Bitchy History - Episode 15： American History 101 - British and French Conflicts and the American Revolution

00:00:00.120 Welcome to Bitchy History, the irreverent history podcast that hates military history, 0.73

00:00:04.640 because talking about how a bunch of rich white dudes were upset about whose turn it was to sit on some random fancy chair 0.99

00:00:10.380 and wear a stupid hat every generation is really annoying. 0.98

00:00:19.340 Welcome to episode 15 of Bitchy History, where we get to talk about my least favorite type of history, which is military history. 0.97

00:00:26.000 To start off, though, I would like to thank the show's first three Patreon supporters,

00:00:29.900 Modman, Alexandria, and Tad.

00:00:31.700 Thank you so very much for the support, and I hope the show will continue to deliver.

00:00:35.360 If anyone else would like to support the show, there's a link to the Patreon on bitchyhistory.com.

00:00:39.580 I just got it fixed so the show will show up on Patreon's search bar,

00:00:43.660 because apparently they had set it to be 18+, for some reason. 0.86

00:00:47.820 Bitchy isn't even a PG-13 word, which I pointed out. 0.93

00:00:50.700 Also, there are several other Patreons with bitchy or bitch in the title, so it really made no sense.

00:00:55.580 They fixed it, though, so the Patreon is now easier to find through the Patreon app.

00:01:00.040 On to the history.

00:01:01.680 There are two ways to think about European history.

00:01:03.880 There's the super complicated way, with all the kings and queens and various complicated tension points related to religion and trade and economics.

00:01:10.920 And then there's the way I generally think about it.

00:01:13.560 I imagine it as a never-ending Tom and Jerry episode, with either England or France as Tom or Jerry, depending on the century.

00:01:20.560 Oh, France and England are fighting again? Must be a Monday.

00:01:23.820 I don't know what it is with those two, but they just cannot seem to get along.

00:01:28.160 You know what, David?

00:01:29.840 You get murdered first for once. 0.98

00:01:32.080 No, you get murdered first. 0.96

00:01:33.800 David, you get murdered first. 0.99

00:01:36.460 No, you! 1.00

00:01:37.440 Yes, you get murdered first!

00:01:39.960 Basically, they've been at each other's throats since the Norman Conquest in the 11th century, 0.63

00:01:43.940 which wasn't really France versus England, but the French were involved.

00:01:48.100 Then we had the Hundred Years' War, which gave us historical figures like Joan of Arc

00:01:51.440 and the invention of the English longbow.

00:01:53.300 and where we also learned that the French never learned the meaning of the word insanity,

00:01:57.720 as they kept trying to attack the English in ways that made it distressingly easy for English longbowmen to skewer them.

00:02:04.040 I'm just saying that after the first couple of times that full plate armor got treated like tinfoil by English archers,

00:02:09.620 I might have changed up my battle strategy instead of getting stuck knee-deep in mud at Agincourt and turning the field into a shooting gallery.

00:02:17.340 Eh, hindsight is 20-20.

00:02:18.960 During the period of the Reformation, religious tensions led to increased conflict between the French, who remained predominantly Catholic, and the English, who, as we discussed before, did not

00:02:28.680 These religious differences combined with political ambitions culminated in the French Wars of Religion from 1562 to 1598

00:02:36.040 Both England and France supported different factions in the conflict, exacerbating the tensions between the two nations

00:02:41.840 The end of the French Wars of Religion would not, unfortunately, end the religious tension between these nations, however

00:02:48.300 Anti-Catholic sentiment in the Americas will be coming up a lot over the next,

00:02:52.980 well, basically it'll make an appearance off and on from this point in the podcast

00:02:56.760 up until the post-war period.

00:02:59.200 And by post-war, I of course mean post-World War II.

00:03:03.040 And then it's going to come up again when we get to the presidential race of 1960.

00:03:06.960 Yeah, anti-Catholicism is a major recurring theme in American history,

00:03:10.780 along with a lot of other unsavory stances with anti in the name.

00:03:14.720 anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-disability, anti-woman, you get the picture. American

00:03:20.580 history itself is basically an extended Tom and Jerry episode where Jerry is the white straight 0.56

00:03:25.980 Protestant male and Tom is anyone else, getting pummeled in increasingly absurd ways. It turns

00:03:32.700 out that America has really only ever been great for a remarkably small subset of privileged people.

