ada.
French prospects, however, received a crippling setback from the outcome of the Seven Years' War (1756-63)--the French and Indian War of American colonial history. The British won most of the colonial battles, taking Quebec as their crowning success. More importantly, the British Navy showed itself clearly dominant at sea. In the Treaty of Paris that ended the war, the French were forced to cede to Britain all of Canada and the entire eastern part of their vast, ill-defined territory of Louisiana. All of North America east of the Mississippi was now in British hands. The French retained only the almost wholly unsettled territory west of the Mississippi, extending north as far as Canada (however that was to be defined), and as far west as the Shining Mountains (whatever and wherever they were) (Keats 9). Only the town of New Orleans, a settlement of a few thousand people, represented an actual material possession as opposed to a vague territorial claim.
And, in fact, the French retained New Orleans and the remainder of Louisiana for only a
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