Chronicles of America 

New France

Although Spain lost control of the high seas with the defeat of the Armada, Spanish authority still remained dominant in Central and South America, and Spanish settlements in the southern part of North America increased steadily until they extended from Florida around the gulf coast to Mexico and up to the Pacific coast far into California. It was not from the Spaniard, however, busily engaged as he was in exploiting an empire in his own way, that the Englishman on the Atlantic coast was to meet strong opposition. Except on the frontier of the Floridas, they nowhere came in contact. It was from the Frenchman to the north and west, who were penetrating the back country in search of furs, fortifying the strategic points, and establishing an inland empire, lightly but firmly held. The New Englander was in contact with the French inhabitant of Quebec and Acadia. The frontiersman of New York, Pennsylvania, or Virginia came frequently upon the French trader at the very back door of his own colony.

Even if there had been no European or Oriental quarrels to set their mother countries upon each other, the colonials would sooner or later have come to blows. The French in Acadia menaced the growing commerce of New England, and the Puritan hated Popish neighbors. The specter of an Indian warrior infuriated by French brandy and religious bigotry was ever in the mind of the English backwoodsman. The French feared the advance of the English pioneer over the mountains into the rich Ohio valley threatening the fur trade upon which his colonial empire was based. These antagonisms were stirred to violence by unending quarrels in Europe. The feud between England and France was fought out in a series of wars, named by the English colonials: King William's War, 1689-1697; Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713; King George's war, 1739-1748; and the French and Indian war, 1754-1763. In all the plan was the same. Englishmen launched successive attacks against Quebec and Montreal and strove to win and hold Acadia. Frenchmen harassed the frontier with fire and Indian vengeance, countered the English blows, and clung desperately to the Ohio valley. In the end, the English captured Quebec and Montreal and forced the French to deliver up their inland empire. For allying themselves with the French against the English, the Spaniards were given in 1763 Louisiana - all that France had claimed west of the Mississippi, south of the great unexplored regions to the northwest. The triumph of England, however, brought with peace a new menace to the British Empire. The colonial inhabitants of the seaboard colonies watched the French peril vanish with mixed emotions. They exulted in victory, for the last war had been in a larger sense their war with the French and Indians. The French were gone. For the Indians they only had contempt. With a new feeling of security and power, they faced the settlement of their relations with the Imperial British Government.