The Colonization of The Americas in the 18th Century

As the 18th century dawned, all the world’s 
eyes turned to America. Once, the resources it promised its colonial masters was its main 
attraction. Now, the societies these powers had planted there rivalled or even surpassed them. 
As constant warfare plunged the European nations into chaos which played out across the Atlantic, 
the people of the Americas – settlers, slaves, and indigenous alike – would increasingly take 
their fates into their own hands. In this video, we will see how colonisation in the Americas 
after 1700 descended into chaotic warfare and violent revolution that spelled the end of 
one age and the dawn of another. By 1776, the map of the American continent, and the 
course of history, would be changed forever. War of the Spanish Succession The 18th century got off to an 
auspicious start when every major European nation fell into a bloody 
conflict over the Spanish throne. The death of Charles II of Spain in November 
1700 left a succession crisis for Spain. Charles and France backed the inheritance 
of 17 year old Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. Such a 
close union between France and Spain was unacceptable to the other European 
powers, especially Britain, the Dutch, and the Holy Roman Empire, triggering 
the War of the Spanish Succession. Most of the fighting played out in Europe, but 
by now any European war was also a colonial war, and the American theatre of the conflict became 
known as Queen Anne’s War. The British with their native allies fought fiercely against the 
French and Spanish with their native allies. The most significant developments of the war saw 
the British capture the French province of Acadia, comprising modern day Nova Scotia, New 
Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, in 1710. Fighting ended with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. 
Philip kept his Spanish throne but lost a lot of his European territory. In the Americas, the war 
had two major consequences. First, the permanent French loss of Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson 
Day to the British, and second, the granting of the Asiento de Negras to Britain by Spain. The 
asiento granted Britain the exclusive right to sell African slaves to the Spanish Empire. 
Spain kept its American empire intact, but the concession reduced Spain to humiliating dependance 
upon Britain for a key piece of its economy. The Iberian Powers in America Emerging from the War of Spanish Succession, Spain 
had taken a beating but Philip V was secure on his throne. The war had demonstrated that Spain’s 
economy and navy had fallen far behind its rivals. Philip’s long reign was one of internal reforms 
to modernise and improve Spain’s government, military, and economy, which he did with 
mixed success. He also pushed to expand Spain’s American Empire, especially into 
Texas where San Antonio was founded in 1718. Key to Spanish imperialism across the New 
World were the Jesuits. This Catholic order took the lead in missionary work and education on 
Spain’s imperial frontier. Many of the frontier settlements and native outreach communities were 
run by Jesuits, and they were often the main link between native subjects and colonial powers. 
However, due to changing attitudes in Catholicism and controversies about Jesuit power, the Jesuits 
fell out of favour with Catholic Europe by the mid-18th century. In 1750 as part of the Treaty 
of Madrid, Spain tried to exchange several Jesuit mission communities in Paraguay with Portugal 
for more valuable territory. The Jesuits, angry at being abandoned and with strong influence over 
the native Guarani, incited the Guarani to rebel. The Guarani Wars saw Portugal and Spain team up 
for several years to suppress the local revolt, and when all was said and done they laid 
the blame firmly on the Jesuits. In 1767, they were expelled from all parts of the 
empire and their property seized by the crown. In the long-run, this would be disastrous for 
Spanish-native relations and would contribute to the weakening of Spanish imperial authority 
that would eventually allow for independence. There were other signs of weakness too. The gold 
and silver mines of Peru, which had made Spanish colonization so profitable at first, were drying 
up by the mid-18th century. The native Inca were also restless with dozens of localised rebellions 
against Spanish rule that caused much anxiety and disruption. Peru’s wealth and importance 
declined in turn, and focus shifted to other areas of colonisation. As if to prove this, 
in 1776, the territory of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and most of Chile was split 
off from the declining Viceroyalty of Peru and reorganised into the Viceroyalty of Rio de la 
Plata. Spain also tried to compensate for its imperial decline with California, which saw its 
first major settlements at San Diego in 1769, Los Angele in 1771, and San Francisco in 1776, 
but Spanish settlement there was always an afterthought and they never did discover the gold 
that would one day make the region so prosperous. Things were a bit more stable for Portugal 
who avoided getting embroiled in most of the colonial wars in the Americas. Its secure 
position down in Brazil and lack of ambition elsewhere minimised conflicts with Britain, 
France, and Spain. The Treaty of Madrid in 1750 firmly recognised Portuguese and 
Spanish interests in South America, reducing the risk of conflict even more. 
