The Seven Years' War

Arch-rivals England and France had fought three wars between 1689 and 1748, so despite periodic breaks to recover and form new alliances no one ever expected peace to last for long. Although there had been savage but brief fighting between their North American colonies, the wars had essentially been European matters. The Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War) was different since it originated in North America. Actually, it could be better described as the first world war since the conflict spread from North America to Europe, the Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent and South-east Asia. The war initially favoured France but when William Pitt became the de facto leader of the British government in 1756 he decided to focus on North America since the British colonies greatly outnumbered the population of New France. By the end of the war, France had lost almost all of its North American colonies while Britain had become the dominant colonial power in India and the Royal Navy was the undisputed ruler of the ocean. (Please click here for a detailed chronology with a listing of all movies related to the Seven Years' War)

The Texan Revolution

The American republic had only existed for fifty years, but its aggressive colonists had already tamed a number of frontiers: Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. The newest frontier was Texas and while it may have been part of Mexico they felt that it belonged to whoever would tame it. Realizing that Anglo immigrants outnumbered native born Mexicans in Texas, the Mexican government passed the April 6 Law in 1830 that ended Anglo immigration and began collecting customs, thus ending a thriving smuggling industry. This was the last straw for many of the Anglos and resentment brewed until a group of particularly violent colonists ejected the garrison at Anahuac, a key smuggling center, in June 1835. The dictator Santa Anna had little interest in conciliation and sent troops to crush the rebellion, but they suffered a series of defeats that culminated in the surrender of the last Mexican force in Texas at the Alamo on December 11. The rebels believed they were safe until spring but Santa Anna surprised everyone when his army appeared at the Alamo on February 21 and he snapped up the scattered rebel forces one by one. When the garrison of Goliad was caught out in the open and surrendered on March 19, it looked as if the rebellion was doomed. However, Sam Houston led his army on a retreat deep into Texas in order to lure the Mexican army from its supply line. Worried that his other generals were gaining too much glory, Santa Anna rushed ahead with a small force to defeat the rebels but when he was beaten and captured at San Jacinto on April 21, he traded official recognition of the Texan Republic for his life. (Please click here for a detailed chronology with a listing of all of the movies related to the Texan Revolution)

The American Civil War

Conflict had been brewing between the anti-slavery Northern states and the slave-owning Southern states for over a decade but when Abraham Lincoln was elected president, it was feared that he would prevent the spread of slavery to new states, thus dooming the Southern way of life to extinction. Seven states voted on March 4, 1861 to secede from the Union, but the war did not actually start until Confederate troops forced Fort Sumter to surrender on April 13. A total of eleven states seceded, leaving 23 states in the Union. Both sides expected a quick and glorious victory but those expectations disappeared after a series of increasingly savage bloodbaths. The Union had 22 million people against the Confederacy's 9 million (of whom 4 million were slaves) and a thriving industrial base, so victory should have been assured for the Union. However, the Union lacked fighting generals able to handle Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Lincoln went through a total of five generals before he found Ulysses Grant, who understood that he could afford casualties and Lee could not.

By the end of 1863, the Union army seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of troops, the Confederacy had failed to win foreign recognition which made it practically impossible to negotiate loans to pay for its imports and the Union blockade was slowly strangling the South. The Confederacy's only hope was that Lincoln would lose the 1864 election and a Democrat president would negotiate a peace. However, when Union forces captured the key Confederate stronghold of Atlanta, Georgia, public elation enabled Lincoln to win re-election. While Grant kept Lee bottled up in Petersburg, which blocked the way to Richmond, the Confederate capital, Sherman burned his way through Georgia during December, knocking it out of the war. Grant then forced Lee out of Petersburg on April 2, 1865, and Lee surrendered five days later at Appomattox, although it took another month before the rest of the Confederate army gave up. (Please click here for a detailed chronolgy with a listing of all of the movies related to the American Civil War)

The Public Enemy Era

When outlaws like the Barker-Karpis Gang, the Clyde Barrow Gang, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd began to attract national attention in 1933, the FBI was an under-funded, amateurish organization. A series of celebrity kidnappings and the massacre of four law enforcement officials in Kansas City in June 1933 led to calls for a national police force, and the FBI would lead the war on crime. In 1934, the many bank robbers would be divided into five nice, clear groups: the family of kidnappers, the lovers on the run, the charming escape artist, the psychotic killer and the misunderstood country boy. A year later, almost none of them were still alive and the FBI was a national institution. (Please click here for a detailed chronology with a listing of all movies related to the Public Enemy Era)

The Korean War

North Korea invaded South Korea (The Republic of Korea-ROK) on June 25, 1950 and the ROK army collapsed almost overnight. American reinforcements were pushed back until they only held 10% of South Korea in a perimeter near Pusan. An amphibious landing at Inchon transformed the situation and put the North Korean army on the defensive. As US and ROK forces pushed across the border and advanced deep into North Korea, China warned that it would not permit American troops near its border. When the warnings were ignored, Chinese "volunteers" crossed the Yalu River in late 1950 and forced the American and ROK forces to retreat. After a series of offensives and counter-offensives, the lines stabilized in October 1951 and remained unchanged until a final armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. (Please click here for a detailed chronology with a listing of all the movies related to the Korean War)