Colonial Wars
For most of the seventeenth century, English settlements in North America were largely insulated from the wars waged by their mother country. The first few generations of immigrants experienced their share of armed violence, but this bloodshed was limited mainly to conflicts with neighboring Indian tribes. The colonists' relative isolation from the turbulent currents of European politics, however, came to an end in the 1680s. Over the next seven decades, the colonies were drawn into a series of four wars pitting England and assorted allies against a shifting coalition of adversaries led by France. All of the wars, save for the last, originated in Europe, sparked by disputes over territorial or dynastic issues. Once hostilities commenced on the continent, the conflagration quickly spread to the overseas possessions of the warring powers. Even when triggered by events on the other side of the Atlantic, though, the North American component of these conflicts was always more than just a by product of the struggle for supremacy being played out in Europe. English, French, and Spanish colonials, as well as different groups of Indians, all took up arms to advance their own interests, whether it was to expand their access to land, resources, or trade, or simply to preserve what they already had. Reflecting the dual character of the contests, each war acquired two names: one as it came to be called in the English colonies, and the other as it was known in Europe.
King William's War/War of the League of Augsburg (1689–1697)
The first colonial war set the pattern for the three that followed. The war aims of English settlers were fueled first and foremost by concerns for their own security. Colonial authorities viewed the presence of a hostile French colony in Canada—and a Catholic one at that—as a serious threat to English settlements throughout New York and New England. Fears of French aggression were magnified by France's alliance with the Algonquian tribes in Canada, and the Abenaki Indians who inhabited the New England borderlands. The danger was driven home during the first year of the war when mixed forces of Canadians and Indians burned Schenectedy, New York, and several villages on the New England coast. Confronted by the twin specters of "popery" and "savagery," the English resolved to drive the French out of North America completely. The plan of conquest devised by colonial leaders entailed a two-pronged attack on their foes. One prong would advance northward from Albany and seize Montreal, while the second would sail up the St. Lawrence River and take Quebec by sea borne assault. Possession of these two places would give the English a stranglehold on the St. Lawrence, thus isolating the French outposts in the interior. To assist with the overland thrust from New York, the English enlisted the support of the powerful Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, whose homeland stretched across upper New York. The Iroquois and the French had a long history of hostilities going back to the start of the century, and, in fact, were already fighting again at the time King William's War broke out. Consequently, Iroquois warriors were willing partners in the campaign to dismantle France's North American empire.
New France, however, did not fall in King William's War. Although English settlers outnumbered the French by a ratio of twenty to one or more, colonial leaders never managed to capitalize on their enormous manpower advantage. The colonies south of New York simply sat out the war as by standers. The metropolitan government in London also declined to furnish assistance in the form of regular soldiers or warships. Left to their own devices, colonial authorities in New York and New England carried on as best they could, but they lacked the resources, organizational experience, and military skills to execute their ambitious double offensive. The joint Iroquois-English expedition that marched on Montreal in 1690 dissolved before it even reached the southern end of Lake Champlain. The other arm of the pincer fared only slightly better. Departing from Boston, a small armada of vessels under the command of wealthy New Englander Sir William Phips managed to plant 2,200 men outside of Quebec in the fall of 1690. But Phips's army was too weak to storm the citadel, and so the men retreated to their ships and sailed back to Boston.
The failed English offensive of 1690 aside, most of the military activity in King William's War consisted of raids, counter-raids, and ambushes—a kind of warfare that the French labeled la petite guerre. In the mid-1690s, the governor-general of New France, Louis de Buade de Frontenac, also launched a series of large-scale incursions into Iroquois territory. The purpose of these assaults was to punish the Five Nations and drive a wedge between them and their English allies. The strategy worked. In 1701, the exhausted Iroquo is sued for peace with the French, and pledged to remain neutral in future Anglo-French conflicts. This agreement represented a major coup for the French. Although no territory changed hands as a result of King William's War, the northern English colonies emerged from the struggle in a weaker strategic position than the one they had started out in.
