Claim: the French-Indian War (by England) was justified

I prefer to call it the Seven Years' War, since that's the holistic term for the conflict. Describing it as the French and Indian War is like calling WWII the Abyssinian War. There was fighting in Abyssinia, but the main action took place in Europe. To address the causes of the war, and how those can be justified, I shall start with European diplomacy in the prelude to it. In the mid eighteenth century, there were essentially six major powers. Britain was a rising star, with possessions that totalled the British Isles, Hanover and the Eastern Seaboard, as well as some scattered colonies in Africa and India and a small part of Northern Canada. It had ambitions to expand west and south in North America, as well as gaining a trading monopoly in India. France was a traditional power, that dominated the European mainland west of Poland, and had sizable possessions in the Caribbean and North America. It desired to prevent British expansion in North America, as well as to reinforce its borders with Germany and with the Indian States. Austria was an ancient power, dating from around the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and stretched from the Adriatic at Trieste to Transylvania. It had most of the predominantly Catholic German States in its patrimony, as well as most of northern Italy. In the last pan-European conflict, Austria had lost Silesia, a stretch of land on what is now the border between Poland and the Czech Republic that was the industrial heartland of Central Europe, to Prussia, and there was a strong feeling of revanchism among the Austrian parliament. It desired to maintain its hegemony over Germany, and to regain the territory of Silesia. Prussia was a very new power in the region, and although it controlled a very small part of Northern Europe, it was a very militarised society, a sort-of eighteenth century Sparta. Voltaire commented on it saying: 'Prussia is not a state that posseses an army, but an army that possesses a state'. With its new military doctrines and state of almost perpetual mobilisation that the current King, Frederick II 'The Great' had introduced, it had the potential to seriously disturb the delicate balance of power in Europe. In the previous war, it had conquered Silesia, as mentioned earlier, and now had the economic base to build a country. It desired Austria's patrimony in Germany, and was motivated to expand its influence over the waning state of Poland in the East. Russia was another old power, having been prominent since the fifteenth century as Russia. It was an agrarian peasant society, much in the same way as Austria and France, but with stronger ties, and showed very few signs of modernising. To the south of it lay the decaying Ottoman Empire, and to the west, the decaying Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth. Russia had a huge population and capacity for expansion, and desired to acquire areas such as Crimea and Poland in the short term, and have more influence over the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe as a whole. Spain was the declining power. At its prime, it was the richest and most powerful state in Europe, with huge colonial possessions and wealth beyond the dreams of the other nations. It controlled the only passage into the Mediterranean and most of the New World, but after the death of the last Hapsburg monarch Charles II in 1700 and the ascension of the Bourbon French monarch, Philip V, Spain became little more than a puppet of France. In previous wars, Britain had acquired the key strategic locations of Gibraltar and Minorca, control of which stripped Spain of the ability to regulate trade passing through the Strait of Gibraltar and to protect it from Barbary Pirates in Algeria and Morocco. Spain desired to reconquer these territories, as well as maintain order in the Americas by maintaining the status quo, and curb British naval power. These six powers formed two alliances. Britain and Prussia were aligned with each other, but this did not come to fruition until 1756. France, Austria and Russia were allied, with Spain coming in in 1761, as Russia was leaving. Prior to the war's outbreak, Britain's relatively dovish government was against war with France, and looked to form an alliance with Prussia to act as a deterrent. This has since been demonstrated to not work; just look at WWI, which showed that it only built tensions up, but they had no way of knowing it at the time. The government was a fairly liberal one under Newcastle, who was determined to avoid war, much to the chagrin of the more radical elements of parliament. The War began in 1756, when a French force attacked the British garrison at Minorca. Britain mobilised for war, and dispatched a force to relieve it. Fighting had occurred in the border regions between the British and French zones in 1754, though it was largely between differently-aligned tribes and over-zealous provincial militia groups and fencibles. Newcastle attempted to avert a war through the aforementioned alliance with Prussia, but this ultimately failed, as it was too little, too late. Shortly afterwards, King Frederick launched a preemptive strike against Austria by invading Saxony, a state in its German patrimony that was on the border with Prussia. Prussia's aim for the war in the short term was to annex Saxony, and use its riches and forces to finance the invasion of Bohemia and Moravia by capturing Prague and Olmutz, and then marching on Vienna to end what had been a short, glorious war. It started as Prussia had expected - the Saxon and Austrian forces were completely unprepared and suffered from poor morale, and Prussian fores took Dresden, the capital, without much resistance. They then made preparations for the advancement of nearly one hundred thousand soldiers into Bohemia and Moravia. An agreement was quickly made at the Westminster Convention, in which Britain agreed to give Prussia over half a million pounds (about two hundred million dollars) and donated military supplies to the Prussian army. They also agreed to not recognise Austria's claim to Silesia in exchange for Prussia to send an army to defend Hanover from the French. This makeshift alliance embroiled Britain in a war with Austria and Prussia in a war with France. Sensing an opportunity to muscle in on Eastern Europe, Russia decided to join on Austria and France's side. Sorry if that was a little long-winded, but the background is always necessary for any well-structured case. The fighting in North America, chiefly in Ohio, was largely as a result of mutual border disputes and tribal feuds. To say that the governments were at war at this point would be to say that Israel is at war with Palestine and Syria because it is conducting transgressions on their land. yes, there was conflict, but there was no war. The war started as a result of French aggression on a British-held island. France was essentially the military arm of Spain at that point, and it was basically liberating Minorca from the British, who were not internationally recognised as the rightful owners of the island. Therefore the war was justified. The justification is on both sides, since France had the justification that it was liberating an island under British occupation; while Britain had the justification that it was defending its sovereign territory. Also, Pitt was not prime minister until three years after the war ended. He was a major figure in Parliament, however, serving as Secretary of State for Newcastle, Devonshire and Bute. Even then, Pitt was a relatively dovish figure, and helped to ease the war's progress from 1761 onwards.