Dynastic wars among European monarchs were constant, involving ruling families in one war after another in unbroken succession.  These wars naturally included the dynastic holdings in colonial America (as well as Asia) and thus the American colonies would get involved in one way or another.  However, the colonial perspective on these conflicts differed from the European perspective, being fought in America around local interests of the English, French and Spanish, and usually drawing the Indians into the conflicts on one side or the other.  A few of these wars stand out because they touched the colonies deeply.

Naturally, where possible, the colonists tried to stay out of the affairs that embroiled European politics.  They were, of course, always well aware of the struggles going on back in Europe.  But the distance from those events gave the colonists a distinct view or take on them.  The colonists were naturally more focused on things closer to home, such as the ongoing troubles with the Indians, and the expansion of the Catholic French into the lands to the West of the Appalachian Mountains, where the Americans were beginning to look for their own expansion.  Then there was also the potential threat from the Catholic Spanish to the south of the colonies.

But in the end, the colonies could not avoid getting involved in the ongoing dynastic struggles between the monarchies of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, and Prussia – and the Netherlands (which was not a monarchy but rather something more like a republic, but which was caught up in the conflicts nonetheless). Mostly these wars involved the English against the French (always) and the Spanish (frequently).  And these European contests had a way of spilling over into the colonies, forcing the colonies to work together to defend themselves militarily.  But this too would add to the growing sense of the colonists that they were not only Virginians or New Yorkers, but also Americans.

This war was fought in Europe over the possibility of a French Bourbon prince, Philip V, becoming the King of Spain (the Habsburg dynasty in Spain finally having expired without an heir).  Philip was the grandson of the French Bourbon King Louis XIV and thus also in line to eventually become the King of France.  The thought that these two large countries should come under the rule of one person was frightening to much of the rest of Europe, especially the English.  A general coalition against the French and Spanish thus gathered and war broke out in 1701.  The final result (the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713) was most importantly that Philip renounced his claim to the French throne and thus became only the King of Spain.

In the colonies, the English forces made up of Royal troops, colonial militia, and their Indian allies, found themselves fully occupied with fighting along the frontiers both in the North, against the French and their Indian allies – and in the South, against the Spanish and their Indian allies. The fighting was rather constant, ferocious, and inconclusive. English and French forts, towns and farming communities, plus Indian villages were attacked here and there, with first one side then the other gaining a brief advantage – or nobody gaining a victory from the effort. The mighty Iroquois Indian confederation (positioned principally in northern and western New York) insisted on remaining neutral between the French and English, though sometimes the Iroquois gave minor aid to the French or to the English.  Mostly the French and English avoided passing through Iroquois territory in order not to upset the neutrality of this strong Indian confederation.

In the end, according to the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, the French lost to the English their scattered French-Canadian settlements in Newfoundland and the more built-up French-Canadian coastal region of Acadia (Southeastern Quebec).  The effect for the Acadian French was the forced Anglicizing of both their Catholic religion and French culture, which would remain a constant sore point for the Acadians, and in the eyes of the English leave the Acadians as questionable citizens within the British Empire.

In the south (in the future Georgia and in Spanish Florida) in addition to the raiding and destruction of coastal settlements of both the English and Spanish (including Spanish Catholic mission stations), the war turned out to be mostly a war of Indian against Indian, tribes being drawn into mutual conflict as allies of either the English or Spanish.  The net result was the huge loss of Indian life in the South – in Spanish Florida and in what would become southern Georgia. The Treaty of Utrecht ultimately changed little in the southern political picture.  But the Spanish were hit so hard in Florida that they never were really able to recover their position there physically.  Ultimately, continuing trouble with Spain in this region was what convinced English King George in 1732 to support Oglethorpe and his associates in their effort to found the English colony of Georgia.

This war was fought between England and Spain, largely over the English right to sell slaves and other goods (for the limited period of thirty years) in the Spanish colonies as part of the terms of the earlier 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.  By the late 1730s both sides claimed that the other party was not properly respecting the asiento (agreement or contract) and war broke out in 1739.  The English played the war cautiously, not wanting English success against the Spanish to draw the French into the war on the side of the Spanish.

The war itself proved nothing in America as well as in Europe.  Oglethorpe's effort to take Spanish St. Augustine in Florida failed (1740), as did a Spanish attack on Georgia (1742).

This war was fought in Europe ostensibly over the question of the right of a woman, Maria Theresa of Habsburg, to the Imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire (Austria).  Actually, it was part of the on-going dynastic struggle among the Bourbon French, the newly Bourbon Spanish, the Habsburg Austrians, and the Hanoverian English for control of particular borderlands here and there in Europe. But the war introduced a new major player in the dynastic game, Hohenzollern Prussia, under the rule of the very capable Frederick (the Great).  France allied with German Prussia in the hopes of further undermining its ancient foe, the Austrian Habsburgs.  But Frederick was more interested in the borderlands (Silesia) between Prussia and Austria.  In the end – and after much expensive, devastating, and inconclusive battling among nearly all the European monarchs – only Prussia really came out of the war with a true gain (Silesia).  France got nothing for its costly efforts except the emptying of the French royal treasury and the deepening of the indebtedness of the French king still trying to cover the costs of his military adventures.  Austria got to keep Maria Theresa in place as Austrian empress.  But Germany would now and for the next century be the cockpit for an ongoing struggle between Austria and Prussia for ascendancy over the many states that made up the land of Germany – which eventually Prussia would win, becoming the centerpiece (1870) for a new German nation.

As for the English colonists in America, the war brought frustration when the vital French fortress of Louisbourg, located on an island at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and thus guarding the maritime entrance to French Canada, was returned to the French in 1748 as part of the final peace settlement (the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle).  Louisbourg had been captured by American colonial troops at some serious cost to those American troops.  But American political interests were of no particular concern to the English monarch, whose sole interest at the time (as with all European dynasties) was how such peace terms played to the political advantage of his own dynasty.

¹Interestingly, these wars were usually known in the colonies by a name which differed from the one used by Europeans!

²English sea captain Robert Jenkins lost his ear in a struggle when the Spanish boarded his ship in 1731 to block the selling of slaves in the Spanish Americas. The displaying of his severed ear in Parliament eventually stirred the English to go to war against the Spanish. Actually, this smaller conflict helped set the stage for the outbreak in 1744 of the larger War of Austrian Succession.