1763
Treaty of Paris Ends the Seven Years' War
Britain kept Canada, Florida, and unquestioned dominion east of the Mississippi. France kept Guadeloupe (it made more sugar). Spain received Louisiana as compensation. The global balance had tipped decisively toward London - and the British taxpayer, facing a huge war debt, began eyeing the American colonies. The peace left France humiliated and hungry for revenge, which arrived fifteen years later at Yorktown.
Pontiac's Rebellion
An Ottawa war leader named Pontiac coordinated a pan-tribal uprising against the British forts that had replaced French ones. Eight posts fell; Detroit and Fort Pitt held. It was at Fort Pitt that British commanders sent blankets from smallpox patients to besieging Delawares - biological warfare, conducted by memo. The rebellion forced London to issue the Proclamation Line of 1763, banning colonial settlement west of the Appalachians.
Royal Proclamation Line of 1763
London forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachian crest, trying to keep the peace with Indians and save money on garrisons. Virginia land speculators - Washington among them - read the proclamation and immediately began figuring out how to ignore it. A grievance was filed in colonial memory. The line was unenforceable from the start, and settlers poured across it within months of its proclamation.
Kruzenshtern and the Russian Pacific Claims
Russian fur traders, having crossed from Kamchatka, built permanent settlements on Kodiak and the Aleutians, squeezing sea otter populations and indigenous Alutiit peoples. They would found the Russian-American Company as a state-licensed monopoly in 1799, claiming a coast that Americans had never seen. Russia's Pacific empire stretched from Siberia to the forests above San Francisco Bay, a vast arc of fur and ambition that held until 1867.