War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome back to Key Battles of the French and Indian War, our survey of the

conflict that shaped the fate of two great empires and laid the groundwork for the American

Revolution.

I'm your host, James Early, as always,

and as always, I am joined by my co-host, Jacob Her. Well, we've come to the end. Our last

episode, we saw a few interesting, well, a lot of interesting things were going on, a lot of

different things going on in different parts of the world. We saw Spain join the war on the side of France, signing the so-called Family Compact.

And Britain's way of thanking Spain for joining the war against them was to capture the city of Havana,

which was a great capture for them, but it was also very costly for both sides.

We also saw that the British picked up

real estate in other parts of the Caribbean. They picked up Martinique at long last, as well as several

other French islands. And then we saw the signing of the Treaty of Paris. As often happens in long wars

like this, remember, this war has been going on for nine years. It started in

1755, and by 1763, both sides were just exhausted. They were broke and just ready to end it.

And so they signed the treaty. And as we saw, some territory changed hands, quite a bit of territory

changed hands. So we're going to talk about that some more in this episode.

...