As a result, Portuguese colonial affairs were relatively low-key compared to the 
history-shaping events going on elsewhere. The discovery of gold had triggered a gold 
rush in the early 18th century that dominated affairs in Brazil. The discovery of diamonds in 
1729 only reinforced the pivot away from sugar, the centre of which had now shifted 
to the Caribbean, in favour of mining. Reflecting this shift, the colonial capital 
moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro in 1763 to be closer to the mining areas. These mines had 
no less need for slaves than the plantations did. Brazil continued to be the primary destination 
for African slaves heading to the New World, with almost 2 million of them imported 
to Brazil over the 18th century. This continued expansion of the African 
population prompted harsher racial laws to rigidly define racial hierarchy: 
Europeans at the top, mesticos below, Africans below that, and the indigenous peoples 
last of all. Portuguese attempts to forcibly subjugate this dwindling indigenous population, as 
expressed through the laws of 1757, only further destroyed indigenous communities with violence, 
forced resettlement, and legal discrimination. Life in the North American Colonies But the pivotal events of this 
period would come from the north, so let’s pivot back to the British. The early 18th century was the Golden 
Age of Britain’s American Empire, but the cracks that would break it were 
already visible. Each British colony had different government arrangements. 
Each colony’s assembly and governor, if they had either, could expect different 
powers and privileges. While Britain tried to assert more centralised control 
through royal governors, realities on the ground prevented the establishment of a 
consistent administrative structureFor example, the Crown could disallow most colonial laws, but 
not those of Connecticut or Rhode Island. Royal Governors regularly butted heads with the elected 
colonial assemblies who each saw their legitimacy drawn from different sources – the former 
from the Crown, the latter from the people. These inconsistent governing arrangements were 
a nuisance. Take for example the founding of Britain’s 13th American colony in Georgia in 
1732. Initially controlled by a board of trustees, the state had no single governor and no right to 
an elected assembly. The leader of the trustees, James Oglethorpe, envisioned it as a settler 
colony for debtors and convicts who could be granted small parcels of land by the trustees. It 
was also conveniently placed to act as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida. 
Most settlers ended up being regular colonists, not convicts, and for some reason they 
weren’t happy with the prospect of being human shields for Carolina on tiny portions 
of land with no right to representation. The Georgia colonists complained relentlessly and 
frequently defied the trustees. Eventually, the trustees gave up and handed over the colony 
to the crown to be its problem instead. Conflict with native groups was also 
a persistent problem. In Carolina, war with indigenous peoples coupled with drought 
and local unrest raised the possibility of abandoning the territory entirely. In the 
end, the ruling proprietors chose to sell North Carolina back to the crown while keeping 
South Carolina with its valuable plantations. The South Carolinans dug in and waged their own 
war against local indigenous groups. With the support of the Cherokee, the South Carolinians 
brutally suppressed the Yamasee, the Creeks, and the Tuscarora, virtually purging Carolina 
of those groups, but at the cost of about 7% of the white population. The Tuscarora were 
forced to flee north where they sought sanctuary with the Iroquois, who admitted 
them as the 6th nation in their Confederacy, much to the anger of the French and English who 
knew the Tuscarora had no love for Europeans. Regional problems aside, the picture for the 
American Colonies was still very positive. The population was growing rapidly from about 
210,000 in 1690, to 445,000 in 1720, and 1.2 million by 1750. Most of this growth was natural 
reproduction rather than immigration. For example, while only 19% of Chesapeake Bay’s white 
population had been born there in 1668, it was 90% by 1750. These growing colonies began 
spreading inland too, with the first European settlers heading into the Shenandoah Valley 
and opening the doorway for further westward settlement in the late 18th and early 19th 