Queen Anne's War/War of Spanish Succession (1702–1713) and King George's War/War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748)
The arena of conflict broadened considerably in the next two wars, as the British colonists found themselves fighting against both the Spanish in the South and the French in the North. For all intents and purposes, though, each theater of combat remained distinct from the other. In the case of King George's War, the Anglo-Spanish phase actually amounted to a separate struggle that the British called the War of Jenkins's Ear, in reference to an English sea captain who had his ear lopped off by Spanish authorities. That conflict started in 1739, and was all but over by the time the British commenced fighting with the French up north in 1744.
The rivalry between the Spanish and the English had created a combustible situation in the South long before the two countries were officially at war with one another. In the 1680s and 1690s, English traders from Carolina seeking deerskins and slaves staged periodic raids on Indians living in mission settlements in Spanish Florida. When Queen Anne's War began, Carolinians leaped at the chance to plunder their neighbors again and assert their claims to the disputed stretch of land between Charleston and St. Augustine. The colonists were joined by large numbers of friendly Indians, most notably the Creeks, who marshaled close to one thousand warriors for a massive raid on Spanish territory. The combined Carolinian-Indian onslaught laid waste to the chain of missions that Franciscan priests had established across northern Florida in the seventeenth century. The Spanish defeat was not total, for they managed to hold onto their fortified posts at St. Augustine and Pensacola; but most of the country side in between was left a smoking, depopulated ruin.
In the War of Jenkins's Ear, colonial leaders in the South set out to finish what their predecessors had started. The creation of the colony of Georgia in 1732 provided the British with a more advanced base from which to stage an attack on Florida. In 1740, James Oglethorpe, an ex-British officer and one of the founders of Georgia, initiated operations against St. Augustine at the head of an army that included several hundred Carolina and Georgia militiamen, an equally large contingent of Creek and Cherokee warriors, and a regiment of regulars, all supported by a squadron of Royal Navy frigates. This impressive military assemblage, however, failed to overwhelm the Castillo de San Marcos, the massive stone fort that guarded the approaches to St. Augustine. Two years later, the Spanish struck back and invaded Georgia, but were also repelled. Following this flurry of offensive activity, the war in the South settled into an uneasy stalemate.
In the North, Queen Anne's War and King George's War unfolded in a fashion similar to the first Anglo-French confrontation. Lacking the military strength to subdue the British colonies by direct assault, the French resorted to their traditional strategy of frontier raiding. The strategic effect of these hit-and-run attacks was limited, but they kept the outlying areas of New England in a state of alarm, and forced the provincial assemblies to divert men and money to the protection of the frontier. British colonials responded to these raids almost exactly as they had in 1690: by plotting to dismember New France through a dual attack on Montreal and Quebec. Assistance from the colonies below New York was again lacking, but toward the end of Queen Anne's War, the British government consented, for the first time, to commit substantial forces to a joint campaign against New France. The scheme misfired, however, as the Royal Navy squadron that was supposed to rendezvous with the New England militia at Boston in 1709 never materialized. Two years later, the colonists and the British tried again—with even worse results. On this occasion, the Royal Navy did show up in Boston with a fleet of sixty-four sail and more than five thousand troops. Yet the entire enterprise turned into a fiasco when several ships ran aground in the fog while ascending the St. Lawrence, leading to heavy loss of life and the hasty cancellation of the expedition. More disappointment awaited New Englanders during King George's War, when the British ministry in 1746 reneged on its promise to provide ships and regulars for an assault on Quebec.
The British still came away from Queen Anne's War with something to show for their efforts. British forces chipped away at the extremities of France's North American empire, gaining possession of Acadia, Newfoundland, and trading posts along the shores of Hudson Bay. But the failure of the joint ventures of 1709 and 1711 produced bitter feelings between the colonists and British officials. During King George's War, Anglo-American efforts to cooperate were somewhat more successful. In 1745, a New England expeditionary force accompanied by a Royal Navy squadron pulled off a stunning achievement, capturing the great French fortress and privateering base at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Yet much of the goodwill generated by the victory evaporated the following year when the British backed out of their agreement to participate in the planned attack on Quebec. Colonial disillusionment with the mother country became complete when, in the 1748 treaty that ended the war, the British handed Louisbourg back to the French.
