The first sustained war between the French and English in North America was known as

The French and Indian War, the North American phase of the larger Seven Years’ War, began after a series of incidents in the upper Ohio River valley, which the French and British governments both claimed as their territory. Military forces assembled by both imperial powers built forts in the region and attempted to capture each others’ forts. These skirmishes, which included an expedition led by George Washington, ultimately led to the escalation of a wider, full-scale war between Great Britain and France.

Wanting to limit British influence along their frontier, the French built a string of forts from Lake Erie towards the forks of the Ohio (present-day Pittsburgh).

Since the colony of Virginia also claimed this region, Virginian lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie sent Major George Washington with a small expedition to order the removal of the French forts in late 1753. Washington arrived at Fort Le Boeuf, about 15 miles inland from present-day Erie, Pennsylvania, and delivered his message. The commander of the fort, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, received Washington and his men courteously, but denied the validity of English claims to the contested region. Washington then returned hastily to Virginia, arriving in early 1754, and delivered the French reply to Governor Dinwiddie. Dinwiddie and the legislature agreed that French rejection of British demands constituted a hostile act, and that the French must be driven from their frontier forts on British-claimed land. Dinwiddie sent Captain William Trent of the Virginia militia to construct a fort at the strategically important forks of the Ohio River and to convince the local Indians to ally against the French. Dinwiddie also promoted Washington to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and ordered an expedition to compel the French to surrender their forts.

While French and British officials maneuvered military forces about, they also attempted to curry favor with American Indians living in the region. The most important group, the Mingoes, were part of the Iroquois Confederation, which was allied with Great Britain. British officials claimed the Iroquois Confederacy had granted a Native American named Tanaghrisson the title of ‘Half-King’ over the Mingoes and other Native communities under Iroquois rule. However, many Indians in the upper Ohio Valley were concerned about British colonists encroaching upon their land, and did not acknowledge either British or Iroquois authority. Although many of them also feared French power and bore grudges against the French from previous wars, the Indians of the upper Ohio valley believed a French alliance to be the lesser of two evils. Consequently, they were amenable to supplying French forces with additional men and intelligence about British movements.

Aided by such reports, the French soon learned of the British fort that William Trent and his small group of men were constructing, and French forces moved swiftly to compel its surrender on April 17, 1754. The French destroyed the unfinished fort, building in its place the much more formidable Fort Duquesne.

Further south, George Washington, accompanied by Tanaghrisson, surprised an encampment of French soldiers in southwestern Pennsylvania on May 24, 1754. A brief fight ensued, and afterwards the wounded French leader, Ensign Joseph de Jumonville, attempted to explain through translators that the French expedition was on a peaceful mission to warn British forces about their incursions into French-claimed territory. Although accounts of the incident differ, it seems that Tanaghrisson, who bore an intense personal hatred of the French stemming from earlier war experiences, intervened in the negotiations and killed Jumonville. Expecting further French incursions, Washington then hastily constructed a fort and prepared to defend his forces, but a combined French and Indian force forced his surrender on July 3.

Once he heard of Washington’s defeat, Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie immediately passed on the news to his superiors in London and called for aid from neighboring colonies. Only North Carolina responded, but refused to make any expenditures outside its own borders. However, British Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, reacted swiftly to the news, and planned a quick strike against the French forts before they could be reinforced. King George II approved Newcastle’s plan to send General Edward Braddock to quickly seize French frontier forts.

Other political leaders wanted a bigger war, and so they publicly announced Newcastle’s plans and changed the original plan so that Braddock would command more forces and order the fractious North American colonies to provide additional support against the French. Once the plans had been publicly announced, the French government moved quickly to dispatch reinforcements to North America and further pursued negotiations to diplomatically isolate the British government by winning over its traditional European allies. Once military forces were under way, war was inevitable.

