A Progression of Wars

As various European imperial powers settled on the new continent of North America, their conflicts became transatlantic. The British and the Dutch vied over the colony of New Netherland, the British and the Spanish fought the War of Jenkins' Ear, and the British and the French fought in a series of wars that concluded in 1763 with the French and Indian War.

Wars with Spain and the Netherlands

The Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652–1674) were a series of conflicts fought largely at sea over Britain's power to restrict trade to the colonies. Their impact on the colonies was mostly limited to their shifting ownership of New Netherland.

The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1748) began over Britain's supplying slaves and goods to the Spanish colonies in North America. The Spanish became suspicious that British ships were overreaching and began boarding and seizing British ships. The war gained its colorful name from a Spanish threat against British captain Robert Jenkins, whose ear was severed when his ship was boarded; he was told to show his ear to Parliament and tell the king that the Spanish would do the same to him. Its conflicts included a siege of St. Augustine in Florida by Georgian colonists and a counter-invasion of Georgia by Spanish forces. The war was largely subsumed by the War of the Austrian Succession in 1742.

Wars with France

Beginning in 1689, the British colonies became involved in a series of major wars between Britain and France for control of North America. Britain and France fought four wars that became known as the French and Indian Wars—followed in 1778 with another war when France joined the Americans in the American Revolution. The French settlers in New France were outnumbered nearly 15 to one by settlers in the 13 British colonies, so the French relied heavily on American Indian allies.

King William's War

King William's War (1689–1697), also known as the "Nine Years War" and the "War of the League of Augsburg," was a phase in the larger Anglo-French conflict for colonial domination throughout the world. New France and the Wabanaki Confederacy thwarted New England expansion into Acadia by raiding settlements in present-day Maine, whose border New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Toward this end, they executed raids against targets in Massachusetts Colony (including present-day Maine), starting with the Northeast Coast Campaign. 

With his New England militia, Sir William Phips moved in 1690 to take the French strongholds at Port Royal and at Quebec. Having to reckon with Quebec's formidable natural defenses, its superior number of soldiers, and the coming of winter, Phips sailed back to Boston with his hungry, smallpox-ridden, and demoralized force. His failure showed a growing recognition of the need to replicate European combat techniques and war policy in order to achieve military success.

The Iroquois suffered heavily in King William's War and were brought, along with other western American Indians, into the French trading network. The British colonists' treatment of American Indian tribes led directly to the Wabanaki tribe's involvement in the war. Unlike tribes in southern New England, the Wabanaki retained significant power relative to the colonists and rejected the latter's attempts to exert authority over them. Expanding settlements fueled tensions and offered an opportunity to the French, who wanted to counter English influence in the region. New England's lack of stability and authority, the Wabanakis' existing grievances, and French encouragement led to Wabanaki attacks on settlements on the Northeast coast, a pattern that would be repeated until the withdrawal of the French in 1763.

Queen Anne's War

Queen Anne's War (1702–1713) was the second war for control of the continent and was the counterpart of the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe. The conflict also involved a number of American Indian tribes as well as Spain, which was allied with France.

In 1702, Carolina governor James Moore led an unsuccessful attack on St. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida, as welll as one of several raiding expeditions that wiped out much of Florida's American Indian population in 1704–1706. Thomas Nairne, the Province of Carolina's Indian agent, planned an expedition of British soldiers and their American Indian allies to destroy the French settlement at Mobile and the Spanish settlement at Pensacola. The expedition never materialized, but the British did supply their allies with firearms, which the Tallapoosas used in their siege of Pensacola. The English failed to compensate the Tallapoosas adequately, and by 1716, the Tallapoosas and other tribes had shifted allegiance and were prepared to strike against South Carolina settlements.

Meanwhile, French privateers inflicted serious losses on New England's fishing and shipping industries. The privateering was finally curbed in 1710 when, under the command of Francis Nicholson, Britain provided military support to American colonists, resulting in the British Conquest of Acadia (which later became peninsular Nova Scotia), the main base used by the privateers. 

The war ended in 1713, and by the Treaty of Utrecht, Britain gained Acadia, the island of Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay region, and the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. France was required to recognize British authority over the Iroquois. Following Queen Anne's War, relations between Carolina and the nearby American Indian populations deteriorated, resulting in the Yamasee War of 1715 and Father Rale's War a few years later, which very nearly destroyed the province.

Portrait of Francis Nicholson, ca. 1710

Francis Nicholson, British commander during the Conquest of Acadia

King George's War

King George's War, 1744–1748, was the North American phase of the concurrent War of the Austrian Succession. In 1745, naval and ground forces from Massachusetts in the Siege of Louisbourg captured the strategic French base on Cape Breton Island. During the war, the French made four attempts to regain Acadia by capturing the capital, Annapolis Royal. The French led American Indian allies in numerous raids, such as the destruction of the village of Saratoga, New York, killing and capturing more than 100 of its inhabitants. The war merged into the War of Jenkins' Ear against Spain and ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, under which the French regained Fortress Louisbourg.

The French and Indian War 

The final imperial war, the French and Indian War (1754–1763), known as the Seven Years’ War in Europe, proved to be the decisive contest between Britain and France in America. The war began over competing land claims between Britain and France in what is now western Pennsylvania. The war continued until 1763, when the French signed the Treaty of Paris and essentially forfeited the land of New France, ending their power on the continent. The British Empire had now gained mastery over North America and become a truly global empire. This last of the wars for empire, however, also sowed the seeds of trouble. The war led Great Britain deeply into debt, and in the 1760s and 1770s, efforts to deal with the debt through imperial reforms would have the unintended consequence of causing stress and strain that threatened to tear the Empire apart.

The Capture of Louisburg, 1745 by Peter Monamy

In the attack on Louisbourg in 1745, naval and ground forces from Massachusetts captured the strategic French base on Cape Breton Island.