War of Jenkins's Ear

(1739-41) part of the struggle between Spain and England that led to the War of the Austrian Succession. Robert Jenkins, master of the ship Rebecca, had his ear cut off by Spanish coast guards. Jenkins showed his carefully preserved ear in the British House of Commons in 1738, and England, already resentful at its exclusion from the Spanish colonial trade, declared war.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

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Although Captain Jenkins's ear was cut off by the Spanish in a skirmish in 1731, the war between Spain and Britain did not begin until October 1739. Domestic pressure for war with Spain marked the beginning of the end for Walpole's premiership. From December 1740 the War of Jenkins's Ear was subsumed into the War of the Austrian Succession.

Jenkins' Ear, War of (1739–1743), was a struggle between England and Spain. It preceded the War of the Austrian Succession (known in North America as King George's War), which lasted until 1748. The war was named for Robert Jenkins, a British seaman who lost an ear in a brush with the Spaniards off the coast of Florida. Commercial rivalry on the seas and disputes over proprietary rights to Georgia contributed to the conflict. England and Spain fought at sea and on land, in two major theaters: the Caribbean and the Georgia-Florida borderlands.

The war resulted in no significant gains for either side. The British admiral Edward Vernon captured Portobelo on the Isthmus of Panama in 1739 but met with disastrous failure in 1741 at Cartagena, Colombia's principal port. James Oglethorpe, having clinched an alliance with the Creek Indians at a meeting on the Chattahoochee River, invaded Florida early in 1740 and seized two forts on the St. Johns River. He attacked St. Augustine the following summer but failed to take it. In 1742 a force of five thousand Spaniards sought to end the Georgia colony but was turned back at the Battle of Bloody Marsh, on St. Simons Island. The next year, Oglethorpe again invaded Florida without success.

Bibliography

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Merrell, James H. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. New York: Norton, 1989.

Usner, Daniel H., Jr. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

The War of Jenkins' Ear, an armed conflict between Britain and Spain, arose from longstanding Anglo-Spanish antagonism fostered by illicit British trading activities in the Spanish Caribbean and the determined, often brutal, attempts by Spain's colonial guarda costa ('coast guard') vessels to suppress such ventures. Popular feeling, incited by opponents of the Walpole ministry in London and a vigorous merchant lobby opposed to diplomatic efforts, further intensified pressures conducive to war.

The immediate events that precipitated open hostilities were the alleged sinking of several British merchant ships by Spanish privateers, the suspension of the asiento or slave supply contract, and the intensification of Spain's search and seizure claims against British smuggling vessels, and, marginally, the ill usage suffered by one Capt. Robert Jenkins, Master of the brig Rebecca. Legitimately bound for London from Jamaica with a cargo of sugar, Jenkins's ship was plundered and his ear severed by the commander of a Spanish coast guard vessel near Havana on 9 April 1731.

The case received brief publicity, subsided, but then was revived (together with other, similar incidents) during a stormy Commons debate in March 1738. Although modern research has established that, contrary to historical tradition, Jenkins never appeared personally to present the missing ear, his plight was highly dramatized and contributed to the momentum of the political opposition campaign urging an immediate offensive against Spain. This appealed to national sentiment and commercial interests alike. Temporizing, Walpole arranged the Convention of Pardo with Spain, which provided compensation for vessels lost but avoided the crucial issue: Spain's continued determination to suppress all smuggling attempts. Confronted with growing public and parliamentary indignation, Walpole finally had to yield and war was declared on 19 October 1739.

In the lackluster naval operations that followed, Admiral Vernon (1684–1757) sacked Porto Bello (in modern Panama) in November 1739, but the attack on Cartagena (Colombia) in early March 1741 failed due to spirited Spanish resistance, tropical disease, and dissension between British army and navy commanders. Commodore George Anson, operating with a small squadron off Chile, marauded coastal areas, then circumnavigated the globe in the HMS Centurion (1740–1744), capturing Spanish treasure along the way. Attempts to seize Cuba in December 1741 and raids along the Florida coast were largely fruitless, resulting in heavy British casualties. Gradually the war overseas petered out into desultory forays against Spanish shipping and ineffectual attempts to isolate Spain from her colonies before becoming enveloped and overshadowed by hostilities in Europe (War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748) in which Britain, by means of mercenary forces, supported Austria against France (who had joined Spain) and her German allies.

While in its altered, Continental dimension the war enabled Britain to contain threatening Bourbon expansionism in key strategic areas abroad during the period 1742–1748, overseas it failed to achieve the initially anticipated sweeping victory over Spain. Small-scale Anglo-Spanish clashes in Caribbean and Mediterranean waters produced little monetary or strategic gain, clearly indicating that naval action was not the solution to Britain's commercial grievances at this time, nor the key to much-needed political stability.

Bibliography

Black, Jeremy. British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole. Edinburgh and Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1985.

Harding, Richard. Amphibious Warfare in the 18th Century: The British Expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742. London and Rochester, N.Y., 1991.

Mc Lachlan, Jean. Trade and Peace with Old Spain, 1667–1750: A Study of the Influence of Commerce on Anglo-Spanish Diplomacy in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, U.K., 1940.

Nelson, George. "Contraband Trade under the Asiento, 1730–1739." American Historical Review 51 (1945–1946): 55–67.

Temperley, Harold. "The Causes of the War of Jenkins' Ear." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser. III (1909): 197–236.

Woodfine, Philip. Britannia's Glories: The Walpole Ministry and the 1739 War with Spain. Woodbridge, U.K., and Rochester, N.Y., 1998.