century. Then there were the cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia which could support 
ever larger populations thanks to the prosperous agriculture around them. By the mid-18th century, 
around 10% of Americans were city dwellers, a sharp increase from early colonial days 
and a number that would only keep rising. Moreover, it was a good life. The average 
white American settler could expect to own more land than a European, pay less tax 
than a European, and have a greater say in government affairs than a European – as 
long as they were a white male, of course. While European cities were piecemeal 
evolutions stretching back centuries, American cities were modern constructs 
often built to a plan and integrated with modern conveniences like pavements, libraries, and 
large ports befitting of a modern trading nation. It is no wonder that many Americans had come to 
believe that life in the colonies was far superior in many measures than life in Europe. This was 
certainly the opinion of Benjamin Franklin who wrote with pride that “every man in New England 
has a vote in public affairs, lives in a tidy, warm house, and has plenty of good food and 
fuel.” Still,he conceded that the Americans were lacking to their English brethren in 
matters of manners, etiquette, and virtue. This, however, was a problem Franklin did his 
fair share in addressing through the foundation of newspapers, colleges, and philosophical 
societies in his native Philadelphia. Resistance to Colonisation Of course, there were plenty of slaves who would 
not paint such a rosy picture of American life. By 1750 there were around 250,000 slaves 
in the 13 North American colonies, mostly in Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, 
and Virginia. These slaves experienced harsh legal discrimination with slim 
prospects of ever buying their freedom. The small free Black population was a distant 
aspiration for the average slave, and many of those free Blacks secured their status through 
their own participation in slave exploitation. Slave resistance was common. Attempted escapes, 
work avoidance, and other small-scale refusal to accept their condition was to be expected, but 
large-scale slave revolts were rare. When they did happen, they were usually brief and 
bloody for everyone involved. The Stono Rebellion of 1739 is a perfect example. Led 
by the literate slave Jeremy Stono, several dozen slaves mostly of Angolan origin set 
out from the Stono River in South Carolina in a desperate march towards Spanish Florida where 
all escaped British slaves were promised amnesty. The escaping slaves killed several dozen whites 
along the way before being intercepted by slave catchers at the Edisto River. Most of the rebel 
slaves went down fighting, including Jeremy Cato. The most consistently effective slave resistance 
was found down in the Caribbean, especially in Jamaica, where escaped slaves managed to form 
maroon societies in the interior which resisted British efforts to recapture them. Between 1728 
and 1740, the Jamaican maroons under Captain Cudjoe in the West and Nanny in the East managed 
to successfully fend off British troops until the British were forced to recognise their nominal 
independence. The British agreed to leave the maroons alone, so long as the maroons stopped 
raiding plantations or helping slaves escape. That was great news for the maroons but 
meant little to the massive slave population who remained. By 1763, an estimated one in five 
people in British controlled America was enslaved, and that number was at least as high if not higher 
when taking the Americas as a whole. The slaves in the Caribbean colonies were producing over 
41,000 tons of sugar by the middle of the century, filling the pockets of their colonial 
masters and leaving nothing for themselves. War in the Colonies With so much valuable trade and 
so many ambitious European powers, America could prove the sources of conflicts 
just as much as conditions back in Europe could. For example, in 1731, a Spanish coast guard ship 
in the Caribbean captured the English Captain Robert Jenkins and sliced off his ear. The wounded 
Captain took his pickled ear back to Parliament, who eventually seized upon the attack to assemble 
a fleet to sail against Spanish America. The War of Jenkins’ Ear did not erupt until 1739, and 
the ear was more of a publicity slogan to mask the real concerns over trade in the Caribbean. 
