The Causes Of The French-Indian War

“On the night of April 18, Gage sent 700 British soldiers to Concord to seize patriot supplies there.” The very next morning, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired (Library of Congress). To this day, 240 years later, it remains unclear which side, the British or the colonial minutemen, fired the first shell. The Americans quickly spread word of the events and garnered the support of the Continental Congress, and thus began the first stages of the American Revolution. On that fateful night, what caused General Thomas Gage to amass 700 troops in order to arrest two citizens, John Hancock and Samuel Adams? Great amounts of tension had built up over the period of 20 years after the French-Indian War; the Americans developed ill feelings towards the British government, attributed to their mindset that Britain had been crippling their future by donating land to the Indians and the French. In short, a few events that transpired as a result of the French-Indian war promoted a tension that exploded violently as the …show more content…
Robert La Salle, a French fur trader, had in 1682 claimed all lands west of the Appalachian mountains to belong to France, with the knowledge that “Illinois are lands to which one has only to put the plow.” The lands of the Midwest were extremely virtuous, so LaSalle claimed them for France. This subsequently left colonial America, a fast-growing settlement, void of expansion options. With their population prodigiously growing from 200,000 in 1700 to 2.5 million in 1775 and doubling every generation, the early settlers were running quickly out of space. To add insult to injury, 92% of all colonists at the time were still on farms. This predicament left the Americans angry at the French, but also frustrated at the British government for not helping