400 Ch. 1 1 • Dynastic Rivalries and Politics
General Wolfe’s forces scale the heights of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec.
British control of most of the Indian subcontinent, with the British navy
preventing French traders and soldiers from receiving sufficient supplies.
The East India Company’s great successes opened up new trade between
Britain, India, and South China, a vast new market.
In what became Canada, there was much more at stake because Britain
and France were fighting for control of a vast territory. In this struggle,
France had a decided disadvantage. Even after more than a hundred years
as a colony, at mid-century “New France” had a French population of only
about 80,000 people, for the most part clustered in three towns along the St.
Lawrence River—Montreal, Quebec, and Trois-Rivieres. By contrast, the
thirteen British colonies already had more than 2 million residents. British
incursions into their territory led Native Americans to ally informally with
the French. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), British
troops forced over 10,000 French-speaking Acadians living in Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick to emigrate. Many of them settled in the French
colony of New Orleans, where the word “Cajun” emerged as a corruption
of the French “acadien.”
The British navy accentuated its advantage on the seas by seizing 300
French merchant ships and capturing 8,000 sailors even before hostilities
formally began. Despite the capture by French troops of several forts in the
Great Lakes region, British ships reduced French reinforcements and sup
plies to a trickle, also besting a French fleet at Quiberon Bay off the coast
of Brittany in 1759.
In 1759, General James Wolfe (1727-1759) led an audacious, success
ful British attack on the French near Quebec, his forces climbing up the