It was really about our old friend, trade. The British wanted to expand into the American interior to allow for more colonists, because the British benefited both from the export of raw materials from the Americas and the import of British consumer goods to the Americas. So more colonists meant more trade, which meant more wealth, which meant ever fancier hats. And the French realized that this British Atlantic Maritime trade was making Britain so rich that Britain might come for France's actually valuable colonies, which were not in the continental US, but those slave-based sugar plantations in the Caribbean. So the fighting began around here, and while the British did send over actual British troops, much of the early fighting was done by colonial militias. Probably the most famous commander of British troops was a Virginia colonel named George Washington. In fact, he may have actually started the shooting at the Battle of Fort Necessity in May of 1754.