Although William Johnson aspired to model a British alliance on his image of the old French alliance, in the end he came to violate his most basic premises. Seeking to overcome the colonial mismanagement that had cost the British their Indian allies before the Seven Years' War, he had found himself “obliged to pursue those methods so successfully practised by the French.” Johnson imitated the French system of gifts and medals, of officers and chiefs. He instituted a regulated trade. He replaced French fathers with British fathers, but he failed to persuade the British government to bear the costs such an alliance demanded, nor could he quickly call into being the cultural and social middle ground on which the alliance must finally rest.