#colonialwars

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Queen Anne's War: When Europe's Succession Dispute Ignited American Frontiers

Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) was the second major colonial conflict in North America, fought between the colonies of England – Great Britain after 1707 – and those of France and Spain, each side aided by their respective Native American allies. An extension of a larger European conflict, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), Queen Anne’s War had its own unique origins, stemming from the tempestuous politics of Colonial America.

The war officially began when Anne, Queen of Great Britain (reign 1702-1714) – after whom the North American conflict was named – declared war on France and Spain, in response to a dispute over who would inherit the Spanish throne. This dynastic war, though of little significance to the colonists on the North American frontier, would nevertheless reignite tensions that had been simmering since the last colonial war. New France, for instance, was quarreling with its English rivals over control of the lucrative fur trade as well as over a border dispute between its colony of Acadia and the New England territory of Maine. The indigenous Wabanaki Confederacy had a generations-long feud with the New England colonies as well, stretching back to the violence of King Philip’s War (1675-1678). And, in the south, the English Province of Carolina contended with its own rival, Spanish Florida, which sometimes authorized Native American raids into Carolinian territory. So, when word of Queen Anne’s declaration of war reached American shores, the colonies and Native American nations readily engaged in a ferocious war of their own characterized by bloody cycles of retaliatory raids and deadly frontier skirmishes.

Background

At the turn of the 18th century, Colonial America was a tinderbox. Decades of tensions, arising from issues such as border disputes, dishonored treaties, and the struggle over resources, had already led to the bloodletting of King William’s War (1688-1697). However, this conflict, quite limited in scope, had achieved little besides the burning of frontier villages and the killing or kidnapping of their inhabitants, serving to heighten the animosity between the English colonies on one side, and New France on the other. One major point of contention was in the northeast, in modern-day Maine, which was claimed both by the French colony of Acadia (modern-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and the New England colonies. Maine had been the site of the most brutal fighting of the previous war, its settlements still scarred by the flames, the graves of the slain still fresh in its soil. New France had also long been struggling with its English rivals over control of the lucrative beaver pelt trade in the Great Lakes region. While the English enjoyed a numerical advantage over their French rivals – the population of the English colonies was approaching 200,000 by 1700, while New France had less than 20,000 – the French had better leadership and more settlers with military experience, helping to even the odds.

Though the rivalry between these two European powers lay at the center of the political tensions, a few powerful Indigenous polities could not be ignored. One of these, the Wabanaki Confederacy, had been fighting against the New Englanders for decades; several times, the Wabanakis and the English had signed peace treaties, only for the English to later trample over these agreements and encroach further onto Wabanaki land. In response, the Wabanakis had aligned themselves closer with the French, intermarrying with French settlers and allowing Jesuit missionaries in their midst. During King William’s War, it had been the Wabanakis who had conducted most of the raids on New England towns, striking terror and fear into the hearts of the English settlers. Another Native American polity was the Iroquois Confederacy, which had been allied with the English during King William’s War only to find themselves abandoned at the end of it. When the English made peace with the French in 1697, they neglected to provide for their Iroquois allies. Thus, the Iroquois were left to keep fighting the French by themselves. Many of their villages were burned and people killed by the vengeful French, before the Iroquois were able to finalize their own peace treaty in 1701. The Iroquois, understandably, accused the English of abandoning them, and were unlikely to want to help should a second colonial war break out.

Such a war, it would turn out, was not long in coming. But the spark that would ignite this North American tinderbox would come from thousands of miles away, over in Europe. In November 1700, King Charles II of Spain died without children. The vacant Spanish throne was duly claimed by a member of the French Bourbon dynasty, a grandson of King Louis XIV, a move that alarmed some of the other European nations who feared that a union between France and Spain would upset the delicate balance of power. These nations, a powerful coalition including England, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Dutch Republic, instead favored a candidate from the Habsburg dynasty to succeed to the throne of Spain. This dispute ultimately led to the War of the Spanish Succession, as the pro-Bourbon and pro-Habsburg alliances vied for control of the Spanish Empire. At first, England and France tried to make a deal to keep their overseas colonies neutral in the struggle. But, by the time word reached Colonial America that war had broken out in Europe in 1702, there was nothing that could put the genie back in the bottle. A new colonial war had begun.

