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Episode 1 - International Feuds and Rivalries
644 Plays7 months ago
In this episode, we explore the international context of the 1740s, as well as events and conflicts in North America that led to growing tensions in the region.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome back to Tales from the French and Indian War. I am your host, Jackson, along with... I'm your co-host, Matt. And today is our first full episode.
Factors Leading to the French and Indian War
00:00:22
Speaker
Hopefully you tuned in for the introduction episode so you know a little bit about what is going to happen here.
00:00:27
Speaker
But in our first full episode, we will be talking, giving some background about the state of the world right before this war takes place. Because you can't just jump in with the first battle. Of course, we've got to...
00:00:41
Speaker
give some background, what were some of the things that led up to this war and how it
Correcting Historical Errors
00:00:48
Speaker
developed. you know Where did this conflict come from? Didn't just pop out of the vacuum.
00:00:52
Speaker
So how we'll be doing it today is Matt will be focusing on the kind of the contributing factors that led up to this war in Europe, particularly the previous war of Austrian succession.
00:01:08
Speaker
And then ive will be focusing more on the contributing factors happening in North America that led up to this war. And hopefully that'll be a fairly comprehensive, uh, beginning point and overview. And then we will start to get into the actual events, uh, of the war within the next couple episodes. Does that sound good to you, Matt? Anything to add?
00:01:31
Speaker
Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, that's ah that's what we're to be talking about in this episode. you know just I'll be giving global history, and then Jackson will give a little bit of what happened on on the North American soil. um A couple things before we get into it. Jackson and I, as I said in our last episode, are not history ah professors or anything of that nature, so we will make a lot of mistakes during this.
00:01:53
Speaker
One mistake I made in our first introduction episode is saying that the Battle of Fallen Tempers was fought in the War of 1812. That is not correct. It was fought shortly before that in the Northwest Indian War 1794.
00:02:06
Speaker
Yes, and one mistake that I made, you know, incredible how many mistakes can be in a nine-minute introduction podcast episode, but a mistake I made is I called another name for the French and Indian War the Third Intercolonial War. But as we will go over today, it is the Fourth Intercolonial War.
Challenges in French Pronunciation
00:02:26
Speaker
Terrible. Huge difference. Yes. And then also Jackson is our native French speaker. So I will try my best to pronounce some of the French names.
00:02:39
Speaker
But if they're too difficult or if I can't, I'll just turn it over to Jackson for correct pronunciation. Well, and just to cover my tracks in case I get any of the proper names wrong, I'm not a native speaker, but I do speak pretty well.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I will hope to inflate my ego a little bit by reading at least one quote in French ah later on. So we will see. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. So let's, let's get this kicked off.
00:03:04
Speaker
um So starting a French and Indian war podcast, we're going start someplace that lot of people probably won't expect. And that's the Holy Roman empire. yeah know, we could go we could do a whole podcast on the Holy Roman and empire and probably still briefly talk about its history, but One thing that we will focus on for this episode is the War of Austrian Succession, which when I began this podcast, I i knew nothing about that war. So I've done a lot of research over the last week or so, getting into this, diving into it. It's really fascinating. So just to give you guys a synopsis of what happened, ah the War of the Austrian Succession but began in 1740.
00:03:42
Speaker
This is when the Holy Roman Empire at the time, Charles VI,
The War of Austrian Succession
00:03:46
Speaker
died. He left his daughter, Maria Teresa, to inherit the Habsburg Empire. Before his death, he had issued a primatic sanction, which aimed to secure Maria Theresa's rule by allowing her to have the Habsburg Empire upon his death.
00:04:05
Speaker
Maria Theresa was a young woman at the time. And in this age, a young female ruler was not looked upon with the same the same power authority as a male ruler. So a lot of the other European powers like to take advantage of that.
00:04:21
Speaker
One being Frederick the Great of Prussia. ah Prussia, as we know, is historically militaristic country, and they had a lot of pride in their military and power to conquer Europe. So as soon as he saw an advantage in this, Frederick took it.
00:04:34
Speaker
and And this led to a formation of kind of some original allies within Europe that... We'll see evolve into this war. good like Quick question for you, Matt.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yes, sir. Maybe you can help me out. So you said this Charles the six had the the pragmatic sanction, to was the name of it? That's correct. Yep.
00:04:56
Speaker
So is that basically just like... The current rules say that the throne can't go to his daughter, but just before he dies, he's going to like essentially like pass a law or make a declaration that will change the the rules or at least customs to allow for his daughter to the throne. Is that how it kind of works?
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's correct. So the Holy Roman Empire had a lot of very confusing and intertwined succession paths because each each lord of every independent kingdom held different titles.
00:05:25
Speaker
This pragmatic sanction was kind of designed to ensure that Maria Teresa, no matter what other succession plans or other... but customary rules would come into effect. It would to ensure that Maria Teresa would receive Habsburg lands, which at that time were Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia.
00:05:45
Speaker
Um, and So it was kind of like an overriding rule. And as part of that, he had actually sought out from other European powers, which included Prussia, Britain and France to recognize and uphold that. And he received those guarantees before his death.
00:06:01
Speaker
So it was kind of something that, you know, Charles thought was set in stone when he died. um But as we'll see, you know, Frederick kind of made that promise with his fingers crossed behind his back.
00:06:12
Speaker
Got Thank you. Yeah. So yeah, yeah Maria Theresa ascended to the throne after Charles VI died in 1740. Frederick the Great, as I mentioned, kind of jumped on that, which created two power divides in Europe. So we had Frederick the Great of Prussia and then Frederick.
00:06:31
Speaker
France, Spain, and Bavaria all joined him. And Frederick's first move was to invade the territory of Silesia. I did not know where Silesia was when I was researching for this episode.
00:06:44
Speaker
Typical American. Yes. um it's It's a part of Poland. I believe now it's kind of within Central Europe, but at the time it was a separate area.
00:06:56
Speaker
And this area was hotly contested between Austria and in Prussia for for a long time. on one side, as I said, you had you had Prussia, France, Spain, and Bavaria.
00:07:07
Speaker
and the other side, you know you had England, and then you had the Netherlands that supported Maria Theresa. And Britain really did those Britain, as as we'll see, did not really care too much about Silesia.
