In 1763, a worldwide imperial conflict called the Seven Years' War ended in resounding victory for the British Empire, which smashed its European rivals to emerge from the conflict as one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history. North America had been just one of many fronts in the global Seven Years' War, which American colonists usually called the French and Indian War in honor of their enemies in the conflict. In the end, the French and their Indian allies fell to British and colonial forces, leaving England officially in control of the whole part of North America east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida. Of course, the several hundred thousand Native Americans who inhabited the continent would not have seen it that way. But for Englishmen everywhere, the war's end was a time of triumph and liberty. Englishmen enjoyed more rights and freedoms than the subjects of any other world empire at the time. The colonists reveled in the victory they had helped the mother country to achieve. Colonists in 1763 would have thought the very idea of independence unthinkable, and probably downright mad.