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⇒ Queen Anne's War: When Europe's Succession Dispute Ignited American Frontiers

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King George's War: When New England Colonists Captured A Powerful French Fort

King George's War (1744-1748) was the third great colonial conflict fought in North America between Great Britain and France, each side aided by their respective Native American allies. Like the previous two major colonial wars, it coincided with a larger European conflict – the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) – though it had its own origins unique to the political turmoil of Colonial America.

The war was rooted in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), in which France had been forced to cede its colony of Acadia (Nova Scotia) to Britain. Fearful of losing the rest of their Canadian colonies, the French constructed the mighty fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island to protect their North American interests and check British expansionism. By the 1740s, Louisbourg was not only the most formidable European-built fortress in North America but also a bustling commercial town.

In 1744, war broke out between Britain and France; as in the previous two wars, the North American theater was named for the British monarch, in this case King George II of Great Britain (reign 1727-1760). Britain's New England colonies used the war as an excuse to remove the threat of Louisbourg and launched a military expedition against it. The Siege of Louisbourg of 1745 was a great victory for the New Englanders and, though it marked the climax of the war, fighting also took place across New France, New York, and New England.

In 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the conflict, stipulating that Britain must return Louisbourg to France. The war helped unify the British colonists by giving them a common purpose and helped set the stage for the fourth, and final, great colonial war, the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

Background

Over 30 years had elapsed since the Treaty of Utrecht had put an end to Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), the second great struggle between the colonial empires of Britain and France for control of North America. That war – characterized by a cycle of murderous retaliatory raids in the northeast and failed military expeditions into Canada – had ended with the British seizing control of Acadia, a former French colony that the victors promptly renamed Nova Scotia.

The loss of Acadia put the other colonies of New France in a precarious position, as the British were now situated threateningly on their doorstep. So, in 1718, the French began construction of a fortress on Île-Royale (Cape Breton Island) to offset the British influence in the region. This fortress was built with the goal of defending the vital supply line up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec and protecting the profitable French fisheries off the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. By the early 1740s, this fortress had transformed into a mighty citadel that the French named Louisbourg in honor of their late monarch, King Louis XIV of France (reign 1643-1715).

By 1740, Louisbourg had become one of the largest and most formidable fortresses built by Europeans in North America, earning it the nickname ‘the Gibraltar of the West'. It included 2.5 miles (4 km) of stone walls, which in some places measured 30 feet (9 m) in height and 36 feet (11 m) across. Ditches and ramparts added further protection, as did six great bastions, situated at various points. The fortress had enough embrasures to mount 148 cannons – though historians estimate it had no more than 100 guns mounted at any given time – and enough barracks to house a garrison of 1,500 soldiers.

The fortress had been monstrously expensive and had cost an estimated 3.5 million livres to construct. This was four times the annual budget usually spent on all New France combined, causing King Louis XV of France (reign 1715-1774) to joke that, for that cost, he should be able to see the tops of the fortress's walls all the way from Versailles. This expense, however, could be expected to be partially recouped by Louisbourg itself since, in addition to being a mighty fort, it was also a bustling commercial town. Within its mighty walls, 4,300 French colonists lived and worked, exporting products made from fish. By the 1740s, Louisbourg had become France's second most important city in the New World after Quebec itself and had become the third largest port in all North America (after Boston and Philadelphia).

Louisbourg's very existence, therefore, was seen as a threat to British North America, particularly the nearby New England colonies. But despite these simmering tensions, the shattering of the 30-year peace would not take place along the Canadian border, but in the West Indies. Viewing the Spanish Empire as a power in decline, Britain had declared war in 1739 on the pretext that Spanish coast guards had mistreated and mutilated an English sea captain, Robert Jenkins, whose ear had been sliced off.

British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon then led a squadron of British warships into the West Indies, scoring a series of small victories against Spanish ports. The goal, aside from simply increasing British control over the lucrative West Indies, was to send a threatening message to Spain's ally, France, that Britain was still the master of the Americas. But the tables turned in 1741, when Vernon's massive invasion force met with destruction at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias; devastated by tropical diseases, Vernon's men died by the thousands and were forced to turn back.

The so-called War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748), rather than showcasing British power, simply proved to the French that British expansionism had to be stopped in order to protect their own imperial interests. The stage was set for yet another clash between the great colonial empires of Britain and France.