00:07:20
Speaker
What they cared about was not letting France become the ultimate power in Europe. They saw this alliance that France formed with Prussia, Spain and Bavaria.
00:07:32
Speaker
And so that France was kind of leading that alliance. France was going to be the the power in Europe if Prussia was allowed to walk in and capture Silesia.
00:07:42
Speaker
France would have kind of control over that alliance. Britain would kind of be left out on it on an island. Not intended. Great Britain joke. It was in this century, too, that that European idea of the balance of power.
00:08:00
Speaker
really of becomes developed, especially like in this war, think in the previous succession war. But yeah, you really start to see people going to war, people diplomatically moving against each other for the sake of not letting one country become the superpower. And that is like a, it starts to become an obsession in Europe to regulate this balance of power, especially in this century.
King George's War and its Impact
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I believe the idea of a balance of power in Europe was kind of developed and ah when this when these two powers kind of pick sides between Britain and France. So Britain picked the side of Maria Theresa, just as I said, to wholly balance out France's power, which is interesting. And this this will set up, as we see Britain and France taking opposite sides, and this conflict will set up the future war.
00:08:55
Speaker
But yeah, so...
00:08:59
Speaker
So yeah, as I said, there were two major two major power factions developed in Europe at this time. So as I said, one of them was France, Bavaria, and Spain, who allied with Prussia. And then you had England, who had allied with Maria Theresa.
00:09:15
Speaker
And these two powers fought on not only Europe, but several ah other continents. So this war kind of spread out to not only involve Silesia and some of the Habsburg Empire, but it also involved North America, which funny enough is called a completely different war. It's called the King George's War, which Jackson will talk a little bit about later. But what that war was essentially was just the spreading of the War of Austrian Succession to the North American continent.
00:09:41
Speaker
And as we'll see, that was primarily only fought between Britain and France, as those were the only two established colonial powers at the time in North America. um And then just going on.
00:09:52
Speaker
So, you know, they they fought all over. They fought India. A lot of Asia was wrapped up in this. So similar to the French Indian Wars, we'll see almost every European war at this time ended up divulging into a global war. So to summarize, as a result of the War of Austrian Succession, the war ended with the Treaty of Ex-La Chappelle.
00:10:13
Speaker
Jackson, am I saying that correctly? That was pretty good. I can't can't complain about that. but Yeah. So the Treaty of Exile Chappelle, it allowed Maria Teresa to stay on the throne, but it also made some concessions to Frederick. He was allowed to keep Silesia province. But really, that's as far as the the treaty went.
00:10:32
Speaker
The treaty itself returned a lot of the pre-war ah territories to their pre-war status. So... Nothing really huge happened. in North America, one important part is that Louisbourg, which was controlled by the British as they had captured from the French during King George's War, as Jacksonville cover, was returned to France, but which we will see becomes a ah huge issue when we talk about the French and Indian War.
00:10:58
Speaker
But in in a nutshell, the Treaty of Ex-La Chapelle was kind of like a pause on on European conflict for the time. I think most powers knew, and you'll see this repeat with the the ah the end of World War I, most powers knew that this was kind of just like a a stalemate or a ceasefire for a period of time.
00:11:19
Speaker
In Europe specifically, as I mentioned, any war gains made by any power would just return to the the conquered nation. But what it really did was it it ignored a lot of colonial interests.
00:11:31
Speaker
So other than Louisbourg being returned to the French and a few territories here and there being addressed North in America, most of the North American border between France and England was left untouched.
00:11:44
Speaker
ah So a a lot of colonials were were pretty unhappy with with the resolution of this war, and they even more so saw it as a a prelude of of more conflict to come.
00:11:56
Speaker
And another thing it did, it you know, I think all the powers at that time knew that there was an imbalance of power between Britain and France and the respective alliances that they had created and in the War of Austrian Succession.
00:12:09
Speaker
it did nothing to to curb intentions of either of those powers. We didn't see any sort of demilitarization or any anything of that nature. Britain and France were allowed to ah continue to build their militaries and have conflicting interests of classes across the globe.
00:12:26
Speaker
So, Thank Yeah, that's a ah a general summary of the War of Austrian Succession. As I mentioned, we could go into a whole episode on just that war or even a whole podcast on that war.
Colonial Powers in North America
00:12:37
Speaker
It's a huge topic, but it is extremely important for understanding why Brent and France were at each other's throats in North America, beginning in the 1750s and late 1740s.
00:12:48
Speaker
And I think it's it's worth covering. So I'll turn it over to you, Jackson, to talk about more of the the history on the North American continent. ah Yeah. Thank you for that summary, Matt. I know it's not easy to just jump into European succession wars and wrap your mind around everything. So that was a great, great summary. Thank you.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll be going over the North American specific events and wars and conflicts that preceded the French and Indian War. And since the focus of our podcast is on that North American side of the Seven Years' War, I'm going to go back a little bit further in history and overview what happened up to about 1750. So real quick to catch everyone up, um for the 15 and 1600s in North America, that is prime time for the beginning of colonialization.
00:13:47
Speaker
So Spanish and Portuguese are the first really to set up these huge empires, but they're mostly focused in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, some places in Africa as well, at least along the coastlands.
00:14:00
Speaker
It takes about 100 years for France and England to really start getting going with the the establishment Port Royal in Acadia and then Quebec, obviously in Quebec for the French in the very early 1600s, the first decade, I think, of the 1600s. And then, of course, you have the British or before before technically they were the British, they were the English at that point because they hadn't unified with Scotland.
00:14:26
Speaker
But with Jamestown, Plymouth, you know those kind of early American settlements that you learn about all the time in elementary and middle school and all that. So they finally start getting going.
00:14:39
Speaker
The French are focusing more on that St. Lawrence River area. that is ah Everyone's looking for that Northwest Passage to China to the other side of the world.
00:14:51
Speaker
That's kind of the obsession. There's a lot of high hopes that St. Lawrence would be that river, but no. but The French, they end up making some settlements there. ah They use the Great Lakes system to explore. They send explorers like Samuel de Champlain, La Salle, and previously there's Jacques Cartier.
