Imperial Wars

Imperial Wars. American warfare took on a new dimension near the end of the seventeenth century when conflicts between the principal imperial powers—France, Spain, and England—spread to their colonies in America.

The earliest English colonists had expected to be part of the rivalry between the European giants, and fighting occasionally occurred. On three occasions, English forces destroyed French settlements on Acadia (present‐day Nova Scotia) and in Canada, and in the 1680s the French extirpated English trading posts on Hudson Bay. England also wrested control of New Netherlands from the Dutch in 1664.

The first European conflict to spread to the provinces was the War of the League of Augsburg, called King William's War by the English colonists, which erupted in 1689. However, in this struggle the American theater was deemed of secondary importance, and the French and the English colonists fought largely unaided by their parent states. Under the leadership of Count Louis de Frontenac, New France and its Indian allies struck first, launching surprise raids on frontier villages. The most devastating blow fell on Schenectady, New York, in February 1690; nearly ninety residents were killed or carried into captivity, and the settlement was razed. The English quickly retaliated. A Massachusetts army under the governor, Sir William Phips, seized Port Royal on Acadia. Phips's army, like those raised by other provinces in the course of the imperial wars, consisted of volunteers; as militiamen could not by law be sent beyond their provincial boundaries, recruits were garnered by cash and land bounties. Later in 1690, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New York raised armies to strike at the heart of their adversary. Phips was to seize Quebec with an armada of 2,200 men, while another army of colonists and Iroquois was to drive up the Champlain Valley to Montreal. The plan miscarried. Phips's assault was repulsed, and the invasion army, disheartened by a dearth of Iroquois volunteers, disbanded without reaching Montreal.

The Treaty of Ryswick ended this inconclusive war in 1697. Despite the deaths of about one thousand English, three hundred Canadians, and countless Indians, nothing had been resolved. However, the English colonists had learned that their security hinged on the destruction of New France, an objective that was possible only with assistance from the mother country.

The peace was shattered in 1701 by the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, known in the English provinces as Queen Anne's War. Because Spain was a belligerent, fighting erupted briefly in the southern colonies, but the North witnessed the heaviest action. French and Indian frontier raids commenced in 1703, although the best‐remembered blow fell early the next year. Deerfield, Massachusetts, was attacked at night in February 1704. Killed immediately were 44 residents, including 25 children, and 109 others—40 percent of the town's population—were taken captive. As settlers elsewhere huddled in garrison houses, the English fought back, attacking Acadia and Abenaki Indian villages.

In 1710, responding to pleas from the colonies, imperial officials in London at last dispatched a fleet that cooperated with a Massachusetts‐Connecticut army in taking Acadia. The following year, Great Britain sent Sir Hovenden Walker to America with 64 ships and 4,300 regulars to attack Quebec. New England recruited 1,300 men to augment Walker's force, while several colonies contributed to another army of 2,300 men that was simultaneously to attack Montreal. Both ventures failed, the former when Walker's fleet ran aground in fog hundreds of miles from Quebec.

Great Britain was more successful elsewhere, however, and in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) acquired Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia (as it renamed Acadia). But the colonists, especially in New England, had paid heavily for a war that failed to drive France from America. Many frontier inhabitants had perished, some cities had experienced food shortages, several colonies had been plunged into debt, and the citizenry groaned under heavy taxes.

The Treaty of Utrecht inaugurated a generation of international peace that endured until commercial clashes in the Caribbean led to hostilities between Britain and Spain in 1739, a conflict known as the War of Jenkins' Ear. Fighting quickly erupted between the English colonists in Georgia and the Spanish in Florida. However, the largest provincial undertaking in this war occurred in 1740, when the Americans raised a regiment of 3,600 men to assist in a British attack on the Spanish port of Cartagena. The unsuccessful campaign ended disastrously with the death of five‐sixths of the colonial soldiery.

Soon thereafter, France allied with Spain, resulting in a larger conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession, or King George's War. In 1745, London consented to a joint operation to seize Louisbourg, the French citadel that guarded the St. Lawrence River. An army of two thousand New England volunteers under William Pepperrell—united with a British naval force of ninety‐four vessels commanded by Commodore Peter Warren—compelled the French to surrender after a brief siege. Although New France was now vulnerable, Britain's leaders soon agreed to peace. Moreover, in the Treaty of Aix‐la‐Chapelle, London returned Louisbourg to France in exchange for compensation in Europe. New England was furious, as more than a thousand of its sons had perished in securing the French installation.

Hostilities soon flared again. This time the first shot was fired in in America, when French and Virginian armies clashed in the Ohio Country in 1754. London immediately rushed an army of two thousand regulars to America and conducted Anglo‐American operations on several frontiers in 1755, although most ended in failure. War was declared in 1756, beginning a conflict variously known as the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War, and the Great War for Empire.

The war went badly for Britain until 1758, when the policies of a new prime minister, William Pitt, bore fruit. Pitt sent more than twenty thousand regulars to America and revamped the Royal Navy, which trounced its adversary.

Britain ultimately gained victory as a result of several successful campaigns, especially an attack on Quebec in 1759. However, this worldwide conflict continued until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris brought peace. France abandoned its claims to the North American mainland, and Spain, which had entered the conflict in 1760, surrendered Florida.

Britain had scored a colossal victory, but the imperial wars had been costly. London was saddled with indebtedness, and many colonists had come to question their ties to a country so frequently at war, particularly now that New France no longer existed to threaten the provinces. Ironically, then, Great Britain's four costly wars to gain hegemony in North America sowed the seeds for the loss in 1776 of every mainland colony it had possessed when the first imperial war erupted in 1689.
See also Colonial Era; Exploration, Conquest, and Settlement, Era of European; French Settlements in North America; Indian History and Culture: 1500 to 1800; Indian Wars; Iroquois Confederacy; Revolution and Constitution, Era of; Spanish Settlements in North America.

Bibliography

Francis Parkman , France and England in North America, 9 vols., 1865–1892.
Gerald S. Graham , Empire of the North Atlantic: The Maritime Struggle for North America, 1950.
Douglas Edward Leach , Arms for Empire: A Military History of the American Colonies in North America, 1607–1762, 1964.
Howard H. Peckham , The Colonial Wars, 1689–1762, 1964.
Ian K. Steele , Guerrillas and Grenadiers: The Struggle for Canada, 1689–1760, 1969.
John Ferling , A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America, 1981.
John Ferling , Struggle for a Continent: The Wars of Early America, 1993.

John Ferling