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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