One reason the British government largely left the Americans alone was its preoccupation with wars against its imperial rivals. Trade and territory in the New World became the spoils of war in a series of conflicts that Britain fought with Spain and France. The American colonists were drawn into the fighting, eventually playing an important role as auxiliaries of the British military.

Over three-quarters of a century, Britain fought a series of major wars with France. The first of these was King William's War, which ran from 1689 to 1697. This broke out in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, with Louis XIV of France supporting the deposed James II. New Englanders captured Port Royal and took part in an unsuccessful attack on Quebec. The Treaty of Ryswick re-established the prewar colonial borders. Neither side was satisfied with this, and it was not long before outright hostilities resumed. Queen Anne's War lasted from 1702 to 1713. This war was the North American extension of the War of the Spanish Succession. American settlements on the frontier suffered from French and Indian attacks, most notably Deerfield, Massachusetts, which was sacked in 1704.

After a period of cold war, fighting broke out once again. King George's War ran from 1740 to 1748 and corresponded to the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe. American colonists won the only notable military success of the war in 1745, when they captured the French fortress of Louisbourg. They were disgusted when the fortress was returned to France at the end of the war.

New France stretched from Canada through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi Valley to New Orleans. French America was sparsely populated. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there were only 55,000 French settlers in this vast area, compared to 1,500,000 people in the British colonies. The French held their own in these wars because they had some advantages that counterbalanced their lack of numbers. A high percentage of the French population was composed of professional military men and expert woodsmen. Interested in fur trading rather than acquiring farmland, the French were better able to acquire Indian allies. The French also benefited from a unified command structure centered on Quebec.

In 1754, the British government encouraged representatives of the colonies to meet at Albany with representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. The British hoped the meeting would improve cooperation against French aggression. Benjamin Franklin presented a plan of union that would have created an American government to negotiate with the Indians. Franklin's vision included a council of representatives from each of the colonies and a president-general appointed by the King. Both the colonial legislatures and the British government rejected the Albany Plan because each side feared it would give the other too much power. Disgusted, Franklin wrote, “Everyone cries a union, but when they come to the manner and form of the union, their weak noodles are completely distracted.”