Still, this new wave of conflict saw tens of thousands of casualties. The most significant 
episode of the war was the British attack on Cartagena in Columbia in 1741. The British 
force, composed mostly of American colonists, suffered tremendous casualties in the campaign 
and lost most of their men to disease or combat. The War of Jenkins’ Ear dovetailed into yet 
another major European conflict in the War of the Austrian Succession. Another chaotic 
inheritance dispute that managed to draw in almost every major European power, it played out 
in America as King George’s War. Again, colonial troops and native allies were essential to the 
fighting. It was a force of mostly New England volunteers who won Britain’s most important 
victory at the Battle of Louisbourg in 1745, cutting off French access to the Saint 
Lawrence River, and indigenous allies made up the backbone of French raids into New 
York and Massachusetts. As much as 8% of Massachusetts’ male population was lost between 
the War of Jenkins’ Ear and King George’s War. The war ended with the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 
in 1748 with no major territorial changes. Louisbourg was handed back to France, much to 
the anger of the American colonists who had fought and died for it. But what the colonists 
wanted didn’t really matter to Britain, who was happy to exchange it for control of the city of 
Madras over in India. A good deal for the British Empire but not for the Americans, who found that 
their sacrifices had been betrayed in the name of imperial ambition. This disconnect between colony 
and imperial master would only keep growing. The Collapse of New France The war was a blow for France who had opened 
the 18th century with a vast American empire and everything to play for. New France stretched 
from Montreal to the mouth of the Mississippi, and the French consistently planted 
new settlements across its breadth, from Detroit in 1701 to New Orleans in 1718. While the Wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession 
shaped relations with European powers, relations with indigenous peoples proved to be just as 
important for the French. The French continued their efforts to ally, incite, remove, or 
destroy native groups as it saw fit. For example, in 1722 the French missionary Sebastian Raele 
who worked among the Wabanaki of New Hampshire incited them to rebel against the British 
settlers. France was angry about border disputes left over from the Peace of Utrecht in 
1713 and realised that the Wabanaki would make a useful weapon against New England. The conflict 
raged for 3 years and claimed hundreds of lives. In other places, the French found themselves 
on the receiving end of native resistance. In November 1729 for example, French colonists at 
Fort Rosalie in Mississippi were attacked by the Natchez after years of declining relations. The 
Natchez killed all of the men but spared the women and slaves before burning the settlement to the 
ground. Believing a native revolt was imminent, French authorities in New Orleans dispatched 
soldiers to destroy nearby native villages, even though most had nothing to do with the attack. 
The Natchez were eventually scattered, with many of them seeking shelter with the Chickasaw in the 
Lower Mississippi Valley. The French continued to wage warfare against the Chickasaw, Natchez, and 
other native groups, many of whom receded support from the British, while using their own native 
allies like the Choctaw, well into the 1750s. However, the fate of French 
colonisation in Louisiana would ultimately be decided 
by events far to the north. On May 28th 1754, the Governor of Virginia 
dispatched a young officer named George Washington to push away a French garrison from the 
headwaters of the Ohio River. What was supposed to be a simple clearing mission descended into 
a skirmish which left a dozen men dead. When word spread of the encounter, both Britain 
and France escalated their military efforts and began preparing expeditions against each 
other. Washington had unintentionally triggered what would later be dubbed the French and Indian 
War. When another major European war broke out in 1756 over Austrian territorial claims, Britain 
and France merely continued their conflict. The wider 7 Years War pitted Britain, 
Prussia, and Portugal against France, Spain, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, among 
others, and naturally the war came to the Americans with the European powers 
and their native allies trading blows. Initially, France got the better of the fighting 
in North America. The situation was so concerning that in June 1754, representatives from 7 
American colonies – New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and 
New Hampshire – met at Albany to discuss plans for their own defence and possible 
alliances with the Indians should France invade. The Albany Congress was the first 
time that representatives of multiple colonies had gathered together on their 
own initiative to direct their own affairs. This was no independence meeting, but some of its 
attendees like Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin would remember how effective such a model of 
colonial cooperation was in years to come. Britain’s military fortunes recovered as the 
war continued through the late 1750s. In 1759, they went on the offensive, sailing an 
army up the Saint Lawrence River and laying siege to Quebec City which 
fell in September that year. In 1760, they marched west and wrested control of 
Montreal from France as well. Britain’s gains in Canada and events back in Europe 
secured its victory in the war by 1763. The resulting Treaty of Paris was the death knell for 
France’s American Empire. Britain would keep all of France’s old Canadian territory and its 100,000 
inhabitants. Meanwhile French Louisiana was split. Everything west of the Mississippi went to 
Spain, while everything east went to Britain including Spanish Florida. Aside from a handful of 
small islands, France’s American empire was over. However, Britain would not have too long to celebrate this victory before 
it too faced colonial collapse. The Path to Revolution Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War 
was expensive in both money and manpower. War debt sat at £161 million and much of the 
fighting in America had been done by American colonists who felt unappreciated by the crown. 
