How would colonists be affected if France won the French and Indian War?

anyone? it doesn’t need to be the best answer.

I always considered the French and Indian War a sideshow to the other wars in Europe. I am just thinking over your Q to see if the events in America would have changed anything in the long term.

Edit- If the French had done better in the War, or gotten better terms upon signing of the peace treaties, The Revolutionary War would have likely come much earlier.

In addition, you would have ended up with much greater French populations in Maine and the Ohio River Valley.

The Native Americans would likely have been stronger allies to the French than the British OR the Colonists, and westward expansion after the Revolution would have been significantly slowed by French (present in this hypothetical) and Indians working together.

France would not have needed to sell the Louisiana Purchase. United States would be much smaller if they even existed at all.

Since the French and Indian War was really just a single theater of a much larger conflict between France and Great Britain, I don’t think a loss in that theater of the war would have been a major setback for the British or the colonies’ westward expansion. The French were very late to decide to colonize North America, though they exploited the fur trade fairly extensively with a minimal voyageur population of mostly single men. The British colonists, on the other hand, were a growing force.

In fact, British performance in the war in North America was one of the keys that brought the Pitt government into power in Great Britain, so that really set the stage for the American Revolution in any case.

Losses in North America would have, at most, delayed the westward migration of the British colonists. Without a strong and permanent presence at the frontiers to enforce the borders, the French would have eventually lost the territory to the migrating colonists – sort of like the Americans are now in our own Southwest.

I think another way to look at this is: What would have happened if the British had thoroughly digested and incorporated the lessons that should have been learned from their poor campaigns in the American woods, and brought those lessons to bear during the Revolution later?

<sniff> Homework?

If France had won the French-Indian war, then they probably would’ve won the overall war that was taking place in Europe at the time…. and the entire landscape of Europe, as well as modern history… would be completely changed.

@Jeruba Yep. A critical thinking question and I’m not great at History.

I went with @WestRiverrat‘s answer for my homework, but I guess thinking of alternate endings to wars is kind of interesting, so you guys can keep answering if you want.