Dinwiddie's actions as lieutenant governor are cited by one historian as precipitating the French and Indian War, commonly held to have begun in 1754. He wanted to limit French expansion in Ohio Country, an area claimed by the Virginia Colony and in which the Ohio Company, of which he was a stockholder, had made preliminary surveys and some small settlements. This version of history is disputed when one notices that Father Le Loutre's War in Acadia began in 1749 and did not end until the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. In fact, Thomas Jefferys, the Royal Geographer of the day, produced a pamphlet out of his Parliamentary testimony that explained the misconduct of the French in what amounted to a Treaty of Utrecht boundary dispute.