00:15:13
Speaker
They send these explorers. They go very far into the North American interior by the mid-late 1600s. La Salle explores the Mississippi Valley, I believe. they go through the St. Lawrence River from the Atlantic.
00:15:27
Speaker
into the Great Lakes system and then along waterways down to Mississippi. Because these lakes and rivers are really the like highways of the time. you know Most of North America is a pretty wild place with massive forests. you know There's not the same kind of infrastructure that ah existed in Europe where it had like all those successive empires, the Romans building their roads, you know all these other huge sprawling civilizations with their infrastructure. It's very wild. So you can't move across land very quickly, but the French especially are very adept at using the waterways.
00:16:04
Speaker
ah To add an and a anecdotal tale to that, Jackson, really quick, you know, growing up in Ohio, and I don't know if you ever heard this too, but people used to say that in Ohio, a squirrel could move from Lake Erie to the Ohio River ah solely jumping on trees before it was, ah before the state was developed.
00:16:25
Speaker
So I think that gives some, some light to what what you're speaking about with, as far as like how, uh, I don't know, undeveloped or uncivilized this area. But Ohio was mostly just one large great forest ah with some swamps and other other different natural features built in. But I can only assume Pennsylvania and the surrounding countryside was the same way.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a great point. And I think even a little later this episode, I'll get a little bit more into that. I haven't heard that saying about the squirrel jumping from tree to tree from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, though. that's That's pretty neat visualization, just how different you know the state of Ohio can look from 300 years ago to now.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yep. That's neat. But yeah, so... A lot of European nations kind of getting in the colonial game. That's the hot thing to do for Europeans, in the the by especially by the 1600s. There are some Dutch colonies on the eastern seaboard next to the English ones. There are some Swedish colonies even, too, I learned about. i think in what is now New Jersey and maybe Delaware.
00:17:35
Speaker
there were some There was New Sweden. But by the mid-1600s, the Dutch and Swedish colonies were pretty much either absorbed or conquered or otherwise annexed by the English.
00:17:47
Speaker
English spreading across that eastern seaboard that we are all familiar with as Americans. And then the French are up in what is now Canada, and they're calling their colony New France or their colony around Quebec and Montreal and Trois-Rivières, specifically Canada. Then they have Acadia in what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
00:18:09
Speaker
And then they'll start to develop Louisiana, like New Orleans and that area in the early 1700s. But before we get there, we have to talk about the first intercolonial war.
00:18:23
Speaker
this is known as King William's War from 1688 to 1697. It's just like the War of Austria, Succession and King George's War being the same thing, one just being the North American front of the other.
00:18:39
Speaker
King William's War is the same thing as the War of the League of Augsburg or the Nine Years' War. I don't know a lot about this war specifically from what I can tell. This was a basically an anti-France alliance made up of Great Britain.
00:18:56
Speaker
I guess then I think they were still England too. Sweden, Spain, Austria, Holland, and then some of the German states. I'm assuming, I don't know if the whole holy Holy Roman Empire was involved or just like some parts of it elected to join the war.
00:19:10
Speaker
Not exactly sure how that all works out. But this was the time when Louis the fourteenth was king of France. He was known as the Sun King. This was like France at some of its most expansionist and some of its most powerful, especially like with its army.
00:19:26
Speaker
So due some circumstances, there's this big alliance against France that spread over to North America. It was kind of paralleled the the Habsburgs versus the the French Bourbon dynasty or know if it would have been pronounced Bourbon at that time.
00:19:42
Speaker
Not really sure, probably. um So it's kind of a a war along these two European dynasty lines. ah Now, some notable points of this war included... There was a lot of raiding and small-scale action in this war. you know Still pretty early on, a lot of the the colonies weren't very developed neither Quebec nor the the English colonies.
00:20:13
Speaker
But the French raided Chenecdody, New York, which is, course, a Dutch... area that became English after the Anglo-Dutch wars.
Colonial Policies and Religious Dynamics
00:20:22
Speaker
And they raided all across frontier settlements in New England, but they couldn't quite get to Boston, which was their goal.
00:20:29
Speaker
Whereas on the English side, some Massachusetts forces took Port Royale, the capital of the French colony of Acadia, and captured its governor. They had sent like 600 soldiers and sailors, and there was just about 90 defenders. So they just surrendered.
00:20:43
Speaker
They also attacked Quebec city in 1690, but that attack was foiled. That was the largest engagement of the war. And it had about both sides with about 2000 militia or other soldiers ready to go.
00:20:58
Speaker
And as we'll see, that's just for a reference, because as we'll see in the French and Indian war, the the scale of action is going to be a lot bigger than some of these earlier intercolonial wars. Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
For reference, population-wise among these two colonies, New France and the ah the British colonies, which I guess are many colonies, not just one united one, of course.
00:21:21
Speaker
In New France, about 1700, there were 15,000 French colonists.
00:21:26
Speaker
ah french colonists Whereas at the bow at that same time, in the British colonies, which were at that time, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and during the war, they would merge into one colony.
00:21:41
Speaker
Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York. Then there was East and West Jersey. and Then think Delaware was like kind of colony or was just getting set up something or it was some kind of like a semi-autonomous branch of another colony.
00:21:59
Speaker
Then there was Maryland and then just one colony of Carolina. They had about a quarter of a million people. so in New France, 15,000 in the British colonies, quarter of a million.
00:22:10
Speaker
That's a just to interject here. I think that this is something we're going to talk about a lot throughout this war, but the different immigration policies and settlement policies between France and England.
00:22:23
Speaker
One of the great sources that we've used for this episode, as well as our is some of the content in our introduction episode, I believe it is a book. me find the name of it here.
00:22:34
Speaker
And throughout the podcast, we'll try to drop any sources that we use to point you guys towards any, don't know, more detailed sources or things to look into if you're more interested.
00:22:47
Speaker
But this one specifically is one of the best books, one of the best history books I've read and certainly one the best French Indian War books. You know, it's just called The French Indian War by Walter Bornman.
00:22:58
Speaker
um I believe, isn't it titled like a struggle for North America or deciding the fate? The subtitle is Deciding the Fate of North America. Yes, that is correct. So, yeah, it's a great book. um And this was mentioned in that book, but I was about to talk about.