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The War of 1812 had only mixed support on both sides of the Atlantic. The British weren’t eager for another conflict, having fought Napoleon for the better part of the previous 20 years, but weren’t fond of American commercial support of the French either. The divisions in American sentiment about the war similarly split, oftentimes along geographic lines: New Englanders, particularly seafaring ones, were against it. Southerners and Westerners advocated for it, hoping that it would enhance the U.S.’s reputation abroad, open opportunities for its expansion, and protect American commercial interests against British restrictions.

Read more below: Major causes of the war

Native Americans had begun resisting settlement by white Americans before 1812. In 1808 the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa began amassing an intertribal confederacy comprising indigenous groups around the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley. In 1812 Tecumseh tightened his relationship with Britain, convincing white Americans that the British were inciting unrest among northwestern tribes. British and intertribal forces took Detroit in 1812 and won a number of other victories during the war, but Tecumseh was killed and his confederation was quashed after Detroit was retaken in 1813. Creek tribes continued to resist from 1813 onward, but they were suppressed by Andrew Jackson’s forces in 1814.

Read more about Tenskwatawa.

Although neither Britain nor the U.S. was able to secure major concessions through the Treaty of Ghent, it nevertheless had important consequences for the future of North America. The withdrawal of British troops from the Northwest Territory and the defeat of the Creeks in the South opened the door for unbounded U.S. expansionism in both regions. The treaty also established measures that would help arbitrate future border disputes between the U.S. and Canada, perhaps one reason why the two countries have been able to peaceably share the longest unfortified border in the world ever since.

Read more below: Final stages of the war and the aftermath

Read about the Treaty of Ghent.

War of 1812, (June 18, 1812–February 17, 1815), conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime rights. It ended with the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent.

The tensions that caused the War of 1812 arose from the French revolutionary (1792–99) and Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815). During this nearly constant conflict between France and Britain, American interests were injured by each of the two countries’ endeavours to block the United States from trading with the other.

American shipping initially prospered from trade with the French and Spanish empires, although the British countered the U.S. claim that “free ships make free goods” with the belated enforcement of the so-called Rule of 1756 (trade not permitted in peacetime would not be allowed in wartime). The Royal Navy did enforce the act from 1793 to 1794, especially in the Caribbean Sea, before the signing of the Jay Treaty (November 19, 1794). Under the primary terms of the treaty, American maritime commerce was given trading privileges in England and the British East Indies, Britain agreed to evacuate forts still held in the Northwest Territory by June 1, 1796, and the Mississippi River was declared freely open to both countries. Although the treaty was ratified by both countries, it was highly unpopular in the United States and was one of the rallying points used by the pro-French Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in wresting power from the pro-British Federalists, led by George Washington and John Adams.

After Jefferson became president in 1801, relations with Britain slowly deteriorated, and systematic enforcement of the Rule of 1756 resumed after 1805. Compounding this troubling development, the decisive British naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) and efforts by the British to blockade French ports prompted the French emperor, Napoleon, to cut off Britain from European and American trade. The Berlin Decree (November 21, 1806) established Napoleon’s Continental System, which impinged on U.S. neutral rights by designating ships that visited British ports as enemy vessels. The British responded with Orders in Council (November 11, 1807) that required neutral ships to obtain licenses at English ports before trading with France or French colonies. In turn, France announced the Milan Decree (December 17, 1807), which strengthened the Berlin Decree by authorizing the capture of any neutral vessel that had submitted to search by the British. Consequently, American ships that obeyed Britain faced capture by the French in European ports, and if they complied with Napoleon’s Continental System, they could fall prey to the Royal Navy.

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The Royal Navy’s use of impressment to keep its ships fully crewed also provoked Americans. The British accosted American merchant ships to seize alleged Royal Navy deserters, carrying off thousands of U.S. citizens into the British navy. In 1807 the frigate H.M.S. Leopard fired on the U.S. Navy frigate Chesapeake and seized four sailors, three of them U.S. citizens. London eventually apologized for this incident, but it came close to causing war at the time. Jefferson, however, chose to exert economic pressure against Britain and France by pushing Congress in December 1807 to pass the Embargo Act, which forbade all export shipping from U.S. ports and most imports from Britain.