00:03:38.620 Hold on, I need to go lock my doors before Moms for Liberty bursts in to take my microphone. 0.98

00:03:44.720 Okay, they can just stay out there and be mad. 1.00

00:03:51.220 Once the wars of religion calmed down slightly,

00:03:53.740 we move directly into the colonial conflicts of the 17th and 18th century,

00:03:57.780 which is what we're actually going to talk about today.

00:04:00.280 So let's talk about the conflicts between England and France

00:04:03.140 and how they become one of the many tension points which will lead us into the American Revolution.

00:04:08.080 When we talk about the French and Indian War in an American history class,

00:04:11.120 usually the only thing we think of is the one that was connected to the Seven Years' War,

00:04:14.980 which occurred in the mid-1700s.

00:04:17.120 However, there are actually four colonial wars that are considered to be the French and Indian Wars,

00:04:22.180 and they run from 1689 to 1763.

00:04:25.780 In order, these are King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War,

00:04:30.240 and finally, the French and Indian War.

00:04:32.840 Each of these corresponds with a war on the other side of the Atlantic as well,

00:04:36.840 because apparently anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

00:04:40.720 So today, we're only going to talk about the first three of these wars, leaving the Seven Years' War for a future episode,

00:04:46.340 because that's where we start getting very involved in all of the modern narratives around the American Revolution.

00:04:52.520 During the 17th and 18th centuries, England and France were engaged in fierce competition for colonial dominance.

00:04:58.220 They clashed in various parts of the world, including North America, the Caribbean, India, and Africa.

00:05:04.400 They were struggling for control over lucrative trade routes and resources,

00:05:07.680 battling both each other and the natives of these lands who really categorically didn't want either 0.67

00:05:12.880 of them there in the first place. But the natives often chose sides in the conflict based on which

00:05:18.060 of the European countries they thought might be slightly less shitty to them in the long run. 1.00

00:05:22.980 Were they right? Usually not. Europeans tended to treat the natives pretty shittily whether their 0.76

00:05:28.200 last name was English or French, and even worse if their last name was Dutch. This all kicks off

00:05:33.560 with King William's War in 1689, also called the Nine Years War in Europe. It began as an extension

00:05:38.980 of a larger conflict between England and France, also called the War of the Grand Alliance. The

00:05:43.860 war primarily took place in northern English colonies of New England, Nova Scotia, and Hudson

00:05:48.160 Bay. Since there's both a colonial and European side to this war, we have to look at the causes

00:05:53.260 of both. Over in Europe, there's a power struggle between King Louis XIV of France and William III,

00:05:58.680 the brand new king of england william has just become king when king james ii had been ousted

00:06:03.800 in the glorious revolution this should sound familiar i briefly covered it in episode 14

00:06:08.440 james second was the last catholic king of england and he flees to france where he tries to get king

00:06:13.780 louis to join forces to take back the throne if you're a fan of outlander this should sound vaguely

00:06:19.100 familiar as well season two's depiction of bonnie prince charlie's attempt to rally a jacobite

00:06:23.960 uprising is the last gasp of the Stuart line's attempt to reclaim the throne, Charlie being

00:06:28.940 James II's grandson. But back in 1689, James II is still hoping to retake the throne, and King

00:06:35.000 Louis XIV is all set to help, because that would make England Catholic again. Like I said, a lot of 0.97

00:06:40.500 this conflict is purely based on a lot of stress over which religion people should be forced to

00:06:45.160 believe in. French forces invaded the Rhineland, Germany and the Netherlands, in 1688. The English,

00:06:50.900 the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold respond by creating an anti-French

00:06:55.740 coalition in 1689 to go to war with the French. That's as far as my outline of that side of the

00:07:01.400 war goes. France eventually lost because they tend to do that when any male Frenchman is leading the 0.92

00:07:06.480 charge, but this conflict spills over into the colonies. The English are in cahoots with the

00:07:11.140 Iroquois Confederacy, and the Iroquois are preventing the French and their allies, the

00:07:15.140 Wabanaki tribe, from expanding their hold on the North American fur trade, which was extremely

00:07:19.560 lucrative. In April of 1688, St. Caston's Trading House in Maine was plundered by English Governor

00:07:25.520 Andros, and this becomes one of the major events that kicks off the war in the colonies. In response

00:07:30.900 to Andros' raid, the Baron de Secastin and the Wabanaki Confederacy began a military campaign