Britain also now faced the cost and challenge of managing an expanded American Empire. As 
well as dealing with an unhappily occupied French population – many would be deported 
from Acadia to Louisiana where they became the Cajuns – Britain also had to deal with new 
waves of native resistance. Conflict with the Cherokee in Carolina in the 1760s and the 
Great Northern Indian Uprising of 1763, which saw a coalition of native groups come 
together to oppose Britain’s new dominance, proved that Britain was still in desperate need 
of money and manpower to secure its empire. King George III felt that the American 
colonies should pay their fair share for this. The Sugar Act of 1764 marked the first 
of a series of taxes and duties imposed upon the American colonists to meet this 
goal. However, Britain had underestimated the confidence and resistance of the colonies. 
The imposition of even a relatively small tax against their wishes triggered unexpectedly 
intense resistance from the colonists. They objected to the taxes being imposed upon them 
by Parliament which they had no representation in. Britain ignored the initial objections and pressed 
on with the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Duties of 1767 imposed upon a variety of goods. 
All together, the new taxes weren’t actually that much. The typical American colonist was still 
taxed less and experienced less government control than virtually anyone in Europe at the time. 
However, a fiercely independent colonial spirit had emerged. Wealthy, stable, and confident, many 
of the colonists felt like they had surpassed Britain and resented the mother country imposing 
anything on them. Protests mounted and Britain was forced to send troops into American cities to keep 
order. On March 5th 1770, this decision turned to tragedy in Boston when British troops opened 
fire on unarmed protestors, killing 5 people. Discontent was now turning to anger. The 
Tea Act of 1773 was designed to limit the trade of smuggled tea and boost revenue 
for the struggling East India Company. Instead, it convinced anti-British leaders in 
Boston to march aboard company ships and dump £10,000 of tea into Boston Harbour. In response, 
Britain closed down all the ports. This had the obvious effect of angering anyone dependent 
upon trade and fuelled anti-British feeling. By now, assemblies and elites across the 
colony were urging support for Boston and calls for full-blown revolt were mounting. In 
1774, a Continental Congress modelled after the Albany conference of 1754 brought 12 of 
the 13 American colonies together to demand a boycott of all British goods. The imposition 
of more strict laws curtailing colonial freedom, known to the Americans as the Intolerable 
Acts, was the breaking point. Negotiation and peaceful protest had failed, and the 
militias were America’s only alternative. In April 1775, British troops met American rebels 
at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The first engagement of the Revolutionary War went in favour 
of the British, as did the second at Bunker Hill in June, but Britain’s victories only seemed to 
unify the colonists against it. The Americans tried and failed to incite Canada to join the 
rebellion, losing 500 men to a disastrous Quebec expedition in December1775, but that did not 
deter the rest of the American colonies. On July 4th 1776, the Continental Congress issued their 
Declaration of Independence, ushering in a new age of American history. It would take until 1783 
for the United States to secure this independence through force of arms, but it would look back 
at 1776 as the moment the country was born. For better or for worse, by 1776 the colonisation 
of the Americas had resulted in the birth of a new nation that would go on to shape world 
history. The independence of the United States foreshadowed the collapse of most European 
colonial empires. Over the next few decades, most of the rest of the Americas from Brazil to 
Bolivia would throw off European colonial rule and usher in a new age of American independence. 
It was, of course, an independence for the European settler communities who had conquered, 
displaced, or subsumed the indigenous peoples who had called the land home when Columbus made 
landfall not 300 years before. Colonisation had irreversibly changed the Americas, and 
like it or not, there was no turning back.