Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 97, French and Indians.

The Seven Years' War was in many respects, the First World War, and so we're going to need to

dart around the globe quite a bit during this series of episodes. Last time out, we covered

the stately quadrille as the various alliances in Europe

shifted, and I hope that provides some context as we get into the nitty gritty of it.

While the Seven Years' War included events in Europe and the Indian subcontinants. And we will cover those. Our focus has to be in North

America. This is a history of the United States after all. And in North America, the Seven

Years War is often known as the French and Indian War. Today we begin to get into that as the

balance of power between the Iroquois Confederacy and the British and French

colonial empires completely collapsed in the 1750s. The balance of power had its

origins in the 17th century.

The Iroquois had been a dominant power in New England for centuries before the Europeans arrived,

and they were an early trading partner of the Dutch, who had no issue with supplying the five nations with firearms.

This made them the biggest threat to the early European

settlers. As the English colonies sprang upon the Atlantic seaboard and New France appeared on

the St. Lawrence, the Iroquois were faced with great internal problems. Not only were the issues such as

alcohol and disease that the Europeans brought, but Jesuit missionaries

divided the tribes. They soon began to splinter, as each tribe developed a

francophile, an anglophile, and a neutralist wing.

These groups argued amongst themselves, and amongst the whole Iroquois Confederacy,

until by the turn of the 18th century they managed to reach a compromise.

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