The Seven Years' War (1756-1763), which is often referred to today as an early modern 'world war', was indeed a conflict with global dimensions and linked theatres of war and lines of conflict in Europe, North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. Depending on the national perspective, however, it stands for two different wars of the 18th century. For some, the Seven Years' War began in July 1755 in the Ohio Valley, for others in August 1756 with the invasion of Saxony by Prussian troops. The Seven Years' War thus epitomises two very different conflicts of the 18th century: Great Britain's struggle with France and the rivalry between Prussia and Austria. Both confrontations stemmed from unresolved rivalries from the previous war, which had also taken on global proportions as the War of the Austrian Succession and encompassed the conflicts between Prussia and Austria as the First and Second Silesian Wars. Although Austria and Prussia had concluded a peace treaty in Dresden in 1745, Frederick II's theft of Silesia was by no means accepted in Vienna. Even the Peace of Aachen in 1748 could hardly really settle the Anglo-French rivalry in the colonies; in France in particular, the peace was regarded as a major mistake. In the following, the focus is on the global side of the conflict with the clashes between Great Britain and France, but it will always be necessary to ask how this was intertwined with those of the other warring parties and theatres. For example, the geographical hub was in Electoral Hanover, whose defence against France forced the British to become involved in the territory of the Old Empire, which had been linked by personal union since 1714. For what historians today call intertwining, contemporaries used images of leaping flames, a metaphor that was directly evocative of everyday life in view of the high risk of urban fires in pre-modern Europe.
However, even if Prussia and Austria's conflict had been completely unrelated to the war between Great Britain and France, this would do little to change the global dimension, as the conflict between the two maritime colonial powers took place in at least six theatres, of which those outside Europe are discussed in more detail below. In Great Britain and France, the Seven Years' War is remembered as a conflict for supremacy in Europe and on the world's oceans, which ended with the hegemony of the British Empire. In the USA, it is known as the French and Indian War, a precursor to the American War of Independence. In Canada, the Seven Years' War is not only known as the French and Indian War, but also as the Guerre de la Conquete, the 'War of Conquest', which resulted in the final end of Nouvelle-France. For India, as the third war in Carnatic and the conflict in Bengal, it is a chapter on the way to becoming a British colony. If one asks what kind of social location was involved in each case, who the warring parties were, what forms of warfare prevailed and what resources were being fought over, some significant differences emerge in comparison to Europe.
In North America and India, there was a triangular competitive relationship: in North America the European settlers of both nations and the Native Americans, in India the European trading companies and the local powers in the succession of the former Mughal Empire. In the Caribbean and Africa, we are mainly dealing with conflicts between the European navies and local militiamen. Economic resources were at stake in all the theatres: sugar in the Caribbean, furs in Canada, land in the Ohio Valley, gum arabic in West Africa and saltpetre and local tax sovereignty in India, among other things. The type of warfare also differed depending on the warring parties and the local environment. In the forests of North America, small-scale warfare and the siege of fixed locations dominated; in Africa and the Caribbean, amphibious operations, i.e. siege and landing operations by naval forces, predominated; and in India, sieges and a few battles, hardly comparable to those in Europe, dominated. The British-French rivalry was further fuelled by confessional motives, which could contribute to ideological radicalisation, not only among Christian Europeans, but also with regard to the indigenous peoples: The Native Americans were met with particular harshness as 'heathens', and the South Asian religious diversity with Muslims and Hindus also provided additional material for conflict. However, the global religious interdependence, as mediated by missionaries and religious orders among others, also supported information flows within an early modern media war. Even this rough overview shows that, in addition to the geopolitical calculations of the European centres of power in London and Paris, it was essentially a question of local actors with modern private economic interests and that armies and methods of fighting sometimes deviated significantly from the European ideal. The global expansion of European power rivalries as such was nothing new; the Palatinate, Spanish and Austrian wars of succession also had their non-European theatres. However, the outcome of the Seven Years' War made a lasting geopolitical difference.
For a few fields full of snow? Canada and the North American colonies
In North America, the Peace of Aachen in 1748 had not ended the rivalries that had been smouldering between New France and the British colonies from Virginia up to Newfoundland. At the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela, the Forks of the Ohio near present-day Pittsburgh, violence escalated in the skirmish of Jumonville Glen in May 1754 - a French defeat - and the British defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela on 9 July 1755. At first glance, it looks as if the creeping outbreak of war in the Ohio Valley had drawn the European powers into a global conflict without them wanting it: In May 1756, Great Britain officially declared war on France.
