16.1.10 to 16.1.13

Colonial conflict with Great Britain, 1744-1815 In the mid-18th century, a series of colonial conflicts began between France and the Kingdom of Great Britain, which would ultimately result in the demise of most of the first French colonial empire. These wars were the War of the Austrian Succession (1744-1748), the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the War of the American Revolution (1778-1783), and the French Revolutionary (1793-1802) and Napoleonic (1803-1815) Wars. Although the War of the Austrian Succession was indecisive—despite French successes in India under the French Governor-General Joseph Fran�ois Dupleix—the Seven Years War, after early French successes in North America, saw a catastrophic French defeat, with the British conquering not only New France, but most of France's West Indian colonies, and all of the French Indian outposts. While the peace treaty saw France's Indian outposts, and the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe restored to France, the competition for influence in India had been won by the British, and North America was entirely lost—most of New France was taken by Britain, except Louisiana which France ceded to Spain as payment for Spain's late entrance into the war (and as compensation for Britain's annexation of Spanish Florida). Also ceded to the British were Grenada and Saint Lucia in the West Indies. Some recovery was made during the French intervention in the American Revolution, with Saint Lucia being returned to France by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, but not nearly as much as had been hoped for at the time of French intervention. True disaster came to what remained of France's colonial empire in 1791 when Saint Domingue, France's richest and most important colony, was riven by a massive slave revolt, caused partly by the divisions among the islands elite resulting from the French Revolution of 1789. The slaves, led eventually by Toussaint l'Ouverture and then, following his capture by the French in 1801, by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, held their own against French, Spanish, and British opponents, and ultimately achieved independence as Haiti in 1804. In the meanwhile, the newly resumed war with Britain resulted in British capture of practically all remaining French colonies. These were restored at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, but when war resumed in 1803, the British soon recaptured them. France's repurchase of Louisiana in 1800 came to nothing, as the final success of the Haitian revolt convinced Bonaparte that holding it would not be worth the cost, leading to its sale to the United States in 1803 (the Louisiana Purchase). Nor was the French attempt to establish a colony in Egypt in 1798-1801 successful.