During colonial times, Great Britain and France competed for control of areas of North America to secure their ability to

Explanation:

“This continent is not wide enough for us both.” So pronounced a Boston clergyman as the fourth imperial war between Britain and

France in North America – the French and Indian War – began in 1754.1

The war would culminate in a total British victory and its

acquisition in 1763 of French Canada and all French territory east of the Mississippi River (the land west of the Mississippi River

going to Spain.)2 Two centuries earlier the main competitors in the hemisphere had been Spain and France⎯for land in the

Caribbean, not the North American continent. The stakes changed in the early 1600s when Britain became a contender by settling

the mid Atlantic coast, right between Spanish Florida and French Canada. Thereafter the European powers, with their everchanging

Indian alliances, strove to defeat each other and dominate the continent. Britain and France were the prime competitors, especially

as their sights focused on the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys⎯land claimed and long settled by the Native Americans.

As Britain emerged as the dominant imperial power of Europe in the 1700s, American colonists were more than pleased to share

the bounty. “In the intertwined commercial and military successes, the British and their colonists found the measure of their virtues,”

writes historian Alan Taylor.3

“Enthusiastic participants in this patriotism of empire, the American colonists felt more strongly tied to

the mother country.” This “patriotism of empire,” however, would be sorely tested as the colonies’ western claims were threatened

by the “encroachments” of the French and Spanish with their Indian allies, and as Britain’s power over its colonies came to resemble

that of an autocratic guardian rather than a “mother country.”

The commentary presented here ⎯ including reports, essays, poems, maps, a narrative, and a sermon ⎯ samples the British and

American perspective on the competition for territory and dominance in North America from 1699 to 1763.

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