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⇒ King George's War: When New England Colonists Captured A Powerful French Fort

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War of Jenkins' Ear: How One Man's Ear Started a Colonial War Between Empires

The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748) was a colonial conflict fought between Great Britain and Spain, primarily in the Caribbean and off the coast of South America. Looking to protect its interests in the West Indies, Britain provoked a war with Spain, one of its biggest colonial rivals, citing the mistreatment of one Captain Robert Jenkins, who was detained – and allegedly mutilated – by Spanish coast guards as they searched his ship for smuggled goods. In 1739, British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon sailed a fleet into the Caribbean, where he won some victories before his eventual defeat at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1741. After that climactic battle, the war fizzled out as the British soon had their hands full with other conflicts, such as the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in Europe and King George's War (1744-1748) in North America.

Background

Since the conclusion of Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), the European colonial powers in North America had enjoyed a relative period of peace. This was largely the work of Sir Robert Walpole, the leading British politician of the day, who became prime minister in 1721. Walpole and his Whig government believed that the British Empire would profit more from avoiding wars, both on the continent and overseas. Without the burdensome cost of military upkeep, Walpole was able to lower taxes while simultaneously working to pay off the national debt, with a sinking fund. Though many celebrated this pacifist policy, it was opposed by the Tories in Parliament, who feared that a non-combative Britain would soon fall behind its rivals, particularly in the Americas. The French, for example, were steadily expanding their influence in the West Indies, growing rich off their sugar plantations there. Should French meddling in the region go unopposed, then France would surely dominate the lucrative West Indies trade, at the expense of Britain's imperial interests. For these reasons, the Tories demanded a show of military force before it was too late.

But even the hawkish Tories were aware that a direct war with France could lead to a long and costly struggle. Instead, they decided to assert their influence in the West Indies by picking on another target they deemed to be weaker: Spain. For centuries, the Spanish had dominated commerce in the West Indies with a trade network connected by four major ports: Veracruz, Portobelo, Cartagena de Indias, and Havana. But Spain's overseas empire was not as powerful as it once was and was viewed by the British as bloated, decadent, and ripe for the taking. Britain's hostility towards Spain was also fueled by an anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish stereotype called the 'Black Legend', in which Spaniards were painted as cruel and greedy brutes. For these reasons, the Tories clamored for a war with Spain, both to assert British dominance in the West Indies and to send a message to France by beating up its weaker ally. The Spanish, for their part, were not blind to Britain's expansionist desires and spent the period of peace watching the other colonial power with unease. Their suspicions seemed confirmed when, in 1732, the British founded a new colony, Georgia, right on the doorstep of Spanish Florida, increasing tensions on the mainland as well.

Amidst all these rising tensions, Britain and Spain continued to trade in the West Indies. However, Spanish ports often imposed high tariffs on their goods, leading to an increase in smuggling. British smugglers would load up on Caribbean goods, particularly sugar, and take them to the Thirteen Colonies, where these luxuries were always in high demand. To crack down on such practices, the Spanish coast guard often patrolled the Caribbean Sea, stopping and searching any British vessel suspected of carrying contraband.

On 9 April 1731, a Spanish coast guard ship stopped one such vessel, the Rebecca, which had taken on quantities of sugar in Jamaica and was now bound for London. As the Spanish sailors searched the Rebecca, they detained its crew, including the captain, Robert Jenkins. Jenkins, according to his own disposition and some other accounts, was tied to the ship's mast with a rope around his neck and was hoisted into the air three times. The Spanish captain then sliced Jenkins's left ear with his cutlass, which was then torn off by another Spanish sailor. After threatening to treat King George II of Great Britain (reign 1727-1760) in the same manner, the Spaniards then left the Rebecca, returned to their own ship, and sailed off.

The Rebecca continued on to London, where the one-eared Jenkins proceeded to tell his story to all who would listen. The story made some traction and was reported in several newspapers – including the Pennsylvania Gazette, edited by an up-and-coming Benjamin Franklin – but the scandal did not fully break until 1738. That year, Jenkins was granted an audience with the Privy Council and even appeared before King George II himself. According to one – likely apocryphal – version of events, Jenkins presented the king with his severed ear pickled in a jar as proof of his sorrowful mistreatment. Jenkins' tale outraged the British public, seeming to confirm their 'Black Legend' prejudices regarding Spanish cruelty. The Tories gained ground in Parliament, politicizing the incident to paint Walpole's Whig government as weak. In March 1739, Parliament passed a vote formally asking the king to seek redress from Spain, on behalf of both Jenkins and other British merchants who claimed to have been similarly mistreated. After Spain refused Britain's demands for restitution, George II declared war on 15 June 1739, an act that was ratified by Parliament four months later.

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⇒ War of Jenkins' Ear: How One Man's Ear Started a Colonial War Between Empires