—KARL W. SCHWEIZER

War of Jenkins' Ear
Date 1739–1748 Location the Caribbean, Florida and Georgia. Result Spanish victory
Combatants
British Empire	Spanish Empire
Commanders
Edward Vernon James E. Oglethorpe George Anson Charles Knowles	Blas de Lezo Manuel de Montiano Andrés Reggio

War of Jenkins' Ear
Siege of St. Augustine - Battle of Cartagena de Indias - Battle of Bloody Marsh

The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748. After 1742 it merged into the larger War of the Austrian Succession.

Under the 1729 Treaty of Seville, the British had agreed not to trade with the Spanish colonies. To verify the treaty, the Spanish were permitted to board British vessels in Spanish waters. After one such incident in 1731, Robert Jenkins, captain of the ship Rebecca, claimed that the Spanish coast guard had severed his ear. The British government, which was determined to continue its drive toward commercial and military domination of the Atlantic basin, used this incident as an excuse to wage war against Spain in the Caribbean. In 1738 Jenkins exhibited his pickled ear to the House of Commons, whipping up war fever against Spain. To much cheering, the British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declared war on October 23, 1739.

One of the first actions was the British capture, on November 22, 1739, of a minor silver-exporting town on the coast of Panama (then New Granada), called Puerto Bello in an attempt to damage Spain's finances. The poorly defended port was attacked by six ships of the line under Admiral Edward Vernon. The battle led the Spanish to change their trading practices. Rather than trading at centralised ports with large treasure fleets, they began using small numbers of ships trading at a wide variety of ports. They also began to travel around Cape Horn to trade on the west coast.^{[citation needed]} Puerto Bello's economy was severely damaged, and did not recover until the building of the Panama Canal. In Britain the victory was greeted with much celebration, and in 1740, at a dinner in honour of Vernon in London, the song "God Save the King", now the British national anthem, was performed in public for the first time. Portobello Road in London is named after this victory and the battle was the most medalled event of the eighteenth century. The conquest of Spain's American empire was considered a foregone conclusion.

The success of the Porto Bello operation led the British in 1740 to send a squadron under Commodore George Anson to attack Spain's possessions in the Pacific specially in the Philippines which were largely unsuccessful.

Battle of Cartagena

Main article: Battle of Cartagena de Indias

San Felipe de Barajas Fortress (Cartagena). In 1741 the Spanish defeated a massive British fleet from this fortress in present-day Colombia, prolonging Spain's access via the Atlantic sea lanes until the early nineteenth century.

The major action in the War of Jenkins' Ear was a major amphibious attack launched by the British under Admiral Edward Vernon in March, 1741 against Cartagena de Indias, one of Spain's major gold-trading ports in the Caribbean (today Colombia). Vernon's expedition was hampered by inefficient organization, his rivalry with the commander of his land forces, and the logistical problems of mounting and maintaining a major trans-Atlantic expedition. The strong fortifications in Cartagena and the able strategy of Spanish Commander Blas de Lezo were decisive in repelling the attack, with heavy losses on the British side. In addition to the unfamiliar tropical climate, Vernon's men succumbed in large numbers to virulent tropical disease, primarily yellow fever.

Several other British attacks took place in the Caribbean with little consequence on the geopolitical situation in the Atlantic. The weakened British forces launched similar attacks against St. Augustine in Florida; Havana, Cuba and Panama; all were repelled. A 1742 Spanish counter-attack upon the British colony of Georgia at the Battle of Bloody Marsh was also repulsed by the British.

The war was also characterised by relatively indecisive naval operations and enormous privateering by both sides. The war eventually died down due to lack of troops as resources were diverted by war in Europe — many had succumbed to disease — without any gain of territory on either side.

Consequences

Although the war ended in military stalemate, Spain's victory in Cartagena de Indias was crucial in prolonging its domination of the Atlantic until the 19th century, and in preserving its large American empire. The diplomatic resolution formed part of the wider settlement of the War of the Austrian Succession by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

The eighteenth century Anglo-Spanish colonial rivalry continued, however. Several other issues at stake remained unresolved until at the end of the Seven Years' War Spain decided to declare war on Britain on behalf of an embattled France, leading to the shortlived British occupation of Havana (Cuba) and Manila (Philippines). In the peace, Florida was handed to the British for the return of these cities. Later, Spain availed itself of the American revolutionary war to seize Florida, the Bahamas and (with French assistance) Minorca from Britain as well as staging an unsuccessful Franco-Spanish siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783). The Bahamas were returned to Britain in exchange of the remainder of Florida. Britain's attempts to avail itself of Spain's chaos during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars by trying to seize San Juan (Puerto Rico) (1797), Tenerife (1797) and Buenos Aires (1806 and 1807) ended in defeat.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

War of Jenkins' Ear

• Tobías Smollet (Tobias Smollett), Authentic papers related to the expedition against Carthagena, by Jorge Orlando Melo in Reportaje de la historia de Colombia, Bogotá: Planeta, 1989.
• The American People - sixth edition by Gary B. Nash and Julie Roy Jeffrey
• Victoria, Pablo (2005) El día que España derrotó a Inglaterra : de cómo Blas de Lezo, tuerto, manco y cojo, venció en Cartagena de Indias a la otra "Armada Invencible" Áltera, Barcelona, Spain, ISBN 84-89779-68-6
• Quintero Saravia, Gonzalo M. (2002) Don Blas de Lezo: defensor de Cartagena de Indias Editorial Planeta Colombiana, Bogotá, Colombia, ISBN 958-42-0326-6, in Spanish

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