00:07:36.200 along the border of New England. On August 13th, 1689, Caston attacked New Dartmouth and killed a

00:07:41.900 few settlers. A few days later, they killed two people in Yarmouth in what becomes the first

00:07:46.120 Battle of King William's War. Then England officially declares war on France, and the

00:07:50.640 entire tone of the colonial conflict changes and heats up considerably. Now it wasn't just about

00:07:56.080 the fur trade, it was country-on-country violence of the patriotic type. To drastically paraphrase

00:08:01.480 Howard Peckham's book, The Colonial Wars, imagine a fight between two small children. The parents

00:08:06.300 would usually step in and pull them apart and make them apologize and play nice. Then imagine

00:08:11.100 that same fight, but instead of pulling the kids apart, the parents start cheering their kids on

00:08:15.940 and then go full WWE on each other. 0.97

00:08:18.740 Now at 11, Mama said knock you out. 1.00

00:08:21.200 Two teen girls throw down in an after-school brawl 0.99

00:08:23.900 that ends up on YouTube,

00:08:25.560 but it's one of their mothers that's now ended up in jail.

00:08:29.540 As a brief aside, while looking for a sound clip to add in here,

00:08:32.900 I found way too many local news stories

00:08:35.140 about parents encouraging beatdowns between teenagers.

00:08:38.500 What is going on?

00:08:40.540 This war ends up being mostly a proxy war

00:08:43.060 for France and England and the colonies,

00:08:44.640 as they more or less just stood back and cheered on the native tribes that fight each other.

00:08:49.380 But the French and English soldiers did get their hands dirty a few times,

00:08:52.620 usually in defense of their own settlements.

00:08:54.800 Oh, and in the middle of the war, the English in Massachusetts take time out

00:08:58.280 to totally lose their minds in Salem in 1692.

00:09:01.460 So that happened.

00:09:02.580 You'd think they'd have more on their mind, 0.97

00:09:04.120 but I guess a good witch trial was a nice distraction from hating the French for a second.

00:09:08.820 In 1694, a peace treaty is signed, which doesn't take.

00:09:12.340 In 1696, the conflict continues with a naval battle and several raids by the French and the Wabanaki,

00:09:18.520 which more or less flattens the entirety of the English settlements in Newfoundland.

00:09:22.820 The English, of course, retaliate, and more bloodshed and destruction goes back and forth for a bit

00:09:27.300 until the Treaty of Ryswick is signed in 1697, ending both the colonial and European side of the war.

00:09:34.040 The treaty stipulated that the borders of New France, New England, and New York remain unchanged,

00:09:39.100 but claims to some of the disputed territories were left unresolved,

00:09:43.000 which, as anyone paying attention to current events with Crimea, Russia, and Ukraine,

00:09:47.480 should realize, that doesn't work out well for anyone.

00:09:51.140 In fact, it leads to the second of the French and Indian Wars,

00:09:54.980 Queen Anne's War, which starts in 1702.

00:09:57.780 So there's a five-year break after a nine-year war.

00:10:00.620 A nine-year war that no one won.

00:10:04.600 Queen Anne's War is also known as the War of Spanish Succession in Europe.

00:10:08.440 it's the second French and Indian War, but also sometimes referred to as the third Indian War.

00:10:14.160 Have I confused you sufficiently now? So Queen Anne's War has a lot of players. The English,

00:10:19.080 the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, the Iroquois, and the Wabanaki Confederacy are all

00:10:23.860 getting in on this one. Once again, drama starts in Europe over who is supposed to be sitting on

00:10:28.720 an overly gilded throne, this time in Spain. King Charles II of Spain dies in 1700 without a child,

00:10:35.240 which is a rookie mistake if there ever was one.

00:10:38.160 He leaves the monarchy to the grandson of King Louis XIV of France,

00:10:41.660 only William III of England doesn't like that plan.

00:10:45.640 Why? Because England hates France.

00:10:47.820 Have you not been listening to this entire episode? 0.98

00:10:50.480 Why it's any of William's damn business who sits on the Spanish throne is anyone's guess. 0.85

00:10:54.880 But nevertheless, William is going to make a play to get his choice on that throne, 0.96

00:10:59.020 his choice being the son of the Holy Roman Emperor,

00:11:01.840 who did, I suppose, have a claim to it, being a Habsburg, the same as Charles II.

00:11:06.560 The Holy Roman Emperor's son is also a Charles, by the way, Charles VI, to be exact.