00:23:13
Speaker
So just to give a quick synopsis of the different immigration policies. So France was very... was very centered on only having Catholic French immigrants settle in their colonies.
00:23:27
Speaker
So not only were they looking at, okay, this is only going to be French citizens that come over to our colonies. They also wanted to keep it religiously, religiously centered on Catholicism.
00:23:38
Speaker
Whereas the British colonies were much more focused on growth rather than having, rather than the having their, uh, colonial settlers fit some sort of paradigm that they had created. So in Britain, you know, you you'll see, as Jackson mentioned, they had conquered some Swedish, some Swedish settlements as well as other country settlements.
00:24:00
Speaker
Most of those civilians when conquered were allowed to join British colonies. And the British also allowed, you know, Catholics, Puritans, Episcopalians, many different religious sects to settle within their within their colonies. And As we'll see later down the road, this ends up benefiting them a lot when it comes to just sheer manpower.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I agree with that assessment. And especially even with like the British colonies, even if some of them were very much focused on one religion, I think like some like Plymouth or the Massachusetts Bay Colony could be like very... i don't know if I don't know if they technically had like a state...
00:24:43
Speaker
Protestant like denomination as the for the colony. But if you didn't fall into some of these colonies and they're like religious majorities, you could just go to the next colony over where it was either more accepting or there was a different like a religious majority.
00:24:58
Speaker
So even if you might not be welcome in one British colony for your particular version of ah Protestantism, you could just go to the next one over. And there wasn't like an outright ban on Catholics. I think Massachusetts could sometimes be very aggressive towards them, but there's 10 other colonies, 12 other colonies that you could go to.
00:25:20
Speaker
So yes, I absolutely agree. And that is a huge factor. at some point, the French ministers, I think maybe it was Jean Talon, Or maybe was, yeah, I can't remember the exact minister, but he realized that he had to increase, you know, the French colonies were two just way too outnumbered. They had to increase the population. But how they went about that was just like promoting more childbirth.
00:25:48
Speaker
And there was like fines if like a male or female reached a certain age without marrying. So there's like a lot more incentive to get married and they would take like orphaned young women in France, like in Paris, and then send them over to the colony to be brides for the predominantly male, you know like rough frontier colony of New France.
00:26:11
Speaker
So they did recognize that, at least eventually, or some ministers recognized that population was going to be a huge issue later down the line. but the way they went about increasing the population was a lot different than the British method. And ah well, we can tell, especially as we get into podcast further, which of those methods worked better.
00:26:36
Speaker
Correct. um And then, yeah, I also, I think at this time, Jackson, correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe England was a Protestant nation at this point, correct? Yes. they had some They went back and forth for a while because like it was just like whichever monarch was in charge of England, their religion would kind of dictate that.
00:26:57
Speaker
where the country would go like as the Protestant reformation is progressing and then completed. So like there would be a Protestant King and then the heir would be a Catholic. And then, so then all the Protestants would be like persecuted and the state religion would be Catholicism. But then like a Protestant would succeed the throne after that. And then the Catholics were persecuted. So there's a lot of like,
00:27:18
Speaker
Back and forth, but yes, it ended up settling on Protestantism with the Church of England. I don't know exactly when that like finally settled and the turmoil was over, but I think the English Civil War was in the 1600s. That's correct. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it was either about to be settled or had just recently been kind of settled in as a Protestant nation around the time of these first intercolonial wars.
00:27:48
Speaker
that Okay, that makes sense. I remember reading, and I believe this was in Borman's novel, i remember reading that a lot of religious...
00:27:59
Speaker
religion A lot of Protestants fled Europe but to avoid religious persecution and instead of, you know, going to the the exclusive Catholic French colonies. So even if these Protestants weren't British per se, they would settle in British colonies because of the more openness to religion and That's what you see.
00:28:21
Speaker
It's kind of like kind of what formed the freedom of religion that we'll see carry over into the ideals of the founding fathers, which is, is pretty interesting. Yeah. I actually had a, when I was doing some genealogical research for my family, I found I had one great, great, you know, however many times grandfather who was a French Huguenot, I think is the term for like an original French Protestant.
00:28:44
Speaker
Cause of course you brought up the Protestant Reformation did happened in France as well. And a good chunk of the country, especially i think in the South and West became majority Protestant, but by Louis the 14th, who was reigning at this time of this, this war, the league of Augsburg, I believe he was reigning where I just finished reigning.
00:29:05
Speaker
He ended up, he really wanted to, you know, unify control under him and develop that like idea of absolute monarchy. But he also wanted France to be a completely Catholic nation. So he repealed the edict of Nantes,
00:29:19
Speaker
which had granted like religious freedom or religious toleration for French Protestants.
European Alliances and Native American Tribes
00:29:24
Speaker
He repealed that and then kind of amped up persecution against them, which prompted a lot more French Protestants to leave France and settle in other areas, including the British colonies. in a and And I think specifically in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony, and then it became New York, there was a significant percentage of the population there was French Protestant, the Huguenots.
00:29:48
Speaker
So yeah, that kind of brain drain and those and those ah those policies definitely ended up hurting France's interests in the long run, especially as we'll see in the French and Indian War.
00:30:01
Speaker
For sure. But yeah, moving on. Well, before we get to the next war, of course, we have to mention that this wasn't just the two different colonies fighting as on the on the North American front.
00:30:14
Speaker
They brought in their respective Native American allies. So of course... the Each colony was they was established, but it was still kind of a precarious existence. They had to interact with to their advantage with the natives surrounding them. There was a lot of wars and skirmishes with the New England colonies against some of the native tribes. They allied some, and then they went after others.
00:30:44
Speaker
In France, or in New France, the French allied like pretty much right upon exploring the region. They allied with the Algonquin Indians, I think the Huron specifically, and and their enemies were the Iroquois, and there was like 100 years of back and forth on and off again, wars between the French and their native allies against the Iroquois.
