American History - The Fall of the Dutch

By the mid-seventeenth century, Dutch power was its peak.  The long eighty year war with Spain and Portugal had not only resulted in the Dutch Republic permanently securing its independence, it also gave the Dutch unprecedented control over world trade.  With more merchant ships than the rest of the major European powers combined, the Dutch had managed to gain nearly complete control over the trade of wood from the Baltic, furs from North America, sugar from Brazil and the Caribbean, slaves from Africa, and spices and other exotic goods from India and the Far East.  Wielding its financial might, the Dutch had managed to outlast the Spanish, bankrupting their rivals by disrupting the flow of silver from New Spain.  At the top of the food chain, with peace secured, the Dutch proceeded to become complete dumb asses, beginning a period of disarming their military and completely ignoring the rising threats around them.  Of course, it didn’t take long for other groups to begin to take advantage.

The first to successfully challenge Dutch dominance were the Portuguese.  Having been ruled by Spain for some sixty years, Portugal became an independent nation again in 1640 and soon after began trying to reclaim its former empire.  Though unable to re-secure its former dominance in either the Far East or Africa, it did manage to re-secure Angola in 1648 and Brazil in 1654, both lost to the Dutch some four decades earlier.  This created new competition in the African slave market and Caribbean sugar market which hurt the Dutch bottom line.

The second group to challenge the Dutch were the English.  During the English Civil War, a time when the English had a foreign policy of basically, we don’t have time for this shit, the Dutch were real dicks to English shipping and fisherman, pushing them around whenever they felt like it and jacking up prices for goods to ridiculous levels.  However, once England got their shit together, they began building up their navy and passing laws requiring all trade to and from England and its colonies to be done by English vessels.  This didn’t sit well with the Dutch, and as a result the two countries fought three maritime wars between 1652 and 1674.  Though largely ending in draws, the English were able to seize control of New Netherlands, cutting the Dutch out of the North American fur trade, and assert themselves into the African slave trade via the Royal African Company and the spice trade via the East India Company, hurting the Dutch bottom line.

The final group to challenge the Dutch were the French.  Ruled by an autocratic king who dreamed of being king of all of western Europe, he launched a six-year war against the Dutch Republic starting in 1672, nearly conquering the country before being pushed out in a long and costly war.  France attacked again in the Nine Years’ War between 1688 and 1697, which saw the French take on pretty much every major power much to their detriment.  This war was in turn then followed by the War of Spanish Succession between 1701 and 1714, which resulted due to the King of Spain dying without an heir and the king of France trying to merge the two kingdoms.  Again the French aims were thwarted, but at a high cost to the Dutch and their allies. 

The result of all the declining Dutch monopoly and the constant warfare was that the Dutch basically went bankrupt, making it even more difficult for them to continue to dominate global trade.  No challenger took more advantage of this then the English, who by the end of the century had become a major player in the Far East spice trade themselves, mostly thanks to giving the East India Company the right to basically act as its own country.  By the end of the seventeenth century, though still an important global player, they were no longer the pre-eminent super power, replaced by France and England, rivals who would clash for dominance repeatedly over the next century. 

American History - Back Across The Pond

To really understand this period in the English colonies, one has to understand what was happening back across the pond in England, which means one has to understand a little bit of history about England.  Now at the time, most of the monarchies across western Europe were fairly autocratic, meaning whatever the king of queen said went, no ifs, ands, or buts.  People in general viewed those in charge as being so because of the will of God, an idea those in charge were more than happy to support.  However, this wasn’t really the case in England, where the king had to share power with Parliament, a voting group consisting of an upper house filled with nobles and a lower house filled with random asshats elected by anyone who owned a bit of land.  The beginnings of Parliament go all the way back to 1215 and the signing of the Magna Carta after the nobles revolted against a real schmuck of a king named John, but that’s not really important right now.

What is important is that Parliament began to gain more power in England in the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII made up his own version of Christianity so he could divorce his wife and marry his side piece.  Not only did this result in a whole slew of new religions sects popping up, who tended to squabble about everything except for their shared hatred of the once dominant Catholics, but it also brought up a few questions regarding the power of the monarchy.  Namely, if the king can change how God is worshipped at will, is he really in power because of God?  And if not, why the hell is he any different than any other random schmuck.  Well, fast forwarding about a century, such questions began to result in actions. 

In 1625, Charles I became king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.  An old school type guy, he wanted to do whatever the fuck he wanted, which mostly involved ignoring Parliament, raising taxes, and marrying a Catholic, none of which sat well with a lot of people.  Eventually, people got so pissed that Parliament launched a revolt in 1642, which resulted in a nine-year civil war where Charles I got his head cut off and the three kingdoms became a republic nominally under the control of Parliament, though in actuality a dictatorship under the rule of a Puritan named Oliver Cromwell.  Good old Oliver ran things until 1658, when he died of a dick infection, after which is son Richard tried to rule, but he was such an asshat that Parliament invited Charles II, the son of the first Charles, to come back and be king instead in 1660.