However, a closer look quickly reveals longer-term geopolitical calculations on the part of both the UK and France. In Great Britain, the two camps of the "blue water policy" and the "continental commitment" differed particularly clearly. While the former favoured expansion on the world's oceans, the latter prioritised the protection of Electoral Hanover and intervention on the European mainland. The debate took place in a relatively modern political public sphere, as Parliament was the decision-making authority alongside the Crown, and the press was able to publish much more freely than on the continent. In view of the smouldering conflict in North America, France endeavoured to spread the image of British aggression among the European public. An important foreign policy objective was to keep the Netherlands out of a possible anti-French coalition. Similar factions rivalled in Paris as in London: while some propagated a political focus on the continent, others called for a commitment to the colonies.
In a letter to his friend Nicolas-Claude Thieriot (1697-1772) on 29 February 1756, Voltaire wrote the famous words: "I do not know whether there are many more disgraceful features for mankind in this picture than to see two enlightened nations cutting off each other's necks for a few acres of ice and snow in America." In his famous Can-dide, he took up the phrase again in 1759 when he asked whether the people of England were as foolish as those of France and received the answer: "You know that these two nations went to war with Canada for a few snowfields, and that they spent more on this pretty war than the whole of Canada is worth." But this was only one, comparatively extreme position among many. The French political elite by no means harboured a general scepticism towards the colonial initiatives. While some called for a pure naval war, others favoured the occupation of Hanover and the Austrian Netherlands. However, even those in favour of colonial policy were by no means unanimous. Some favoured the Mississippi Valley and Louisiana in particular, while others were decidedly in favour of Canada.
The quantitative relationship between the two powers in North America was highly unequal: around 2 million inhabitants of the British colonies faced only around 60,000 French inhabitants. The armed forces were also correspondingly unequal, with around 10,000 regular French land and naval troops facing 42,000 regulars and militiamen on the British side. Due to this asymmetry, the French in particular had to rely on indigenous allies such as the Abenaki, Algonquin, Lenape, Ottawa and Shawnee. The British, on the other hand, were at times allied with the Iroquois Confederacy or the Cherokee Nation, from which the conflict was named the French and Indian War. The practices of European warfare also changed with the Native Americans, which from a European perspective was repeatedly perceived as a dissolution of boundaries, even though European warfare against the tribes was particularly ruthless. Practices such as scalping caused a stir in the contemporary media and reports of alleged atrocities committed by the 'Indians' appeared time and again. For example, an incident medialised as a 'massacre' during the capture of the British Fort William Henry in August 1757, in which many of the retreating British were killed. The event gained literary fame primarily through James Fenimore Cooper's historical novel The Last of the Mohicans from 1826.
In 1757, the situation for the French was initially characterised by successes. The British leadership was still disorganised and proved itself in the small war for the forts in the Ohio Valley.
The French tactics changed. An expedition to Louisbourg in what is now Nova Scotia failed due to a French fleet being sent to relieve it. But now the tide began to turn structurally. The British naval blockade increasingly took hold and cut the French off from the supply of troops and resources from the mother country, the harvest in Canada in 1757 was poor, the intendant responsible for army supplies exceeded the usual level of corruption, the allied tribes often suffered from smallpox infections and the British were able to successfully mobilise troops in return. In 1758, the besieged Louisbourg fell to the British and they also gained control of the Ohio Valley. However, the real turning point came with the spectacular conquest of Quebec in September 1759. After a daring landing on the cliffs outside the city, the Battle of Abraham's Fields took place, one of the shortest but most momentous battles of the Seven Years' War, lasting around an hour. Both commanders, the British General James Wolfe and the French General Louis Montcalm, fell as a result of the battle, while the French ranks, made up of militiamen and line infantry, quickly disintegrated. As a result, the encircled town was forced to surrender. The most important French bastion in Canada was lost, leaving Montreal as the last major city in French hands. Faced with an army of around 18,000 British regulars and colonial troops, Governor Vaudreuil and his 4,000 remaining men surrendered to the superior attackers without a fight on 8 September 1760. Within a few weeks, the entire province came under British rule. On the Canadian-North American theatre, the Seven Years' War as the French and Indian War had thus come to an end. A smaller French expedition against Newfoundland in 1762 remained an episode. The Native Americans lost a powerful ally in the French, and although it initially looked as if the advance of the European settlers west of the Appalachians would be halted by George III's royal proclamation of October 1763, the demarcation of the border remained largely ineffective, and the next conflict followed immediately with the Pontiac War of 1763-1766.
