History of Detroit, Michigan

The city of Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, was settled in 1701 by French colonists. It is the first European settlement above tidewater in North America. Founded as a New France fur trading post, it began to expand with British and American settlement around the Great Lakes in the nineteenth century, and resource exploitation. But industrialization drove its becoming a world-class industrial powerhouse and the fourth-largest American city by 1920, based on the auto industry. It held that standing through the mid-20th century.

The first Europeans to settle here were French traders and colonists from the New Orleans (the La Louisiane colony. Traders from Montreal and Quebec had to contend with the powerful Five Nations of the League of the Iroquois, who took control of the southern shores of Lakes Erie and Huron through the Beaver Wars of the 17th century, during which they conquered or pushed out lesser tribes.

The region grew initially based on the lucrative inland and Great Lakes connected fur trade, based on continuing relations with influential Native American chiefs and interpreters. The Crown's administration of New France offered free land to colonists to attract families to the region of Detroit. The population grew steadily, but more slowly than in English private venture-funded colonies. The French had a smaller population base and attracted fewer relatives. During the French and Indian War (1756-1763), the French reinforced and improved Fort Detroit (1701) along the Detroit River between 1758–1760. It was subject to repeated attacks by British regular and colonial forces, strengthened by Indian allies.

Fort Detroit was surrendered to the British on November 29, 1760, after the fall of Quebec. Control of the area, and all French territory east of the Mississippi River, was formally transferred to the United Kingdom by the Treaty of Paris (1763) after it defeated France in the Seven Years' War. The British counted 2,000 people in Detroit in 1760, but the population had dropped to 1,400 by 1773. The city was in the territory which the British reserved for the Indians under the Royal Proclamation of 1763. It was transferred to Quebec under the Quebec Act of 1774. By 1778 in a census taken during the American Revolution, its population was up to 2,144. It was then the third-largest city in the Province of Quebec, after Montreal and Quebec.

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