, a certain balance of power could be maintained in North America. But if the British penetrated the interior of the continent, French trading interests could easily be upset. Moreover, the French relied on the Ohio River as a waterway connecting the two disparate parts of New France, including Canada to the north and Louisiana to the south. They could not afford to lose control of the river. In June 1747, the French sent a military expedition to the region under Pierre-Joseph de Céloron, both to ward off the pesky British traders and to remind the Indigenous peoples where their loyalties should lie.

Céloron's expedition failed to scare off the British, who continued to be active in the Ohio Country in the early 1750s. In 1752, the new governor-general of New France, the Marquis de Duquesne, dispatched a new expedition into the Ohio Country with the goal of punishing the Indigenous village of Pickawillany for ignoring his orders and continuing to trade with the British. The French brought fire and blood to the village, capturing three British traders and killing 14 Native Americans. The following spring, the French acted with even more aggression and began building a series of fortresses along the river. This directly interfered with the interests of the Ohio Company; if they could not convince the French to stand down, they would lose all the land they had purchased.

Lt. Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia was an investor in the company and was determined to use his office to enforce Britain's claims to the land. He decided to send a diplomatic mission to the newly built Fort Le Bœuf to remind the French that the land did not belong to them and to demand that they leave immediately. The only question was who Dinwiddie would choose to lead this sensitive expedition.

The man that Dinwiddie chose was certainly an unconventional candidate. At only 21 years old, he was young and inexperienced, with little formal education and no grasp of the French language. But in other ways, George Washington was the perfect man for the job. He was hungry for glory and eager to win a lasting reputation for himself. Moreover, he had a personal stake in the success of the Ohio Company – his late half-brother, Lawrence, had been one of its first investors. Whether or not it was a good idea, Dinwiddie placed the fate of the Ohio Country in Washington's untried hands. On 1 November 1753, Washington left the colonial capital of Williamsburg bearing a letter from the lieutenant governor. As he made his way into the wilderness towards the French forts, he was joined by several companions, including an Ohio Company guide, a translator, and a cunning Mingo sachem named Tanacharison, known to the British as the Half-King.

Washington made his way to Fort Le Bœuf, where he was politely but firmly turned away by the French commander. After a death-defying journey back to Virginia – Washington nearly drowned while crossing the icy Alleghany River – the disappointed young officer reported his failure to Dinwiddie. But Dinwiddie was undeterred and, early the following year, sent Washington back with 159 men, most of whom were, in the words of historian Fred Anderson, "paupers and vagabonds coerced into service" (45). On 27 May 1754, as he was setting up camp in an area called the Great Meadows, Washington learned that a party of French soldiers had been spotted in the area. Early the next morning, Washington surrounded the French encampment as the groggy soldiers were stumbling out of their tents and preparing to make breakfast.

What happened next is still uncertain. Either Washington's troops ambushed the unassuming French soldiers or the French, startled to find the Virginians outside their camp, fired first. In any case, by the time the smoke cleared, 14 French soldiers lay dead or wounded. Amongst the wounded was a 35-year-old ensign, Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. With the help of a translator, Jumonville began to explain that, much like Washington the year before, he was merely on a diplomatic mission, meant to warn the British away from the Ohio. But he had not yet finished his explanation when Tanacharison stepped over him and said in French, "Thou art not yet dead, my father," before burying his hatchet in Jumonville's head and washing his hands in the brains. While Tanacharison's motives cannot be known for certain, Anderson suspects that he committed the act to bind his people to the British.

The battle – or some would say massacre – of Jumonville Glen was the start of the French and Indian War. Aware that the die had been cast, Washington withdrew to Great Meadows, where he constructed a rudimentary fort that he dubbed Fort Necessity. It did not take long for the French to follow him there. On 3 July 1754, the fort was surrounded by 700 French soldiers, more than double Washington's number. They kept up "galling fire" for the next eight hours, from "every little rising, tree, stump, stone and bush" (Freeman, 60). By 8 p.m., Washington had lost a third of his force and was compelled to surrender. After signing articles of capitulation – in which he unwittingly admitted to assassinating Jumonville – Washington and his ragged men were allowed to leave, beginning their long and humiliating retreat to Virginia.

Far from settling the Ohio question, Washington's misadventures only served to make matters worse. If the British truly wished to dislodge the French, a larger show of force needed to be made. In February 1755, Major General Edward Braddock arrived in America at the head of two regiments of British regulars. Braddock made it clear that he acted with the authority of the king and that he would suffer no fools amongst the provincials – he scolded the colonial governors for the "pusillanimous and improper" manner they had been conducting themselves and began coordinating a large-scale expedition into the west (Anderson, 86). His goal was to capture Fort Duquesne, the mightiest of the French bastions located at the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. In doing so, he hoped to send a message to the French that the Ohio belonged to Britain, now and forever.

On 29 May 1755, Braddock set out from Fort Cumberland, Maryland, with 2,200 men (including Washington, who had signed on as Braddock's aide-de-camp). The going was slow; the route he had chosen was bumpy and ill-suited for columns of marching men hauling cannons and wagons of provisions. Frustrated, Braddock ultimately decided to split his army in two, sending a 'flying column' of 1,300 men on ahead, while the rest of the army played catch-up. On 9 July, the flying column crossed the Monongahela River, within 10 miles (16 km) of Fort Duquesne. There, they encountered 800 French soldiers and Indigenous warriors, who had sallied out from the fort to confront the invading horde. Despite their exhaustion, the British soldiers were confident of victory and opened fire. The French commander, Captain Beaujeau, was instantly killed, while the French and Indians ran for cover.