India: A trading company on its way to becoming a territorial power
After the death of the Mughal Aurangzeb in 1707, India was characterised by numerous succession conflicts, a situation that can be described negatively as the disintegration of the Mughal Empire or positively as "segmentary state formation" (Michael Mann). In any case, the weakness of the Muslim dynasty, which had exercised centralised power for centuries, opened up a wide range of opportunities for alliance politics for foreign actors. Local rivalries repeatedly generated advantages for third parties. Unlike on the American continent or in Europe, however, the conflict in India was not waged by regular armies or local militias on the European side, but by the respective trading companies. The British East India Company (EIC) and the French Compagnie des Indes (CdI) had gradually replaced the Dutch and Portuguese as the most important European trading nations on the Indian subcontinent and were heading for a military confrontation. Compared to North America, however, both parties in South Asia were dependent on local military support. The French were the first to respond systematically to the need for soldiers and recruited local warriors, the so-called sepoys, whom they drilled, uniformed and armed according to European patterns. The British soon adapted this recruitment strategy and outperformed their French rivals in the long term. The British had three particularly important trading posts on the Indian subcontinent: on the west coast in Mumbai (colonial Bombay), on the south-east coast in Madras and in Calcutta in north-east Bengal. However, the French base in Chandannagar was located to the north of Calcutta and French Pondicherry was in the neighbourhood of Madras. A direct confrontation was therefore obvious, especially as the French had appointed an ambitious governor in Joseph Francois Dupleix. Similar to North America, the Europeans' expansion endeavours were dependent on local cooperation partners, so that triangular alliance structures with the local powers also emerged here. One point of conflict with the local princes in the succession of the Indian Mughal Empire was always the authorisation to build and fortify local forts, as the European traders were always on foreign territory and were only tolerated. However, they skilfully used a policy of securitisation, i.e. a situation was described as unsafe and threatening to trade, which required security measures that could ultimately be directed against the local authorities.
In the case of Fort William in Calcutta, this policy escalated into open conflict with the Nawab of Bengal, Prince Siraj ud-Daulah (1733-1757) in 1756. The Nawab's troops captured Fort William in June, and the remaining British - the commander had absconded - whose numbers fluctuate between 40 and 145 in the reports, were imprisoned in a small guardroom of the fort. The majority of those imprisoned did not survive that night in the "Black Hole of Calcutta", which subsequently became one of the myths of the British Empire in the media. The authenticity of the only written testimony of a survivor, John Zephaniah Holwell, which was also published in German translation shortly afterwards, is disputed, but this did not stand in the way of the Black Hole's impact on the British image of Indian despotism.
When news of the loss of the branch in Calcutta reached Madras, the Company, led by Colonel Robert Clive, quickly took the initiative in a counter-attack, which was initially delayed until December due to transport logistics. Calcutta was taken more or less without a fight at the beginning of January 1757, but the confrontation with the Nawab ended in a kind of stalemate, especially as the latter was exposed to attacks from Afghanistan and could not act on two fronts simultaneously. The British used the break to turn against the French Chandannagar, which fell to Clive's troops on 23 March. Strategically, this not only meant the loss of French influence in Bengal, but also had further logistical consequences for the French establishment in Mauritius.