Now just because Charles II came back, didn’t mean that he got to do whatever he wanted.  As part of the agreement to restore the monarchy, he had to agree to share power with Parliament.  However, this didn’t work as well as it could, mostly because while Parliament was full of hardcore Anglicans and Puritans who thought Catholics were just the worst, Charles II was pretty okay with them, to the point that his brother and heir, James, converted to Catholicism in 1668.  Eventually the anti-Catholic hysteria in the country and Parliament got so bad that Charles II just said fuck it and dissolved Parliament permanently, doing whatever the hell he felt like until his death in 1685.    

Following the death of his brother, the Catholic James became king.  Wanting to be a good king, he reinstated Parliament, but soon found the general hatred of Catholics conflicted greatly with his personal belief that people should just worship however they damn well pleased.  Eventually, James dissolved Parliament just like his brother, which made him so unpopular that Parliament invited a random Dutch guy named William to come on over and be king instead.  Not only was William a Protestant, but he was also married to James’s Protestant daughter Mary, giving the pair at least somewhat of a claim to the throne.  William and Mary though it would be pretty cool to be monarchs, so in 1688 they popped over with an army, which met little to no resistance because nobody in England really liked James all that much by that point.  James went into exile and William and Mary were crowned co-rulers after a vote by Parliament.  However, as part of the deal, the new rulers had to agree to an English bill of rights.  This bill of rights included a requirement that Parliament exist, free elections, freedom of speech, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments, the right for Protestants to bear arms, and no taxation or laws passed without a vote by Parliament.  Some of you might recognize these things as being rather pertinent to some upcoming parts of American history, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.    

American History - Mississippi

The conquest of the New Netherlands by the English in 1665 wasn’t all that great for the Iroquois, who suddenly lost their primary source for firearms.  However, it was a pretty sweet deal for the French, who suddenly had easy access to the Great Lakes again.  No longer afraid of getting their heads split open, the French voyageurs began travelling further west to find new trading partners.  Along with them came a shit ton of Jesuit missionaries, just as eager to save what they saw as lost souls. 

The Jesuit were a Catholic religious order with an extreme hard on for converting people to their brand of Christianity.  From the earliest days of New France, the Jesuits had been doing their level best to convert as many of the locals as possible, funded by wealthy nobles and merchants eager to make up for the sins involved with being rick dickheads.  It was not exactly safe or easy work.  For some reason, though some of the locals were receptive, for some reason many weren’t down with some busybody just showing up to tell them their gods sucked, resulting in many Jesuits mysteriously disappearing.  Furthermore, even when they were successful, the various epidemics that they brought with them tended to kill off the recently saved and unsaved alike at an alarming rate.  Undeterred, the Jesuits just moved further out into the frontier to find new converts.  For protection, they built missions, which became centers for trade, and eventually towns with both French and native populations. 

When the Iroquois threat ceased in the late 1660s, the Jesuits got on their knees and thanked god for the new opportunity, then got up and asked the government for money, which the aristocracy was totally down to give.  Alarmed over reports of English traders appearing along the Great Lakes, the nobles and merchants who were making a bundle off of the fur trade were eager to build up any kind of French presence in the area.  Over the next decade, numerous missions were built along the Great Lakes.  Unfortunately, this created conflict with many of the French voyageurs already operating in the area, who were trading liquor for pelts, something the Jesuits were not all that happy about.  Having never had access to liquor before, many of the natives went pretty crazy when they drank, causing all sorts of problems for everybody.  This conflict eventually convinced the French government that perhaps depending upon liquor selling asshats and bible thumping douchebags to make first contact with the natives was not the best policy given neither guaranteed a stable supply of furs, which is what they ultimately wanted. 

Beginning in the 1670s, French merchants and government officials began funding professional expeditions, who proved pretty damn successful at creating new alliances with the tribes they met, even at times brokering peace treaties between formerly warring tribes.  This eventually led to a great meeting of chiefs from across the Great Lakes region in 1677, where the French gave them gifts and declared all to be now subjects of the King of France.  The chiefs were rather confused by this, and not really understanding what was going on, just shrugged their shoulders and assumed it was all part of some kind of weird French fur trading ritual.  The English, who had been effectively shoved out of the region, were much less confused.  Rather pissed off, they began selling the Iroquois guns, which restarted that whole cluster fuck.  However, by the French were too dug in, and though some missions and trading posts were destroyed, they were there to stay.

From the Great Lakes region, most of the French exploration that followed were mostly in a westward direction.  Mostly because the Iroquois were killing anyone and everyone in the Ohio Country to the south, which made it less than inviting.  However, the new lucrative trade soon became less lucrative with the arrival of the Ojibwe, who eager to maintain a monopoly over trade with the French, were moving westward and beating the crap out of anyone who got in their way.  As a result, French explorers began moving more southwestwardly into the Illinois Country, eventually making their way down the entirety of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682.

The navigation of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico was a pretty big deal all the way around.  For the French, it created a new opportunity to cheaply move furs out of the interior, while for the Spanish it was a very direct threat to territory they most definitely saw as belonging to them even though the closest settlements they had to the area were in Florida.  Either way, the Spanish weren’t really in a position to stop the French, who still managed to muck it up pretty badly.  Their first attempt to establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1684 resulted in a colony in Texas instead, which was soon after wiped out by the locals.  Several other attempts followed, but none were successful until 1699 when they established the colony of Louisiana.  The success of the colony secured for them an important new trade network and a claim to all of the territory along the Mississippi.