00:11:11.380 The numbering makes no sense. Just let it flow around and through you and stop trying to make it make sense.

00:11:17.340 Then, after having the audacity to start this whole mess,

00:11:20.720 William III up and dies and leaves this whole mess in his sister-in-law's lap,

00:11:25.740 his sister-in-law being Queen Anne.

00:11:28.060 England joins the conflict and declares war on Spain and France in May of 1702,

00:11:32.620 to which I can only guess the English population's reaction was some approximation of this.

00:11:39.440 No, God! No, God, please, no! No! No! No!

00:11:48.980 The unresolved colonial issues from the end of King William's War quickly allowed the tensions in Europe to spill over into the colonies.

00:11:55.520 Not only that, but the religious sectarianism of the war, Spain and France still being Catholic-dominant countries and England wanting a Spanish king that was more friendly to Protestantism on the Spanish throne, meant that the New England tendency towards anti-Catholicism brought tensions in New England to a boiling point very quickly.

00:12:13.220 Fighting was widespread across the colonies,

00:12:15.280 from English colonists against the French and natives in New France and Newfoundland,

00:12:18.960 where they were re-litigating the King William's War conflict,

00:12:22.140 and English colonists in the provinces of Carolina and Georgia,

00:12:25.620 who were fighting a war with the French and Spanish in Florida.

00:12:28.440 In the colonies, Queen Anne's War ends up being more of a set of skirmishes and guerrilla warfare,

00:12:33.100 though the English navy would do some full-scale invasions of Caribbean islands held by the French.

00:12:38.180 Again, this is where I skip most of the gory details,

00:12:40.600 because military history bores me so very much.

00:12:43.720 There's a lot of battles, tit-for-tat,

00:12:45.420 retaliatory strikes between the two sides of the war.

00:12:47.900 There, summarized.

00:12:49.400 For the most part, the English colonists were fighting this war on their own

00:12:52.280 with no extra support from England itself.

00:12:54.560 That changed in 1709 when the English government

00:12:56.960 finally sent in five warships with 400 marines,

00:12:59.860 which drastically turned the tide for the English colonists.

00:13:02.860 Then English warships captured Port Royal,

00:13:05.360 not the one from Pirates of the Caribbean.

00:13:07.020 This one was in Nova Scotia.

00:13:08.200 There's not a lot of originality and naming conventions from this period.

00:13:12.280 Finally, the 11 years of back-and-forth battles comes to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht.

00:13:17.180 The treaty made Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, king of Spain.

00:13:20.840 It also forced France to give England some of its land in North America and the Caribbean,

00:13:25.080 including Newfoundland, Acadia, the Hudson Bay region of northeastern Canada,

00:13:29.260 and the island of St. Kitts in the West Indies.

00:13:31.680 Spain was forced to give England the islands of Menorca and Gibraltar.

00:13:35.060 So the deceased King William got nothing he wanted when he started this whole thing,

00:13:38.680 i.e. the Holy Roman Emperor's kid on the Spanish throne,

00:13:41.620 but England got some neat geographic doodads to play with.

00:13:45.100 Worth it?

00:13:45.920 Only the people who didn't actually have to fight in the war, probably.

00:13:48.840 I'm not sure the casualties of the war would disagree.

00:13:52.180 Though I suppose the English did hate the French an awful lot, 0.79

00:13:55.240 so maybe they'd think it was worth it just to give the French a bloody nose. 0.91

00:13:58.360 What do I know?

00:13:59.580 After all, the resentment between the British and the French

00:14:01.920 would continue to build up until it started another war in 1744, this time with a new English

00:14:07.760 ruler's name attached. Like I said, naming conventions were not that creative, and so we

00:14:12.740 reach King George's War. This one also has some other names, the War of Austrian Succession and

00:14:17.860 the Third of French and Indian War, and a semi-related war during this period called the

00:14:22.900 War of Jenkins' Ear that takes place between the British and Spanish in the Caribbean.

00:14:27.020 Robert Jenkins was an English sea captain whose ear was allegedly cut off by the Spanish Coast

00:14:31.420 guard when searching his ship for contraband in 1731, eight years before the War of Jenkins'

00:14:37.300 Ears started, so I don't know why they named it that, but some British historian in 1858

00:14:42.880 thought it was a good idea. At least it's more creative than the rest of the names of these wars.