On 26 June, there was a cannonade between Clive's troops and Siraj du-Daulah's army at Plassey, 150 kilometres north of Calcutta, which is remembered as the decisive battle in the struggle for British supremacy. The composition of the parties is significant for the asymmetry of the whole conflict. Around 50,000 men on the Nawab side faced around 3,000 men on the Clive side, including 2,100 sepoys alone. The Nawab's artillery was also supported by 50 French artillerymen. Several factors made the event a debacle for the Nawab. One of his followers Mir Jafar Ali Khan, commander of an army of 15,000 men, conspired against the Nawab and did not engage in battle, a monsoon rain had drenched the Indian side's powder while the British were able to keep it dry with tarpaulins. Two of the Nawab's three main commanders were killed early in the battle. The British lost around 80 men killed and wounded, while the Indians lost around 500. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the victory was Mir Jaffir, who was hailed by Clive as the new "Nabob of Bengal". The repeatedly victorious Clive became the heroic figure of the Indian theatre of war par excellence. He was rewarded with the title "Clive of Plassey", but later went down in history as the "Clive of India". With the victorious Battle of Wandiwash in 1760 and the conquest of Pondicherry in 1761, the British finally secured their supremacy in India. A decision that was of almost incalculable importance for the history of India. Through the successive acquisition of tax privileges and the further playing off of the local princes against each other, the role of the EIC in Bengal changed from trading partner to territorial ruler. This also required more and more political involvement on the part of the British crown and in the long term paved the way for the British Raj of the 19th and 20th centuries.
On the coasts of Africa, South America and the Caribbean
From the cabinets' point of view, global integration always meant weighing up gains and losses. For example, France showed much less interest in its territories in North America, which were primarily relevant for the fur trade, than in the much more lucrative sugar islands in the Caribbean. London was also aware of this, and so one of the maritime strategies of the British Secretary of State Willam Pitt aimed to hit French trade in the West Indies. An expedition against Martinique at the end of 1758 initially failed, but this was followed by the conquest of Guadeloupe in May 1759. An event that has only recently been recognised in this context with reference to the Seven Years' War is the slave uprising in Jamaica from April 1760 to October 1761, known as Tacky's Rebellion. Led by an enslaved African named Tacky, it was one of the largest slave uprisings of the time, during the bloody suppression of which several hundred black people were killed. This action tied up British military forces and influenced the strategic situation in the Caribbean. After the large troop units in North America were available for other tasks after 1760, parts of them were sent to the renewed attempt to capture Martinique, which was successful in February 1762, quickly followed by the conquest of Saint Lucia, Grenada and Saint Vincent. This was a hard economic blow for the French crown, but for the plantation owners, the ending of the British blockade opened up the markets again.
Two other British operations in Africa and Latin America, which are probably only barely present in Europe's historical memory culture today, illustrate in particular the effectiveness of private sector initiatives for global integration. In 1758, a New York Quaker and merchant by the name of Thomas Cummings convinced Pitt of the project to seize the French trade in gum arabic and send an expedition to the coast of West Africa. Gum arabic is a resin obtained from the sap of certain African acacia trees (including Senegalia senegal), which was used in the 18th century for binding colours, calico printing and silk processing, among other things. Today it is an important ingredient in Coca-Cola, for example.
On 9 March 1758, a small fleet of four warships under the command of Henry Marsh set sail from Plymouth for Africa. Their destination was the French slave fort St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal, founded in 1659. The British reached the mouth of the river on 23 April and quickly captured the fort without a single battle. Thus motivated for further conquests, they set course for the French island base of Gorée (from the Dutch "Goede Reede" safe harbour), 100 miles to the south, a central transhipment point for the Atlantic slave trade. However, the attack was unsuccessful, so that they returned home with 400 tonnes of captured gum arabic. Pitt saw this as a success and immediately dispatched an even larger fleet under the command of Captain Augustus Keppel (1725-1786), which left Spithead for Africa again on 22 October. This time, however, the voyage went less smoothly. One of the ships was shipwrecked off Morocco, with the result that 130 men drowned and 220 others became prisoners of the Moors. The rest of the fleet anchored near Dakar on 28 December 1758. This time the French surrendered quickly, the fighting cost the lives of 30 French and 16 British, and a further 300 French soldiers were taken to Europe to be exchanged for British prisoners. The inhabitants of the Old Empire received the news of the conquest at the end of January 1759, but for the most part could do little with it. The strategic value of the British revenues was limited. However, they were part of Pitt's strategy to damage the French economy and impressively demonstrated the global clout of the British Navy.
