What was the Treaty of Paris of 1763?

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 was the treaty signed on February 10, 1763 that ended the Seven Years' War in Europe and the French and Indian War in North America. France ceded virtually all of its North American possessions to Britain (and to Spain). The treaty transferred New France, including the colony of Canada and Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), to Britain. France retained only the small fishing islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon south of Newfoundland (still a French overseas territory today) and certain fishing rights along the Newfoundland coast (the French Shore).

The treaty was negotiated between Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal at Paris in late 1762 and signed on February 10, 1763 by representatives of all four powers. Britain was represented by John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford; France by César Gabriel de Choiseul, duc de Praslin; Spain by Jerónimo Grimaldi, marqués de Grimaldi; and Portugal by Martinho de Mello e Castro. The accompanying Treaty of Hubertusburg (February 15, 1763) ended the war between Prussia and Austria.

The treaty's North American provisions transferred to Britain all French territory east of the Mississippi River (including Canada and the eastern Mississippi Valley) and to Spain all French territory west of the Mississippi (Louisiana). France also transferred Florida, which it had received from Spain, to Britain in exchange for the return of Havana, Cuba (which Britain had captured in 1762). The French Catholic population of New France received limited religious rights under Article IV of the treaty: 'His Britannic Majesty agrees to grant the Liberty of the Catholick Religion to the Inhabitants of Canada'.

The 1763 Treaty of Paris had profound long-term consequences. It ended French imperial power in continental North America. It made Britain the dominant European power in North America (until the American Revolution). It left Britain with a large French Catholic population in Quebec that dramatically complicated colonial governance, leading directly to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774. It ended Indigenous ability to play French and British powers against each other, contributing to Pontiac's War of 1763. And it laid the foundations for both the modern Canadian state and the lingering French-English tensions in Canadian politics. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon remain a small French overseas territory of about 6,000 people, the only French territory in North America.