00:31:07
Speaker
So the native Americans are a powerful factor. They're not necessarily united, ah which works to their detriment, but they are a powerful factor in both the French and the British want to get native support on their side to add a lot of extra manpower and support and just all the ways that the natives know the land, they know the routes to take, they know how to fight in these you know massive forests covering the continents. and They learn a lot from their native allies. So in this war, in the King William's War, end of the 1600s, the French are allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy, which is made up of the Abenaki, Penobscot, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet Indian tribes.
00:31:53
Speaker
You'll have to forgive me if I mispronounce some of these Indian names. Also allied to the Algonquins and some of the Mohawks, the Kahnawake Mohawks, probably butchered that.
00:32:04
Speaker
And on the British side, the Iroquois and Mohicans were fighting with them against the French. The Iroquois and the French had a big rivalry um going for a long time. But there was a lot of political tur turmoil back home in England during this war. so ah colonies didn't really cooperate well, but there was never any like huge actions besides the New England colonists trying to take Quebec.
00:32:29
Speaker
It was a lot of raids and frontier warfare. It started causing a lot of division and animosity between the French and English colonists more than there already was just from being competing world powers.
00:32:41
Speaker
Not long after that is Queen Anne's War. which correlates to the European war of the Spanish Succession. ah lots of you know Lots of succession wars in this this time. It Europe's favorite thing after colonizing the New World was fighting wars of succession, seems like.
00:33:00
Speaker
But this one lasted from 1702 to 1713. King William, I think, presided over the beginning of it, but then Queen Anne of England quickly succeeded him and kind of inherited most of the war.
00:33:16
Speaker
So this was a war where it was England, and I know think during this war it becomes Great Britain finally. Holland, Prussia, and Austria, and then some of the Holy Roman Empire states,
00:33:28
Speaker
were going against France and Spain. This was a result of a dispute about, well, you might be able to guess, Spanish succession. The King of Spain, I believe his the the throne was going to go to Louis XIV's grandson. So like the French Louis the fourteenth his grandson was going to inherit the Spanish throne and that would have unified the two countries.
00:33:52
Speaker
Because at this point it was really much just like what titles did the ruler have claimed to as then that decided what like the country or the kingdom or the empire looked like.
00:34:04
Speaker
So That would have united Spain and France, which terrified a lot of other European countries, that balance of power idea. They didn't want that huge superpower to be formed.
00:34:17
Speaker
So European states formed an alliance and went after France and Spain in that one. On the North American front... It was pretty similar to the previous war, a lot of raids and skirmishes and frontier warfare. couple of the notable points of the war, Abenaki allies of the French burned Deerfield, Massachusetts. Sometimes it's called like the Deerfield Massacre.
00:34:43
Speaker
um it and that will cause a lot of animosity between New England colonists and the French and Indians for generations to come. Then New Englanders capture Port Royale, the capital of Acadia, in 1710 after two earlier failed attempts. But once again, they cannot quite take Quebec.
00:35:05
Speaker
and They get beaten back. Since Spain is now involved, that means Spanish Florida comes into play. And the Carolinans burn down St. Augustine, Florida, one of the oldest ah European settlements in North America.
00:35:21
Speaker
The French form this plan to move an army up from their Caribbean colonies into the Southern US s colonies and kind of wreak havoc. That ends up failing. think mostly due to disease on the way there, the the force just gets like ah terribly reduced.
00:35:38
Speaker
And then there's a lot of fighting in the Southeastern, what is now the USA, especially with some of the native tribes there and the English colonists. Still, though, Europe is not prioritizing the North American conflict. As you can see, these are pretty small-scale actions overall, even though it's widespread.
00:35:59
Speaker
you know they're still focusing on what's going on in Europe, where the war started. Yeah, go ahead. Quick question for you. So as you're going through these wars, and you know as I talked about with the War of Austria and Succession, it kind of seems like a lot
British Naval Dominance and Colonial Expansion
00:36:13
Speaker
of these North American wars are just you know results of these two competing powers having borders on a separate continent um as they involve a lot of border raids and a lot of skirmishes. But it doesn't seem like there's too many...
00:36:27
Speaker
I guess, organized military action to conquer a specific area or land for a country. It seems kind of like they're almost incidental skirmishes. Would you categorize it as that?
00:36:38
Speaker
A lot of it was, yeah. There were definitely some concerted or somewhat concerted efforts from like the New Englanders to you know take Port Royale and move their way up the...
00:36:50
Speaker
by the Atlantic and St. Lawrence and try to take Quebec. But these, I mean, other than them finally taking Port Royale after a few attempts in this war, they, ah yeah, it's not very cohesive or directed like from across the ocean. It's pretty much just like the colonies being like, well, I guess we're at war again.
00:37:11
Speaker
wreak havoc and i guess let's also try to like take the move towards this one strategic point but it is definitely still very small scale for the most part mm-hmm Okay. So these, so North America is really just one front for a war.
00:37:29
Speaker
Hundreds of different fronts going on. Okay. Yep. Just like the previous King Williams war. So the, the end result of this one is that Louis the 14th grandson could become King of Spain, but he had to renounce any claim to France and that the two countries were like, we're never to be united. That was kind of like the, the deal of the, of the war.
00:37:55
Speaker
And then some there is actually some territorial changes with this war. So Great Britain gets to keep Newfoundland, which France had. And then they also get to keep Acadia, or at least a good chunk of Acadia, rather, like that, what is now Nova Scotia, that peninsula.
00:38:14
Speaker
that yeah It's kind of got a weird shape. I don't really know how to describe it. Probably a peninsula, i guess, technically. But Now, Great Britain has control of a good chunk of Acadia, including the French Acadians who were living there.
00:38:31
Speaker
Now, they still don't have control of all of it, and there's a lot of like messy borders, but Great Britain at least gets some territorial gains on the North American side as part of the peace settlement for this war.
00:38:46
Speaker
It was also during this war, importantly, where Great Britain really kind of, I mean, they always had to have like an okay Navy, but they really start prioritizing it during and after this war. So they will become the predominant commercial and naval power in Europe as a result of what's happening here.
00:39:07
Speaker
ah The natives on France and Spain's side include that previously mentioned Wabanaki Confederacy, the Mohawks, the Choctaws, Timuquas, not sure how to say that one, Apalachies, and Natchez Indians.