The Embargo Act hurt Americans more than the British or French, however, causing many Americans to defy it. Just before Jefferson left office in 1809, Congress replaced the Embargo Act with the Non-Intercourse Act, which exclusively forbade trade with Great Britain and France. This measure also proved ineffective, and it was replaced by Macon’s Bill No. 2 (May 1, 1810) that resumed trade with all nations but stipulated that if either Britain or France dropped commercial restrictions, the United States would revive nonintercourse against the other. In August, Napoleon insinuated that he would exempt American shipping from the Berlin and Milan decrees. Although the British demonstrated that French restrictions continued, U.S. Pres. James Madison reinstated nonintercourse against Britain in November 1810, thereby moving one step closer to war.

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Britain’s refusal to yield on neutral rights derived from more than the emergency of the European war. British manufacturing and shipping interests demanded that the Royal Navy promote and sustain British trade against Yankee competitors. The policy born of that attitude convinced many Americans that they were being consigned to a de facto colonial status. Britons, on the other hand, denounced American actions that effectively made the United States a participant in Napoleon’s Continental System.

Tecumseh

Events on the U.S. northwestern frontier fostered additional friction. Indian fears over American encroachment coincidentally became conspicuous as Anglo-American tensions grew. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (The Prophet) attracted followers arising from this discontent and attempted to form an Indian confederation to counteract American expansion. Although Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock, the British commander of Upper Canada (modern Ontario), had orders to avoid worsening American frontier problems, American settlers blamed British intrigue for heightened tensions with Indians in the Northwest Territory. As war loomed, Brock sought to augment his meagre regular and Canadian militia forces with Indian allies, which was enough to confirm the worst fears of American settlers. Brock’s efforts were aided in the fall of 1811, when Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison fought the Battle of Tippecanoe and destroyed the Indian settlement at Prophet’s Town (near modern Battle Ground, Indiana). Harrison’s foray convinced most Indians in the Northwest Territory that their only hope of stemming further encroachments by American settlers lay with the British. American settlers, in turn, believed that Britain’s removal from Canada would end their Indian problems. Meanwhile, Canadians suspected that American expansionists were using Indian unrest as an excuse for a war of conquest.

Under increasing pressure, Madison summoned the U.S. Congress into session in November 1811. Pro-war western and southern Republicans (War Hawks) assumed a vocal role, especially after Kentucky War Hawk Henry Clay was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. Madison sent a war message to the U.S. Congress on June 1, 1812, and signed the declaration of war on June 18, 1812. The vote seriously divided the House (79–49) and was gravely close in the Senate (19–13). Because seafaring New Englanders opposed the war, while westerners and southerners supported it, Federalists accused war advocates of expansionism under the ruse of protecting American maritime rights. Expansionism, however, was not as much a motive as was the desire to defend American honour. The United States attacked Canada because it was British, but no widespread aspiration existed to incorporate the region. The prospect of taking East and West Florida from Spain encouraged southern support for the war, but southerners, like westerners, were sensitive about the United States’s reputation in the world. Furthermore, British commercial restrictions hurt American farmers by barring their produce from Europe. Regions seemingly removed from maritime concerns held a material interest in protecting neutral shipping. “Free trade and sailors’ rights” was not an empty phrase for those Americans.

The onset of war both surprised and chagrined the British government, especially because it was preoccupied with the fight against France. In addition, political changes in Britain had already moved the government to assume a conciliatory posture toward the United States. Prime Minister Spencer Perceval’s assassination on May 11, 1812, brought to power a more moderate Tory government under Lord Liverpool. British West Indies planters had been complaining for years about the interdiction of U.S. trade, and their growing influence, along with a deepening recession in Great Britain, convinced the Liverpool ministry that the Orders in Council were averse to British interests. On June 16, two days before the United States declared war, the Orders were suspended.

Some have viewed the timing of this concession as a lost opportunity for peace because slow transatlantic communication meant a month’s delay in delivering the news to Washington. Yet, because Britain’s impressment policy remained in place and frontier Indian wars continued, in all likelihood the repeal of the Orders alone would not have prevented war.