This rapid increase in tension between the French and the British caused the governor of virginia to send george washington to oppose French expansion in the Ohio River valley five years later. Washington constructed Fort Necessity, and soon attacked the French. The French and Indian War had begun.However, when studying american nationalism, it is not what started the French and Indian war that is important. Instead, by focusing on the American’s view of the British during this time, the growing nationalistic ideas leading to the American Revolution are more apparent.
Alan Brinkley, “It forced them, for the first time, to act in concert agianst a common foe. The friction of 1756 -1757 over British requisition and impressment policies, and the 1758 return of authority to the colonial assemblies, established an important precedent in the minds of the colonists: it seemed to confirm the illegitimacy of English interference in local affairs”. (111) During the French and Indian war, for example, the colonists generally viewed the British as brutal, and were alarmed by the way that British generals treated their army. Furthermore, the French and Indian War was the first time that the colonies sought to