War, Trade and Empire

Introduction

Spanish and British empires compared

1520s-1540s more specie extracted from America than all the gold accumulated by Europeans over the previous centuries
1560-1685 25,000-35,000 tons of silver annually
1685-1810 50,000-70,000 tons of silver annually

Source: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart

Anglo-French rivalry

French Empire [map]:
-Caribbean: Saint Domingue, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Grenada. . .
-New France: metis
-Indian Ocean: French East India Company (1642), factories (e.g. Pondicherry)

central question: how did Britain become the world's foremost imperial power by the 1760s?


I.  English > British Empire [English/British monarchy]


Scotland

1603   union of the Scottish and English crowns
1707   union of the Scottish and English parliaments


grant
James Grant, governor of East Fl


Ireland
emigrants and exiles


Hanoverian political stability

the Whigs
minimal internal unrest


British identity

freedom, Protestantism, island nation

Stuart  
1689-1702 William and Mary
1702-1714 Anne
Hanover  
1714-1727 George I
1727-1760 George II
1760-1820 George III
1820-1830 George IV
1830-1837 William IV
1837-1901 Victoria
ship

 


II.  Commercial success


coffee

financial institutions: permanent national debt (1693), Bank of England (1694), stock exchange (1697)

mercantilism

birth of consumer society/ consumer revolution [see Walvin]

Principal English imports from North America and the West Indies, 1699-1774 (in pounds sterling)
Commodity 1699-1701 1722-24 1752-54 1772-74
Sugar 630,000 928,000 1,302,000 2,360,000
Rum 0 6,000 70,000 163,000
Tobacco 249,000 263,000 560,000 518,000
Coffee 0 0 3,000 414,000
Rice 0 52,000 167,000 340,000
Dyestuffs 85,000 152,000 97,000 167,000
Cotton 23,000 45,000 56,000 88,000
Drugs 6,000 22,000 55,000 55,000
source: Price

British tea imports (in pounds)
1670s
 trickle
1720
 9,000,000
1750
 37,000,000


European trade patterns c. 1740

map


III.  Military victories

fiscal-military states

trends:
1) increasing willingness to use the British military overseas
2) European conflicts increasingly global affairs



   
1689-1697

War of the League of Augsburg

William & allies vs. Louis XIV

King William's War Treaty of Ryswick
1701-1713

War of the Spanish Succession
death of King Ch II of Spain (1700)
Philip, duke of Anjou
first British troops in N America (1711)

Grand Alliance vs. Louis XIV

Queen Anne’s War Treaty of Utrecht: Gibraltar, Minorca, St. Kitts, Acadia, Hudson Bay, asiento
1739-1748

War of Jenkins Ear and War of the Austrian Succession [map] [image]

death of Ch VI, HRE (1740)
Frederick II of Prussia; Silesia
Captain Robert Jenkins
continental strategy
France, Prussia, Spain, Bavaria & Saxony vs. Austria, Britain, the Netherlands

 King George’s War Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle: status quo ante bellum
1756-1763

Seven Years War

Caribbean trade
North America: settlement or fur trade?

Prussia, Britain, German states, Iroquois Confederacy, Portugal vs. France, Austria, Russia, Spain, Sweded, Saxony, Mughal Empire

French & Indian War Treaty of Paris: Minorca, Grenada, Domenica, St. Vincent, Tobago, New France, Cape Breton Island, Florida, n. America east of the Miss, Senegal, Bengal
1775-1783  War of American Independence American Revolution Treaty of Versailles