00:39:21
Speaker
On the British side, there's the Creek, Chickasaw, and the Amasi. So you can see so far there's most of the Native American nations have been on the French side and the British have, we'll have a few.
00:39:34
Speaker
That's pretty typical. The French had a a good way of, for the most part, a good way of relating with the Native American tribes. They knew because of their population inferiority that they really needed your Native American support to survive and thrive.
00:39:51
Speaker
Also, they were very commercially interested with the fur trade, which was you know a huge moneymaker for these colonies. So they were mostly interested in like trading with the Indians.
00:40:02
Speaker
getting you know the different kinds of pelts and furs to send back to Europe. And they weren't so much you know colonizing or settling mass. you know They were along the St. Lawrence River Valley in Acadia.
00:40:15
Speaker
And then I think right around this war, just after they started so building up in like New Orleans and Louisiana, But they mostly just had some forts and trading posts, and then they had their settlements in the St. Lawrence and Acadia.
00:40:29
Speaker
That was kind of it. They weren't really just like sending floods of people across that would really start to irritate ah the native tribes around them. So they were able to manage these native alliances better than the British typically could.
Significance of King George's War
00:40:42
Speaker
The Iroquois in this war did remain neutral. France had just signed the Great Peace of Montreal with them, i think it was in 1700 or 1701. And they were, of course, very afraid that just after signing this treaty that ended like 100 years of rivalry, that the Iroquois would just join the British again and fight in Queen Anne's War. But Iroquois remained neutral.
00:41:05
Speaker
About this point, Spanish Florida, for reference, has about 1,500 colonists. The French colony is about 15 to 20,000. And the British, again, over just over a quarter million.
00:41:18
Speaker
I can see how that might upset some some native american Native American tribes in this area. but Yes, just the sheer mass of european or British colonists and the land that they want for farming and other things like that.
00:41:37
Speaker
So yeah, Great Britain gets to keep Port Royale. They established Nova Scotia as a colony of Britain now in what is a good chunk of Acadia. And they ah get Newfoundland, as I mentioned.
00:41:48
Speaker
There is going to be, as we'll see, a lot of tension and friction in Nova Scotia and Acadia as a result of this this treaty. And the Abenaki and Mi'kmaq Indians who lived in that area...
00:42:00
Speaker
were not represented in the peace talks. So that is going to be Big Thorn and their side, and that's going to cause a lot of small-scale guerrilla wars and skirmishes in Acadia, Nova Scotia, and some of the New England colonies off and on for the next 40 years, even though it's...
00:42:18
Speaker
Those years are technically years of peace between Britain and France. We're going to see there's still going to be a lot of kind of unofficial or covert or so other kind of small scale combat and skirmishes, especially in Acadia where this the results of this treaty were not well taken.
00:42:42
Speaker
And then of course, King George's War, which is the North American side of what Matt spoke about from the first 10 or 15 minutes of this podcast, going from 1744 to 1748. I think maybe France had joined in the War of Austrian Succession a little bit late, like maybe a few years after it started. I think that's why the King George's War timeframe is 1744 to 1748 and not, I like 1740 or 41 all the way to 1748.
00:43:08
Speaker
That is correct.
00:43:12
Speaker
that is correct Okay. And one of the reasons for that late entry, I found out was that France, because of the previous war, as you had talked about the the War of Spanish Succession, one of the results of that war was that France and Spain shall never become one.
00:43:28
Speaker
ah France spent a considerable amount of time after Prussia took up arms in Silesia, trying to convince Spain to join the war um on Prussia's side. And once they were able to get that commitment from Spain, then France entered the war along with Spain. So that kind of, like there was a, ah about three year gap there where Prussia was really the only, the only yeah aggressor in the war per se.
00:43:53
Speaker
Okay. And so, yeah, this will be the first time that France and Prussia are now working together because they are on the same side of this war against Austria and Great Britain, as Matt spoke about in the previous, in the war with Spanish succession, they were on opposing sides, but now Prussia and France are,
00:44:12
Speaker
fighting together. Some notable points of the war in North America. Again, lots of raids, lots of small-scale action. However, for the British, a big victory is that they end up capturing Louisbourg, the French fortress on Cap Breton Island in also what is now Nova Scotia, i think, or New Brunswick. I think it's still Nova Scotia today, but at that point, it was still part of the French part of
00:44:44
Speaker
Acadia. big fortress that ah helps secure access to the St. Lawrence River for the French, which is crucial for them, for their supplies, reinforcements, for the trade goods that they are sending over there to be given to the Indian nations.
00:45:00
Speaker
So the British finally, they end up capturing it. A big French fleet is sent to retake it and then also burn Boston. But in the Atlantic, a huge storm happens and it kind of tears apart the fleet and they scatter and then return home without ever making it to the other side of the Atlantic.
Iroquois Confederacy's Strategy
00:45:18
Speaker
ah British were probably relieved. However, in the peace treaty for King George's war, they have to return Louisbourg. And that is going to upset a lot of New Englanders because wars have been so devastating for them because they're on the front lines with the you know the Wabanaki Confederacy the ah and the French colonists. So when all these raids are coming from the French and Indians, it's hitting New England first and foremost.
00:45:46
Speaker
So they are not happy that the peace treaty returns Louisbourg. The French and Indians, notable point for them, they raid and destroy the city of Saratoga in upstate New York. ah Still not a lot of large-scale actions. The taking of Louisbourg was the most large-scale action of the war, but it's still not still not the focus for the Europeans. It's much more of just a sideshow.
00:46:08
Speaker
But it is it's deadly and brutal, the fighting in this time period, is is very rough. and In the war, about 8% of the adult male Massachusetts population died during the war, which is pretty substantial for a colony that is still overall pretty small, having that many of your fighting age men die from the war.
00:46:36
Speaker
As far as Indian support goes, the French had the Wabanaki Confederacy, one of some of their most loyal, steadfast allies. And the British, they technically had the Iroquois on their side for this one, but they I don't believe they really participated.
00:46:52
Speaker
i think I read that the warriors like assembled to help the British campaign one year up into like what's now upstate New York and into Canada. But the British support just did not show up.
