How the Aftermath of the French and Indian War Impacted British/American Relations

From the 1600’s up until the early 1700’s, the British Colonies were in a state of salutary neglect. Thereafter, the British executed the Navigation Acts, though loosely enforced, they were created in order to regulate trade between the Colonies and the mother country. The relationship between Britain and it’s colonies was a civil one up until it was greatly reformed with the events of the French and Indian War. The war significantly affected the economic, political, and economic relationship between the colonies and the mother country, the British want for control and their restrictions left the colonies seeing their mother country in a different light. In addition to the events over the course of the war, the economic aftermath of the war’s debts also left the colonies to suffer the British need of revenue.
Though the greatest effects of the French and Indian weren’t felt until after the war, during the war the British started to show a stronger hand with their colonists in their time of need. With the start of the war, the colonists were already in a state of dissatisfaction with the mother country. The colonies were bound by the navigation acts, though the acts were loosely enforced in the early 1700’s with the years leading up to the war these restrictions were beginning to be administered. The colonies were not allowed to create factories to manufacture items, thus keeping them in a tie with Britain, by having the colonies trading their raw materials for manufactured items. During the war this proved to be a great problem, the British wanted the colonists to expand but the Native Americans and the French oppressed any colonial expansion, the colonies were stuck with the British in order to defend their land. Furthermore, the colonial soldiers in the war had an already growing discontent with the British. As a colonial soldier stated in his diary, “though we be Englishmen born, we are debarred Englishmen’s liberty”, this opinion of the British coming from a... [continues]

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