The middle of the seventeenth century marked the collision point between the two competing world empires England and France. Two inconclusive wars during the first part of this century left world supremacy in question. The logical next point of conflict lay in the loosely claimed, mostly unexplored territory west of the British colonies, America’s Ohio River Valley. With a significant and well established presence for both England and France in early America, this conflict was inevitable. Yet a close analysis of the circumstances and the actions taken reveal that England became the initial aggressor in starting the war in order to protect and expand its growing advantage of world dominance.
France differed significantly from England in its expansion strategy. Where England needed to expand its territories westward to satisfy its rapidly growing colonies and population needs, France preferred to better its relations with the native American tribes to grow its lucrative fur trade as well as convert Native Americans to Catholicism. As England began zeroing in on this obvious vastly untapped area that France had already laid claim to, strategic moves from both sides were set in place. A quote from The Scratch of a Pen shows us why and how Britain Started the war: "The British feared the French were building a line of forts that threatened to strangle Britain's seaboard colonies" (Calloway 4). Britain was seeking to continue expanding their empire west but began to feel threatened by France, who were building forts on controversial land. British had a population advantage that demanded a more pressing need for this territorial expansion. In 1754, France built Fort Duquense where the Allegheney and Monongahela rivers join. At this moment the British colony governor of Virginia, realized that some 200,000 acres of this land had already been granted to wealthy planters, and chose to send militia to evict the French. This militia, led by twenty-two year old George Washington, immediately created an outpost they named Fort Necessity. “In May 1754, Washington’s militia attacked a small detachment of French soldiers, and the