00:47:05
Speaker
I don't know if they were like promised, like, hey, if you assemble your warriors and go fight the French, like we'll have some British regulars here to help you. I don't know if it was like a promise like that, or if the British colonies just couldn't focus on their defense or raising up enough troops. And they were just hoping the Iroquois would just go fight the French for them.
00:47:23
Speaker
But nothing really happened from the Iroquois perspective. assembling for war and they ended up going back to their own homes. Well, this is a good prelude though for the the initial or the the upcoming alliance between Britain and the Iragor Confederacy as we move more into the French and Indian War.
00:47:40
Speaker
I'm assuming that the these talks between the two the two nations kind of set the foothold for that. Yes, that will definitely come into play further on in the podcast. The Iroquois, obviously, they don't want the English or the French around.
00:47:56
Speaker
They mostly have preference for the British. But, I mean, they don't they don't want either. And they they try to play this like very precarious middle ground of, you know, they don't want to fully give their support ah completely because they don't want to be taken advantage of and used like as as bodies, like if this casualties, cannon fodder.
Population and Military Power Differences
00:48:19
Speaker
And they don't want to completely eliminate one of the... the colonies because then it's just going to be them against one superpower in North America and they can't stand up. They don't have the population for that.
00:48:30
Speaker
So they're trying to play this very unique middle ground and they're composed up of six nations. It's not just like one homogenous ah tribe. The Iroquois is like is also called like the six nations or the five nations. And then around this time, the Tuscaroras tribe joined them. So it became six nations.
00:48:48
Speaker
So they have to balance like all of their different tribes and their needs. Some tribes, especially in the West, I think like the Seneca, start to get a little bit pro-French because they're more in the French zone of influence in the Great Lakes, whereas the easternmost Iroquois nations, like the the Mohawk, are typically...
00:49:07
Speaker
pro-British because they're in close proximity to the British and trading with them in the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York. So they have a very interesting position, very powerful position, but they're not strong enough on their own to take on the British or French. So they have to play this this intermediary, this third party that can sometimes tip the scales a little, they got to be careful that it's to their advantage and not the colonial powers.
00:49:34
Speaker
All right. So I've got a few big events that I want to go over that happen, uh, right around 1750 or in the next couple years that will really precipitate the events that lead to the French and Indian war.
00:49:48
Speaker
So the first one, I want to give a, now like we've we've walked through the history of like the last 100, 200 years of French and British colonization. So what does the picture look like right now?
00:50:01
Speaker
So the French are either control or claim a vast expanse of territory from the St. Lawrence River and some of Acadia down into the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River and out into the Gulf of Mexico.
00:50:17
Speaker
They also claim the Ohio country, which is mostly corresponds with modern day Ohio, although it also includes a little bit of like Western PA and I think Northern West Virginia, as well as like counted as the Ohio country, whenever we refer to that.
00:50:32
Speaker
So most of this empire, this empires colonial empire is following those waterways, you know the super highways of colonial America. Their firmest control is in New France, like the St. Lawrence River Valley, and then New Orleans,
00:50:47
Speaker
and they have some forts spread throughout like the Mississippi and Great Lakes and other like trading posts and areas of influence. Especially in the early around 1720s and onwards, really
00:51:01
Speaker
consolidating and making more forts throughout like the Illinois country and the Mississippi Valley. They make Fort Detroit, or it's not technically called Fort Detroit. It's just referred to as you know Detroit or Detroit.
00:51:13
Speaker
I think it's Fort Pontchartrain is technically what Detroit was called. But they make that in the early seventeen hundreds So this is kind of big arc. You can imagine it like looking at a map.
00:51:27
Speaker
It is now surrounding the British colonies who are all on the eastern seaboard, much more populous, but they're now stuck essentially between the Atlantic and the Appalachian Mountains.
00:51:39
Speaker
At this point, around 1750, all of the British colonies have now evolved into the 13 colonies that we know. you know the The final forms have been taken.
00:51:51
Speaker
Carolina split into North and South Carolina. Georgia was the last colony to be founded in 1733.
00:51:57
Speaker
But they're surrounded by the French and then the ocean. There are two main weaknesses in France's like net, and that is Fort Oswego, which the British were able to build on the south shore of Lake Ontario.
00:52:13
Speaker
That's the the Great Lake in western New York, upstate New York. It's northeast of Lake Erie. They were able to, using the waterways, the Mohawk River and then some other lakes and rivers, build a fort to contest French control of Lake Ontario.
00:52:30
Speaker
And then the other main weakness in this French arc is the forks of the Ohio River, modern day Pittsburgh, where that is a you know massive navigable waterway heading west into the heart of this French claimed area.
00:52:51
Speaker
Let's see what else. Oh, yeah. so just to go back to the big population difference that we were talking about, kind of gave it away. yeah Up to this point, population difference is still massive. So we saw it in the first of these intercolonial wars. We're still seeing it now 50, 60 years later.
00:53:12
Speaker
some numbers for in 1758, during the middle of the French and Indian War, Great Britain had mobilized 50,000 regulars and militiamen in the new world.
00:53:23
Speaker
At the same time, all of new France numbered about 55,000. fifty five thousand So in the middle of the war, once Great Britain kind of got their machine going and we're starting to work out the kinks, their fighting force equaled the population of new France.
00:53:39
Speaker
New France had about 10,000 of an effective fighting force at that time in around 1758. The 13 colonies around this point have 1.5 million people, including slaves. I think slaves make up about 300,000-ish or 200,000 of that number.
00:53:58
Speaker
So that the population difference cannot be understated.
Colonial Governance Approaches
00:54:02
Speaker
And as we mentioned before, French colonies were much more discriminatory with their immigration. Actually, but don't think I mentioned this earlier in the podcast. No, no, I did. No, no, no, I did. My ah ancestor, he i didn't i don't think I actually went through with it. But he immigrated to New France. And upon arriving, he had to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism to be like allowed to stay in the colony and settle down.
00:54:30
Speaker
Oh, wow. They had mandatory conversion too. Wow. They didn't want to ah have any kind of disunity. They they wanted it to be royal Catholic colony. Now, that added a some difficulties for New France, as we talked about, but it did give them some advantages, which is that New France was a very unified, top-down directive. It was royal colony. The governor, like his word went.