The French and Indian War/Seven Years' War (1754–1763)
The lengthy contest for dominion over the eastern part of North America came to a climax in the fourth colonial war. Unlike its predecessors, this war started in America and then expanded, eventually becoming global in scope. The immediate cause of hostilities was the clash of imperial interests in the Ohio valley. Both the French and Expansionist-minded colonists in Virginia claimed this area for themselves, and in the early 1750s, each side took steps to fortify the disputed territory. Mounting tensions in the region erupted into open warfare when seven hundred French soldiers, Canadian militia, and Indians in the spring of 1754 overwhelmed an expedition of three hundred Virginia volunteers commanded by George Washington. Initially, the war went badly for the British for many of the same reasons their military endeavors had miscarried in the past: faulty planning and logistics, weak leadership, and a lack of colonial unity. But the appointment in 1756 of John Campbell, earl of Loudoun, to over-see military operations in North America created its own set of problems. Loudoun's imperious mannerisms and abrasive personality made him a poor choice for the post, and he ended up alienating many of the provincial leaders whose support he needed most. Meanwhile, the French had devoted the interval between the end of the last war and the start of the next to shoring up relations with the Delaware, Shawnee, and other western tribes. Once hostilities commenced, Indian war parties wreaked havoc on the frontier regions of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Anglo-American military fortunes reached their lowest point with the loss of Fort William Henry at the foot of Lake George in 1757. However, they rebounded dramatically when the brilliant British statesmen William Pitt took control of the war effort. Besides removing Loudoun, Pitt redirected Britain's strategic attention away from Europe and focused most of the country's military energies on winning the war in North America. He also initiated a new policy with respect to the provincial governments, promising to reimburse each colony for a large portion of its war expenses. Colonial leaders responded enthusiastically to his offer. For the 1758 campaign, Massachusetts alone raised seven thousand volunteers. More than twenty thousand British redcoats were also on hand to spearhead the assault against the French.
Compared to all of the false starts and misadventures in the past, the multi-phase offensive launched by Pitt in 1758 proceeded like clockwork. Louisbourg fell to the British that year, as did key French posts on Lake Ontario and the Ohio River. In 1759, Major General James Wolfe and some 4,500 regulars fought a pitched battle just outside of Quebec against a French force of roughly equal size led by General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. Both generals lost their lives in the celebrated engagement, but the French abandoned the field, enabling the British to occupy Quebec. As news of the British victories spread across the Great Lakes and down into the Ohio country, France's network of Indian alliances began to crumble. The coup de grâce was finally delivered in 1760, when no less than three British and provincial armies converged on Montreal, prompting the badly outnumbered French defenders to capitulate without a fight.
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formalized what the sweeping British successes on the battlefield had already decided. The French accepted the enormity of their defeat and surrendered their entire North American empire, ceding the territory east of the Mississippi to the British, and leaving the rest to Spain in a separate treaty. The British also gained Spanish Florida as part of the settlement. At this point, the British triumph seemed complete; but Anglo-American euphoria was destined to be short-lived. With the acquisition of these vast new domains, the British were also forced to confront the question of how to govern their much expanded empire. British efforts to solve this problem of imperial administration would lead, in the space of only about a dozen years, to further conflict and even more profound changes in the geopolitical landscape of North America.
Bibliography
Anderson, Fred. A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War. New York: Norton, 1985.
———. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of British Empire in North America, 1754–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.
Eccles, W. J. The French in North America: 1500–1783. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998.
Leach, Douglas Edward. Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
Marshall, P.J., ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume II: The Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
—Jeff Seiken
