Part 31 (2/2)
Only five years later Europe was plunged into the long War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). King William and the Habsburg emperor with other European princes formed a Grand Alliance to prevent Louis'
grandson Philip from inheriting the Spanish crowns. For if France and Spain were united under the Bourbon family, their armies would overawe Europe; their united colonial empires would surround and perhaps engulf the British colonies; their combined navies might drive the British from the seas. Furthermore, the English were angered when Louis XIV, upon the death of James II (1701), openly recognized the Catholic son of the exiled royal Stuart as ”James III,” king of Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713]
While the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene were winning great victories in Europe, [Footnote: See above, pp. 249 ff.] the British colonists in America were fighting ”Queen Anne's War” against the French. Again the French sent Indians to destroy New England villages, and again the English retaliated by attacking Port Royal and Quebec.
After withstanding two unsuccessful a.s.saults, Port Royal fell in 1710 and left Acadia open to the British. In the following year a fleet of nine war vessels and sixty transports carried twelve thousand Britishers to attack Quebec, while an army of 2300 moved on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain; but both expeditions failed of their object.
On the high seas, as well as in America and in Europe, the British won fresh laurels. It was during Queen Anne's War that the British navy, sometimes with the valuable aid of the Dutch, played an important part in defeating the French fleet in the Mediterranean and driving French privateers from the sea, in besieging and capturing Gibraltar, in seizing a rich squadron of Spanish treasure s.h.i.+ps near Cartagena, and in terrorizing the French West Indies.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Utrecht, 1713]
The main provisions of the treaty of Utrecht, which terminated this stage of the conflict, in so far as they affected the colonial of situation, [Footnote: For the European settlement, see above, pp. 253 f.] were as follows: (1) The French Bourbons, were allowed to become the reigning family in Spain, and though the proviso was inserted that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united, nevertheless so long as Bourbons reigned in both countries, the colonies of Spain and France might almost be regarded as one immense Bourbon empire. (2) Great Britain was confirmed in possession of Acadia, [Footnote: A dispute later arose whether, as the British claimed, ”Acadia” included Cape Breton Island.] which was rechristened Nova Scotia, and France abandoned her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and the island of St.
Kitts in the West Indies. (3) Great Britain secured from Spain the cession of the island of Minorca and the rocky stronghold of Gibraltar --bulwarks of Mediterranean commerce. (4) Of more immediate value to Great Britain was the trade concession, called the Asiento, made by Spain (1713). Prior to the Asiento, the British had been forbidden to trade with the Spanish possessions in America, and the French had monopolized the sale of slaves to the Spanish colonies.
[Sidenote: The Asiento, 1713]
The Asiento, however, allowed Great Britain exclusive right to supply Spanish America with negro slaves, at the rate of 4800 a year, for thirty years. They were still forbidden to sell other commodities in the domains of the Spanish king, except that once a year one British s.h.i.+p of five hundred tons burden might visit Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama for purposes of general trade. For almost three decades after the peace of Utrecht, the smoldering colonial jealousies were not allowed to break forth into the flame of open war.
[Sidenote: The Interlude of Peace, 1713-1739]
During the interval, however, British ambitions were coming more and more obviously into conflict with the claims of Spain and France in America, and with those of France in India.
[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in America]
In spite of her losses by the treaty of Utrecht, France still held the St. Lawrence River, with Cape Breton Island defending its mouth; her fishermen still had special privileges on the Newfoundland banks; her islands in the West Indies flourished under greater freedom of trade than that enjoyed by the English; and her pioneers were occupying the vast valley of the Mississippi. Moreover, in preparing for the next stage of the conflict, France displayed astonis.h.i.+ng energy. Fort Louisburg was erected on Cape Breton Island to command the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A long series of fortifications was constructed to stake out and guarantee the French claims. From Crown Point on Lake Champlain, the line was carried westward by Fort Niagara, Fort Detroit, Sault Sainte Marie, on to Lake Winnipeg and even beyond; other forts commanded the Wabash and Illinois rivers, and followed the Mississippi down to the Gulf. [Footnote: By the year 1750 there were over sixty French forts between Montreal and New Orleans.] Settlements were made at Mobile (1702) and at New Orleans (1718), and British sailors were given to understand that the Mississippi was French property. The governors of British colonies had ample cause for alarm.
[Sidenote: French Aggressiveness in India: Dupleix]
In India, likewise, the French were too enterprising to be good neighbors. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of a wonderfully able governor-general, Dupleix, who was appointed in 1741, they were prospering and were extending their influence in the effete empire of the Great Mogul.
Dupleix exhibited a restless ambition; he began to interfere in native politics and to a.s.sume the pompous bearing, gorgeous apparel, and proud t.i.tles of a native prince. He conceived the idea of augmenting his slender garrisons of Europeans with ”sepoys,” or carefully drilled natives, and fortified his capital, Pondicherry, as if for war.
[Sidenote: Trade Disputes between Spain and Great Britain]
To the dangerous rivalry between British and French colonists and traders in America and in India, during the thirty years which followed the treaty of Utrecht, was added the continuous bickering which grew out of the Asiento concluded in 1713 between Great Britain and Spain.
Spaniards complained of British smugglers and protested with justice that the British outrageously abused their special privilege by keeping the single stipulated vessel in the harbor of Porto Bello and refilling it at night from other s.h.i.+ps. On the other hand, British merchants resented their general exclusion from Spanish markets and recited to willing listeners at home the tale of their grievances against the Spanish authorities. Of such tales the most notorious was that of a certain Captain Robert Jenkins, who with dramatic detail told how the b.l.o.o.d.y Spaniards had attacked his good s.h.i.+p, plundered it, and in the fray cut off one of his ears, and to prove his story he is said to have produced a box containing what purported to be the ear in question. In the face of the popular excitement aroused in England by this and similar incidents, Sir Robert Walpole, the peace-loving prime minister, was unable to restrain his fellow-countrymen from declaring war against Spain.
[Sidenote: The ”War of Jenkins's Ear,” 1739]
It was in 1739 that the commercial and colonial warfare was thus resumed,--on this occasion involving at the outset only Spain and Great Britain,--in a curious struggle commonly referred to as the War of Jenkins's Ear. A British fleet captured Porto Bello, but failed to take Cartagena. In North America the war was carried on fruitlessly by James Oglethorpe, who had recently (1733) founded the English colony of ”Georgia” [Footnote: So named in honor of the then reigning King George II (1727-1760)] to the south of the Carolinas, in territory claimed by the Spanish colony of Florida.
[Sidenote: War of the Austrian Succession. King George's War, 1744- 1748]
The War of Jenkins's Ear proved but an introduction to the resumption of hostilities on a large scale between France and Great Britain. In a later chapter [Footnote: See below, pp. 354 ff.] it is explained how in 1740 the War of the Austrian Succession broke out on the continent of Europe--a war stubbornly fought for eight years, and a war in which Great Britain entered the lists for Maria Theresa of Austria against France and Prussia and other states. And the European conflict was naturally reflected in ”King George's War” (1744-1748) in America, and in simultaneous hostilities in India.
The only remarkable incident of King George's War was the capture of Louisburg (1745) by Colonel William Pepperell of New Hamps.h.i.+re with a force of British colonists, who were sorely disappointed when, in 1748, the captured fortress was returned to France by the treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle. The war in India was similarly indecisive. In 1746 a French squadron easily captured the British post at Madras; other British posts were attacked, and Dupleix defeated the nawab of the Carnatic, who would have punished him for violating Indian peace and neutrality.
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