In 1740, the king of Austria, who also happened to be the Holy Roman Emperor, died without a male heir, creating a bit of a cluster fuck as various people argued over which female heir should inherent the throne. If you want exact details on this argument, you can look them up, just know now they are extremely stupid and pedantic. Anyways, more important then such bullshit is the fact that this put Austria in a rather weak position, creating an opening for other nations who wanted to take advantage to gain greater control and influence amongst the smattering of states which made up Germany and Italy at the time. Within two months of the Austrian king’s death, France, Prussia, Spain, and Sweden were all on the attack, with Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Russia, not wanting these nations gaining more power, jumping in to defend Austria. What followed was an eight year shit show known as the War of the Austrian Succession, which spread to the Caribbean, North America, and India, and resulted in nearly a million people dead with little to nothing to show for it.
In New England, the war was called King George’s War, because George II was the King of Britain at the time and creativity was not really a big thing in New England at the time. The outbreak of war in Europe was pretty much just an excuse to escalate a conflict which had been ongoing since the end of Queen Anne’s War some 27 years earlier. Throughout this period, Britain had been attempting to settle what is today Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, something which was not really all that okay with the French given how close it was to their colonies in Quebec and Nova Scotia. However, lacking the population and the willingness to do their own dirty work, they instead armed the native Wabanaki Confederacy, who lived in the area, and had them periodically attack the New England colonists. This was fine with the Wabanaki given they didn’t really like the British colonists encroaching on the lands where they had lived for generations and because they really had nothing else to trade with the French in order to keep getting much needed European trade goods.
Pretty much all the outbreak of war in Europe did was create the excuse for both sides to be much more open and dramatic regarding the violence which had been taking place anyways. At first this increase in violence was focused in Nova Scotia, which had been split between the British and French following the previous war. The French and their native allies attempted to retake the entirety of the island, but met with failure thanks to reinforcements from Massachusetts which then led an assault on a key French fort, managing to capture it after a bloody two month siege. Unable to retake the fort, the French retaliated by sending the Wabanaki on raids into Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and even into Massachusetts itself, causing a significant loss of life and forcing the New England colonies to build a series of forts to protect their northern frontiers.
Now during this time, at least on paper, the Iroquois Confederacy was allied with the British and their colonies. However, unlike the Wabanaki, the Iroquois did everything they could to avoid being drawn into the conflict other then acting as a buffer on the northwest frontier. Though still able to access European goods via the trade for buckskins, the Iroquois were in a precarious position, their ability to keep control of western New York and Pennsylvania and the Ohio Country based mostly on their fierce reputation built during the Beaver Wars and their continued willingness to torture and murder anyone who trespassed on their territory. However, in truth, they had been weakened significantly by conflict and disease, and its leaders, recognizing that much like the beaver trade their ability to exploit the buckskin trade would not last forever, were beginning the process of shifting their society towards more of a European style of living. This was a big reason they were so friendly to the German Palatine, seeing them as an avenue to learn more about European agriculture and metallurgy. However, this shift was not universally popular and internal rifts were beginning to threaten the long-standing alliances which tied the Iroquois Confederacy together.
While all of this was going on in New England, the war also affected the Caribbean, Florida, and Georgia. Known as the War of Jenkin’s Ear, named after some random sea captain who got his ear cutoff, the war was mostly between Britain and Spain, with British businessmen hoping their government could force Spain to open its colonies to British trade. This involved British attacks on various Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, a failed British invasion of Florida, a failed Spanish invasion of Georgia, and a disastrous attempt by the British to attack Spanish shipping in the Pacific, which though unsuccessful, did result in renewed British interest in the Pacific Ocean the possibility of a Northwest Passage.
In the end the war ground to a stalemate, and with many of the nations involved facing bankruptcy, the British forced a peace in 1748, which though largely returning everything to the way it was prior to the war beginning, did establish the British as the world’s pre-eminent superpower. However, it did little to assuage the issues and disagreements which led to the war in the first place. The peace was especially unpopular in New England, where an estimated 10 percent of the adult male population had perished for apparently no reason whatsoever given the fort they captured in Nova Scotia was returned to the French and the Wabanaki continued raiding their settlements much as they had before.