00:54:55
Speaker
They didn't. They had the all the same religion, so that was a big unifier. And then on the British side, it's more of like a patchwork of colonies. And there's not so much of a top-down direction, and which is why they couldn't really work together super well in some of these previous French and Indian wars.
00:55:15
Speaker
you know They've got disputes between the colonial assemblies, disputes with the governor, disputes with the king or queen back in England. And that can cause a lot of im like a just stalling in initiative. I guess we kind of see that in the government we have today with sometimes the the bickering between different parts of the government or different parties can end up where like nothing happens.
00:55:39
Speaker
Well, that was also the case for the British colonies at this time. There is a William Livingston who ended up signing the constitution. He was writing around this time and made a note of these advantages and disadvantages between New France and the British colonies. And he quotes,
00:56:00
Speaker
though The French colony contains perhaps not 30,000 men capable to bear arms, yet these are all under the despotic command and sole direction of their governor-general.
00:56:11
Speaker
The strength of our colonies, on the other hand, is divided, and the concurrence of all necessaries both for supplies of men and money divided. like concurrence, like competition, I think.
00:56:23
Speaker
They're all competing for men and money. Jealous are they of each other, some ill-constituted, others shaken with intestine divisions, probably internal divisions, probably old speech for that.
00:56:36
Speaker
And if I may be allowed the expression, parsimonious even to prodigality. Full disclosure, I don't know what parsimonious means, but I'm sure it's a negative adjective.
00:56:47
Speaker
You got to love the the flowery language of the people writing at this time. And then he says, our assemblies are dissident of their governors. Governors despise their assemblies and both mutually misrepresent each other to the court of Great Britain.
00:57:02
Speaker
So the British have a lot more people, but they're a lot more divided as well. Sure. And I think we're going to see this come up a lot throughout the war, where the French military aim is very consolidated.
00:57:16
Speaker
It's clear the orders given to generals are clear. And you don't see, you'll see a bit, but you don't see generals um for commanding different armies competing with each other or having different opinions. Whereas a lot of the mistakes that Britain runs into early in this war our are due to the exact reason. You have different militias, different forces that are under different commands of different states or different generals that don't agree with each other or will sometimes they'll interpret the same orders differently.
00:57:49
Speaker
And also at the same time, different communications, making it back to England that either completely contradict one another or oppose something in a better light than what had actually happened. So i think that's a ton of foreshadowing within that quote.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah. And yeah, we will get into that as we go through this podcast.
Unresolved Colonial Issues and Future Conflict
00:58:10
Speaker
But yeah, clear communication, clear chain of command and respect for authority will go a long way in organizing a military campaign in this time.
00:58:21
Speaker
So as the ink dries on the piece of Ix-La-Chapelle, there are still so many unresolved issues, so many rivalries between France and Britain, both in Europe and the New World.
00:58:36
Speaker
None of them are resolved. There's still lots of territorial disputes in Acadia, in the Ohio country, There are still lots of bad feelings and hatred between the two differences of religion, remembrances of some raids and brutal battles and generations past.
00:58:56
Speaker
And the peace of Ix-Lachappelle doesn't really resolve all of that. All it does is just end the hot war, but the cold war is still actively going. ah That's certainly right. And Jackson, I think you had a French quote for us to, to sum up this episode.
00:59:14
Speaker
Oh yes. Thank you. I had, I had reached the end of my thought and couldn't remember what I was going to close this episode with is a, uh, Charles Bonin, maybe it was Charles Joseph Bonin. He was a French artilleryman and I'd love to do a separate episode on his life and his experiences in the war at some point, like a little detour episode.
00:59:35
Speaker
He arrives in Canada in 1751 and fights throughout the whole French and Indian War and had a like his memoirs published and they're available online for free. But he makes this note and I'll read it in French to flex my ego and then translate.
00:59:51
Speaker
This period that we are going to dive into deeper next episode of the early 1750s and the competition between the two. He says, la de mon aivveo canada or mi seson saintconte you have a point go to get u mon delarey enre la france elanlaaire may is super state on lakaji all to canada um misant television itra ja which is essentially when I arrived in Canada in 1751, there wasn't war openly declared between France and England, but there subsided in Acadia and Upper Canada, lots of jealousy and misinformation and mistrustfulness.
01:00:35
Speaker
And that sums it up a lot. And we're going to dive into our next episode where what are these concrete aggressive expansionist steps that both france and england are doing immediately after this piece sure uh yeah thanks jackson that french was beautiful um ah i totally understood every word you said so uh i think that's that's great and it's also nice having you as a As a fluent French speaker, we can understand a lot of the text and documents at this time period a little bit better. So I appreciate that.
01:01:11
Speaker
um And then also, you know, next episode, we're going to be mentioning one of the first big players of French and Indian War, and that is the founder of our country, George Washington. um but um His career kind of starts with the French and Indian War and ah we'll do some ah deep dive into him and and kind of how he started as ah as a ah mission officer in the Virginia militia and then he eventually moves to the ranks. But as we'll see, he never gets a commission in the British Army, which becomes heavily important for the Revolutionary War. But
01:01:42
Speaker
um We will talk about him and his first expedition to the Ohio Valley to confront the French on behalf of the crown. It's more of a diplomatic confrontation than a military confrontation, which we will see later. So it'll be very interesting.
Preview of George Washington's Role
01:01:57
Speaker
There will be plenty of military confrontation to come. Correct. In this time period, sides like to be gentlemanly and, uh, propose, uh, gentleman terms before any action is taken. So we'll, we'll see a portion of that next episode, but we appreciate you guys tuning into us and we hope we were able to give you a good background of this, this time period, both on the international scale and on the North American continent.
01:02:21
Speaker
Um, I know we breezed through about probably eight wars in this episode. So if you have any any comments or questions, feel free to let us know on ah either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We're on both of those platforms. I think you can leave comments and we can respond to them. Happy to answer any questions or look into more areas you guys have particular interest on. But um other than that, we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us on Tales from the French and Indian War.