The conflicts with the French power in Canada also had a powerful influence in consolidating the colonies and teaching them their strength. The first Congress in which they were all invited to take part was called in New York in 1690 to coöperate in war measures against Canada. Three long, costly, and bloody French-Indian wars, in which the colonists felt they bore the brunt of the burden and the fighting, drew them closer together, made them conscious of their common interests and of their resources. But their victory in the last of these wars had also another effect. It opened the way for a change of policy on the part of Great Britain towards her American colonies,--a change which involved their reorganization, their subordination to the authority of the British Parliament, and the "weaving" of them, as ex-Governor Pownall put it, into "a grand marine dominion consisting of our possessions in the Atlantic and in America united into one empire, into one centre where the seat of government is." This was undoubtedly imperialism. And it was because the Americans felt this that the spirit of self-reliance rose against the new policy and stubbornly resisted every step, even the smallest, which seemed to them to lead in the direction of subjugation and dependency. Followed ten years of acrimonious and violent controversy and eight years of war,--about what? The Stamp Act? the Paint, Paper, and Glass Act? the Tax on Tea? the Boston Port Bill? No; but at bottom about the right and intention of the colonies to continue to direct themselves. You cannot possibly understand the American Revolution unless you understand this. And without an understanding of the causes and the nature of the Revolution, you cannot comprehend the United States of to-day.