The war expanded further as a result of the Bourbon Family Pact between France and Spain, which extended the conflict to the colonial territories of Spain and Portugal in 1762. In addition to Cuba and the Philippines, fighting also broke out in Latin America. In Nicaragua there was a British attack on the fortress of Immaculata Concepción, on the Rio de la Plata there were battles between the British and Portuguese against the Spanish around Buenos Aires, and in Brazil the Spanish and Portuguese fought in the province of Mato Grosso and around Colonia del Sacramento. At this point, only one brief episode should be mentioned, which refers to recurring patterns of British naval warfare. In 1762, John MacNamara, a former officer of the East India Company, launched a private initiative against the Spanish settlements at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. With a syndicate from Plymouth, he sailed against Colonia del Sacramento with the three frigates Gloria, Ambuscade and Lord Clive. However, the Spanish managed to successfully defend the fort located directly opposite Buenos Aires. The flagship named after Robert Clive, who was so successful in India, caught fire and both Commander MacNamara and most of the crew were killed as a result. Unlike in Senegal, the British were unsuccessful here.
Two peace and a new world order
The first signs of a possible peace emerged as early as the end of 1759. Plans were made for a European peace congress in Augsburg in 1761, but this never materialised. This would have given all parties the opportunity to end the partial conflicts of the Seven Years' War in a joint major peace agreement. Instead, two peace treaties were concluded in 1763: On 10 February 1763, peace was concluded between England, France, Spain and Portugal in Paris and on 15 February between Prussia, Austria and Saxony in Hubertusburg, Saxony. However, the war could hardly be said to have ended immediately; it ended as gradually as it had begun. It was months before all the armies had left the opposing territories, and on a global scale, the long communication channels prevented simultaneous action anyway. Some news of victory only arrived in Europe after peace had been concluded. The preliminary peace of the Treaty of Paris had already been signed in Fontainebleau on 3 November 1762.
The peace was not uncontroversial in Great Britain. From the point of view of the victorious party in particular, some felt that not enough advantages had been achieved. Controversial issues included the return of the French sugar islands, concessions on fishing rights in Newfoundland and the consequences of the withdrawal from the Empire for the Prussian ally. However, the House of Commons eventually voted in favour of the peace by an overwhelming majority.
On 10 February 1763, the treaty containing 27 main and 3 separate articles was signed in the English ambassador's hotel in Paris. One of the most far-reaching agreements was the complete cession of French territorial claims in North America. This sealed the end of New France, the nouvelle France. The French inhabitants of Canada were granted religious freedom and certain fishing rights, Louisiana was divided along the Mississippi River and Spain received the western part, while Great Britain received the eastern part. Things were better for France in the Caribbean, where it regained the islands of Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, Désirade and Martinique, among others, while Grenada went to Great Britain, which also retained St Vincent, Dominique and Tobago. While Gorée on the West African coast was returned to France, the British were given Senegal. In South India, the French possession of factories from 1749 was restored, while in the north-east, in Bengal, the French were henceforth prohibited from any form of military activity; Chandannagar and Pondicherry fell back to France. Belle-Île also went back to France, and Minorca in turn to Great Britain. The territorial shifts were enormous and led to a lasting realignment of the imperial orientation of France and Great Britain.
The war had not only linked different theatres, but also severed many connections. France was looking for new zones of influence, for example in northern Latin America (French Guiana) and above all in Africa. Great Britain had become a global empire, but its enormous expansion was also to become a problem in the medium term. The costs of the war had to be paid, and the North American colonies, for example, did not want to bear the necessary taxation without political participation. The French and Indian War is therefore also regarded as an important precursor to the American War of Independence, in which the former rivals France and Spain also joined in on the side of the 'rebels'. One of the consequences of the loss of the North American colonies was a stronger British focus on India, which once again highlighted the global interdependencies of a world in flames. Not everything was connected to everything else in the 18th century, but the Seven Years' War is an impressive example of the global dynamics of a war that could have effects on distant regions. Effects that largely eluded geopolitical planning, even in purely technical terms, without making imperial will irrelevant to the activities of the actors on the ground. Rather, this war was characterised by the fact that it can hardly be described with conventional labels such as cabinet war and was characterised by a complex mixture of economic, territorial, confessional and patriotic motives. Motives that claimed countless human victims, who died not only in battle but also from disease and hunger, thus holding up a bloody mirror to the century of Enlightenment. In 1764, Voltaire lamented that famine and epidemics were due to providence, but that war, as an additional driving force, was solely due to "the imagination of three or four hundred persons scattered all over the globe under the name of princes or ministers".
