Why France Lost the Seven Years War

This was the war that was twenty years before the American Revolution. France fought on two major fronts: the colonial front and the continental (European) front. England won by concentrating her efforts on the colonial front.

“Front” here is taken loosely. On the continent there were major areas of operations such as Flanders, Germany, and Italy. In the colonies, there were major areas of operations as widely separated as India, the East and West Indies, and of course, North America. Winston Churchill called this war the first real world war.

This essay goes over the reasons in more depth.