NOT MANY AMERICANS are commemorating the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War. Outside Washington, D.C., over 100 West Virginians recently assembled for their annual commemoration of their own community’s role in the “war that made America.” Creditably, PBS aired a documentary with that very title last year. And the Smithsonian Institution currently has an equally competent exhibit on the French and Indian War called “Clash of Civilizations.” But other commemorations of the conflict are scarce, which is unfortunate.

There would be no United States without the French and Indian War, which ousted the French from North America and ensured Anglo-American dominance. The conflict also transformed a young Virginia woodsman named George Washington into an international figure. It gave a previously unknown unity to the English colonies in America. And it created the financial burden for the British Empire that led directly to the unwanted taxes on the colonies that would fuel a revolution. That revolution would succeed, in part, because the French would support it, in retaliation for their defeat by the British 20 years earlier.