How Did The French And Indian War Affect The Politics Of North America?

If asked, most people would point to the Revolutionary war as the war that made America. After all, it was when America declared independence from England and began to stand as its own nation, when all those lofty ideals of equality and liberty flourished and began to shape the modern American identity. But Fred Anderson makes a very different argument; that it was in fact the French and Indian war that would ultimately make the nation into what it is today by radically altering the political landscape in North America, creating the climate for those ideas to take form in the first place and, more importantly, by stripping the native populations of North America of power and allies, leaving them helpless against an encroaching white population.
What begun as a power struggle between three major players – British, French, and Iroquois – in North America for control of …show more content…
It moves along at a brisk pace, and provides a good general history of the war for the casual reader, but sometimes it becomes easy to become confused under the barrage of names and numbers and locations. The occasional stop to provide more depth to a subject might provide the reader with a better understanding of the war as a whole. Anderson had many excellent points to make, but he should have said more on them. Nonetheless, it is a work that must be commended for managing to strike a balance; popular histories can often take a very Eurocentric point of view, or try to paint European empires in a more sympathetic light at the expense of local populations. While Anderson does not skimp on the atrocities performed by Indians, he does not let the atrocities committed by European players fall to the wayside either, nor does he downplay the importance of Indian populations to the outcome of the war. An excellent starter for anyone that might be curious about the history of the war, but some supplementary reading would be