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The French & Indian War
The Virginia colony's 1606 grant from James I included land north of the Ohio River. Sixty-three years later a French explorer laid claim to the Ohio Valley. The two nations were locked on a collision course.
In 1749, when Virginia land speculators looked to push settlement north of the Ohio River, French troops out of Canada and Virginia soldiers commanded by young George Washington skirmished in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania. They initiated a world war between the English and French (known globally as the Seven Years' War) that ended with the expulsion of France from the mainland of North America. |