00:14:48.300 As the name The War of Austrian Secession would suggest, this is yet another war about who gets

00:14:53.460 to sit on a pretty gilded throne, this throne being the Holy Roman Emperors. In 1740, Charles VI,

00:14:59.800 the dude that William III wanted to be king of Spain, dies without a male heir. He does have

00:15:04.860 children, just no sons. A law passed in 1713, the pragmatic sanction of 1713, declared that the line

00:15:12.080 of succession would be any son of the monarch followed by the eldest daughter. So Charles VI's

00:15:17.240 daughter, Maria Therese, inherits the throne. Unfortunately for Maria Therese, the male

00:15:22.520 Habsburgs were apparently the Andrew Tates of 18th century Europe, and they didn't like that shit at 1.00

00:15:27.920 all. They claimed that Salic Law, a 6th century Frankish law code, prohibited women from inheriting 0.99

00:15:33.880 the throne. What a 6th century law code had to do with anything when the 1713 law clearly said

00:15:40.000 that women could inherit as long as there were no male heirs is anyone's guess. There's a long

00:15:45.540 history of men trying to regress the law to whatever period is most useful for them to keep 0.83

00:15:50.420 women in their place though, so it's not like I'm surprised that they cited a law that was over a

00:15:55.360 thousand years out of date at the time. Frederick II of Prussia says screw that pragmatic sanction 1.00

00:16:00.840 and invades a Habsburg province which is now Poland and conquers it in 1741. So Prussia invades

00:16:07.160 Austria also known as the Holy Roman Empire and gets France to join them in an anti-Austrian

00:16:12.760 alliance. So of course Britain forms an alliance with Austria because France is involved and they

00:16:18.680 say it with me everybody, hate France. Do you want to form an alliance with me?

00:16:29.520 Absolutely I do. Good. Good. Excellent. If France gained major control in Europe, Britain's

00:16:35.280 commercial and colonial empire would be threatened because France also hates Britain. France declares

00:16:40.100 war on Britain in 1744. Eventually the news of the declaration of war by France reaches the colonies

00:16:46.160 and of course immediately the colonials are at each other's throats again.

00:16:49.940 The British go after Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia

00:16:52.320 and keep it under siege for six weeks before they finally capture it. 0.99

00:16:55.780 The Wabanaki Confederacy is still on France's side

00:16:58.340 so they start attacking British settlements all throughout Maine.

00:17:01.460 Saratoga, New York gets absolutely destroyed in November of 1745.

00:17:05.780 30 colonists die and 100 are taken prisoner.

00:17:08.360 A bunch of skirmishes and fights take place.

00:17:10.780 King George's war was relatively short.

00:17:12.840 Only four years compared to the nine years of King William's war

00:17:15.880 and the 11 of Queen Anne's.

00:17:17.700 In 1748, France, England, and the Dutch Republics

00:17:20.620 all get together to sign another treaty and end the war,

00:17:23.860 because treaties have worked so well in the past.

00:17:26.720 I'm sure the French and British won't start any more wars now,

00:17:30.140 especially since the treaty actually bothered to work out

00:17:32.760 all of those tension-causing boundary issues

00:17:35.000 between the colonies of England and France, right?

00:17:37.940 Right?

00:17:39.080 Oh, wait, no, it didn't.

00:17:40.920 Almost as soon as the treaty was signed,

00:17:42.960 France and England are sniping at each other

00:17:44.880 over territorial borders in the colonies again. 0.98

00:17:47.460 So good job there, guys.

00:17:48.740 I'm sure another war won't be caused by this.

00:17:51.340 You sure about that?

00:17:53.540 You sure about that?

00:17:55.200 You sure about that?

00:17:56.840 And of course, that brings us to the Seven Years' War,

00:17:59.340 but we'll get to that one in another episode. 0.80

00:18:01.620 Thanks for tuning in to listen to me bitch about history.

00:18:04.100 Sorry for the delay on this episode.

00:18:05.580 It turns out that it's a lot harder than I thought

00:18:08.480 to make French and British military history interesting.

00:18:11.240 Who would have known?

00:18:12.440 Next time, we'll be beginning to look at the Seven Years' War

00:18:14.800 and the exploits of a young George Washington.

00:18:17.280 Thank you for listening, and I'll see you back here next Monday.

Bitchy History - July 17, 2023

Episode 15： American History 101 - British and French Conflicts and the American Revolution

Episode Stats

Transcript