THE STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA- HISTORY OF COLONIAL AMERICA

Beginning in 1689, England, France, and Spain fought a century-long series of wars for dominance in Europe and the western hemisphere. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) pitted England and its allies against France and Spain. In the American segment of the conflict, usually known as Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), England attacked Spanish Florida, and Spain retaliated by assaulting Charleston, South Carolina. In the Northeast, the French armed its Native American allies, who destroyed English settlements in Maine. In 1704 a force of French soldiers and Native Americans also attacked the western Massachusetts town of Deerfield, killing 50 residents and carrying at least 100 into captivity. New England militia joined British troops to seize Port Royal in Nova Scotia, but in 1710 a major Anglo-American expedition against French Québec failed miserably. The New York frontier remained quiet because the major native group in the region, the Iroquois, had adopted a policy of aggressive neutrality, trading with both the British and the French but refusing to fight for either one.

Great Britain was frustrated militarily in America, but used its victories in Europe to win territory in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. (see Peace of Utrecht) Through the treaty, Great Britain obtained Newfoundland, Acadia (now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), and the Hudson Bay region of northern Canada from France, as well as access to the Native American trade. From Spain, England acquired commercial privileges in Spanish America. These gains solidified Britain’s commercial supremacy in North America and brought peace for a generation.

In the late 1740s, Anglo-American settlers and land speculators began to move into the Ohio River valley, which France had long claimed. The French responded with military force and sparked the last of four North American wars with the British, the French and Indian War (1754-1763). William Pitt, 1st earl of Chatham, the British prime minister, sent thousands of troops to America. Pitt exploited the numerical advantage of the British colonies (whose nearly 2 million inhabitants far surpassed the 88,500 settlers in New France) and paid the American assemblies to raise thousands more soldiers. In 1758 Anglo-American forces captured Québec and in 1760 took Montréal, completing the conquest of New France.

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 made Britain the dominant European power in eastern North America. France relinquished its claims to New France and all French territory east of the Mississippi River. Spain gave Florida to Britain, and as compensation, took over French Louisiana west of the Mississippi, thus solidifying its claim to all of western North America. Britain had begun as a relatively insignificant country in 1600, but by 1763 it had become an influential European nation and a major colonial power.