The Thirteen Colonies by Louis B. Wright

Author:Louis B. Wright [Louis B. Wright]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/United States/Colonial Period
ISBN: 9781612308111
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, followed by the death of Louis XIV in 1715, brought a promise of peace to Europe and the colonies. A king obsessed with notions of military grandeur no longer governed France. Louis XIV had outlived his son and grandson, and the new king, Louis XV, the Sun King’s great-grandson, was five years old.

England also had a new ruler. Queen Anne had died on August 1, 1714, without an heir. Her nearest of kin was a Stuart and a Catholic and therefore unacceptable, but she had a distant relative who was a Protestant. He was a German princeling, George, elector of Hanover, the great-grandson of James I of England through the union of James’ daughter Elizabeth with Frederick, the elector of the Palatinate. Although George could speak no English, he was invited to take the throne. His accession introduced a system of rule by prime minister and cabinet that has persevered. The English people allowed the accession of a German king, but they showed little enthusiasm for the new monarch. At length, however, King George made amends by taking an English mistress too.

The formal treaty of peace in 1713 did not end all warfare on the American frontiers. Although delegates to the peace conference in Utrecht might sign an infinite number of papers, they could not control forces that had been unleashed in the North American wilderness. The English, French, and Spaniards living in the colonies continued to eye each other warily, and they often incited Indian allies in order to infringe on the others’ territory. High stakes were involved, not only in the great territorial gamble of empire, but for merchants and traders in America. By 1713, trading centers existed in all the colonies, and in some an urban life had developed, with rich merchants eager to expand their commercial interests in the back country and overseas.

The eighteenth century is often described as the Age of Enlightenment because of its achievements in science, letters, and philosophy, but it might also be called the Age of Trade. The explorations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were now bearing fruit. All the great maritime powers - England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland - had established overseas bases and were exploiting territories in Asia, Africa, and America. Although the wars that ravaged Europe - and the colonies overseas - through much of the eighteenth century frequently involved dynasties, the struggle to control commercial development and exploitation lay behind political rivalries. Commerce was to the eighteenth century what the Crusades were to the Middle Ages, an enterprise that absorbed the energies and aspirations of ambitious members of society.

In the British colonies of North America, the greatest urban development occurred in New England, which by the first quarter of the eighteenth century had a large number of towns depending upon commerce with the outer world. New York and Pennsylvania were becoming trading areas with a profitable back country that was a source of agricultural products for export. In the

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