But this was only the beginning. Sheltered behind shrubs, rocks, and other cover, the French and Indians returned fire at the British. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an open clearing, the British had little room to move and nowhere to take cover. For the next three hours, they made easy targets, dropping like flies as bullets zipped around their heads. Braddock attempted to restore order until he was knocked from his horse by a bullet; though Washington managed to extricate him from the field, the wound was mortal, and the general would soon be dead. The surviving British and colonial troops soon fled, leaving nearly 1,000 of their comrades dead, wounded, or captured by the enemy. The Battle of the Monongahela, better known as Braddock's Defeat, was one of Britain's worst military losses of the 18th century, and a sign that the struggle for the Ohio was just beginning.

Braddock's ill-fated expedition was not the only British offensive launched in 1755. Sir William Johnson led a combined force of colonial militia and Mohawk warriors to victory at the Battle of Lake George (8 September), while another British expedition captured Fort Beauséjour in modern New Brunswick (the victorious British proceeded to expel thousands of French-speaking Acadians from their homes in this region, an early modern example of ethnic cleansing). But the ever-shifting fortunes of war would change again in 1756. For one thing, the war escalated that year when Britain officially declared war on France, triggering the Seven Years' War in Europe. For another, a new French commander arrived in the New World. Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm, was a 44-year-old soldier experienced in the art of European battles. He played by the book, and it remained to be seen how he would fare in the wild frontier warfare of North America.

The answer, it would prove, was that he was quite effective. In August 1756, he captured Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario after a brief siege; having judged that the British garrison did not put up much of a fight, he refused to allow them the honors of war. The next year, Montcalm outdid himself, leading 7,000 French, Canadian, and Indigenous troops against Fort William Henry along Lake George. This time, Montcalm decided that the garrison had fought honorably and, when they surrendered, he agreed to allow them to withdraw to nearby Fort Edward. Unbeknownst to Montcalm – who did not care for his Native American allies and did not take the time to understand them – this offended his Indigenous warriors, who had only signed on to the expedition with the expectation that they would receive plunder and captives.

Outraged, some of the warriors decided to get what they had come for. They followed the British soldiers for a while as they withdrew from the fort and then struck. Before Montcalm and his officers could stop them, hundreds of men, women, and children had been slaughtered or carried away as captives. The massacre at Fort William Henry was a watershed moment of the war. It drove a rift between Montcalm and his Indigenous allies, led to a feud between Montcalm and Governor-General Vaudreuil of New France (the governor-general understood the need for Indigenous allies and blamed Montcalm for misusing them), and caused the British colonists to hate the French, believing that they had intentionally allowed the killings to occur.

The winter of 1757 to 58 proved disastrous to the French war effort. A smallpox epidemic broke out amongst the Indigenous communities, depriving the French of their valuable aid. Moreover, a poor harvest led to famine in much of New France, forcing Montcalm's Canadian militiamen to return home to tend to their families. As such, Montcalm faced a severe manpower shortage at the time he could least afford it. In London, William Pitt the Elder, the secretary of state for the colonies, had decided that it was not enough to merely drive the French from the Ohio Country – it was time to conquer New France, and dislodge the French from North America altogether. He ordered three offensives, two of which were successful; by the end of the year, both Fort Duquesne and the mighty French stronghold of Louisbourg were in British hands. Lt. Colonel John Bradstreet, an American of Acadian origin, also took it upon himself to assault Fort Frontenac, which he captured without the loss of a single life.

The one British defeat of 1758 took place outside the walls of Fort Carillon on 8 July. Montcalm had gathered what few forces he could – amounting to less than 3,500 men – and furiously dug in, building strong fortifications on the high ground outside the fort. When British Major General James Abercromby arrived with 18,000 men, he anticipated a quick victory and ordered a frontal assault without the support of field artillery. The mass of British troops broke against the French breastworks and were mowed down "like grass" (Anderson, 244). By the time the sun set, Montcalm retained control of the fort at the cost of around 500 casualties, while close to 2,500 British and colonial troops lay dead or wounded. Abercromby had no choice but to withdraw. The Battle of Fort Carillon was not only Montcalm's finest hour, but the bloodiest battle of the war.

Despite the setback at Carillon, the British were in a much better position now than they had been a year earlier. In July 1759, they continued to squeeze the French by taking Fort Carillon (renamed Ticonderoga by the victorious British) and Fort Niagara in quick succession; the latter was taken by Sir William Johnson, who had finally managed to mobilize a significant number of Iroquois warriors against the French. But the main show would play out in Canada, where a young major general named James Wolfe was leading 4,500 men in an expedition against Quebec City itself. The climactic confrontation would take place outside the city at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September. The engagement was over in 20 minutes and left roughly 600 casualties on each side; these casualties included the respective army commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, both of whom had been mortally wounded and would die within hours.

Despite the loss of their general, the British pressed on and entered Quebec City a few days later. In 1760, Sir Jeffrey Amherst struck the killing blow, leading a three-pronged offensive against Montreal. The 3,500 sick and undersupplied French defenders of Montreal were no match against Amherst's 18,000 men, and the city capitulated on 8 September 1760. With the fall of Montreal, all of New France had come under British occupation. Though the Treaty of Paris would not be signed for another three years, the war in North America was effectively over. When the peace was formalized, France ceded control of Canada to Britain. The question of colonial dominance in North America was finally answered – Britain had come out on top. But this victory would prove more costly than Britain had bargained for. The war had put Britain into mountainous debt, which Parliament decided to pass off to the Thirteen Colonies. Resistance to these new taxes would lead to unrest and, ultimately, to the American Revolution.