American History - British Dominance

The shift in power from England being one of multiple kingdoms on the island of Great Britain to being the center of the United Kingdom was not a sudden affair.  The various competing factions and England’s attempts to dominate them stretched back centuries, and was only made more complicated by the religious schisms that dominated the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  By the start of seventeenth century, England was firmly in control of Ireland and Wales, with the latter being fully absorbed in 1535, but Scotland was still an independent kingdom, at least until 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I of England died without children, leaving the English crown to her cousin, King James VI of Scotland.  However, though the two kingdoms had the same king, they remained otherwise completely separate, with their own laws, finances, and parliaments.  This state of affairs did not come to an end until 1707, when following a massive financial loss related to a failed Scottish scheme to establish a colony in what is today Panama, the Scottish parliament acquiesced to English demands to unite the two kingdoms, and hence the United Kingdom.

The declining power of the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic in the latter half of the seventeenth century led to a significant power vacuum in Europe which for a time was largely filled by France, though this ascendency was significantly checked by the War of the Spanish Succession between 1705 and 1715.  In comparison, the British focused much less on dominating Europe, and much more building a colonial trading empire.  When the English Channel creating a buffer between them and the massive armies on the continent, they focused on building a professional navy, which gave them not just the ability to protect their own shores, but also the ability to project their power around the globe.  Not having to be directly involved in the conflict and having access to abundant natural resources from their colonies, they built themselves into a center of manufacturing to support their allies.  As such, by the end of the war, they were a maritime, commercial, and financial world power. 

Much like the Dutch Republic, who were completely bankrupt by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the British recognized that one did not have to control territory to dominate Europe, they just needed to control the flow of important trade goods.  As such, the concessions gained by the British were focused on expanding colonial power in the New World, Africa, and India and opening up trade routes previously closed.  The most significant of these was gaining the right to ship goods between Spanish ports in the New World, which had been limited to only Spanish ships for the better part of two centuries.  As a result, the British quickly began to dominate both the important Atlantic triangle trade and the Far East trade, the latter via the massive corporation known as the British East India Company which over time came to control large parts of India.

This rather rapid shift in status had a profound effect on many parts of the United Kingdom.  The financing of a large powerful navy and small professional army required a large amount of money, which was largely gained via a shift from taxing property to customs and excise taxes.  The war and new dominance in trade stimulated rapid growth in the manufacturing sector, which led to the creation of a much larger middle class and a more powerful banking class.  This in turn aided in the development of a culture much more critical of the aristocracy, which over time greatly increased the power and influence of the British parliament as the primary decision-maker in British politics and foreign policy.  By the middle of the seventeenth century, the United Kingdom was not just the most powerful European nation, it was also the most democratic.    

Of course, this rise did not go unchallenged.  Though definitely weakened by various wars, the French remained the primary rival for the British, also controlling a global colonial empire.  However, unlike the British, the French faced more immediate threats in Europe, limiting their ability to focus on a more global worldview.  As a result, the War of the Austrian Succession from 1740 through 1748 and the Seven Years’ War of 1756 through 1763 saw the British increasingly gain the upper hand, with the latter conflict resulting in a near complete loss of French territory in both the New World and Far East.  The collapse of France as a viable rival to counter British global dominance resulted in the United Kingdom being the dominant global super power for nearly the next two centuries.         

American History - Muskogean Mayhem

In 1542, the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon died of a fever in what is today the southeastern United States, ending three years of his expedition wandering randomly around, looking for an imaginary city of gold and in general being a dick to the local Muskogean people he encountered.  Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of troubles for said locals, whom soon after falling sick with various Old World diseases, which in less than a decade or so killed some 90 percent of the population.  As you can probably expect, this somewhat destabilized things, by which I mean all traces of the old civilizations that once called the area home disintegrated, leaving behind a post-apocalyptic shitshow.  Luckily, if you can say that, the region had little of value to the Europeans, having no gold or beaver, and tribes from neighboring regions were less than willing to travel into the region for reasons related to holy shit everyone there just died, with the exception of a few Iroquoian peoples like the Cherokee.  As such, aside from a few coastal raids by the Spanish to capture slaves, the region was largely left alone for a century or so, giving the Muskogean peoples the needed time to rebuild, forming new tribes, nations, and cultures.

Unfortunately, this all came to an end in the latter half of the seventeenth century as sugar production grew in the Caribbean, greatly increasing the demand for slaves.  As a result, the English began trading with various tribes along the Atlantic coast for slaves, who were overall more than happy to provide them because they were enslaving each other anyways and it gave them access to all sorts of sweet European goods.  As one can probably imagine, this did not work out well for anybody, except the English, with a number of tribes being wiped out by and those remaining coalescing into several large confederacies, the most dominant being the Muskogean speaking Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, and the Iroquoian speaking Cherokee.  Horrified by the violence, the English gave up on enslaving the native peoples.  Okay, not really, they actually did it because the demand for buckskins exploded, making the natives more valuable as deer hunters rather than slaves, a value that only increased when a smallpox epidemic ripped through the region in 1738, killing some 50 percent of the native population.  With the native slave trade drying up, the growing plantations in South Carolina shifted to importing more African slaves, which was somehow even worse, since at least when a native slave escaped, they could at least walk home. 

Anyways, the buckskin trade caused a new focus on the region by both the English from the east and the French from the west, who found strong trading partners in the Chickasaw and Choctaw respectively.  Desperate to control the valuable buckskin trade, and prodded on by their respective European allies who were more than happy to supply all the guns and ammo they needed, these two groups fought a forty-two year long war from 1721 to 1763, which historians later creatively called the Chickasaw Wars.  You can probably guess who won just by the name.  Despite being fewer in number, the English-backed Chickasaw managed to fend off attacks by both the French allied Choctaw and Illinois Confederacy, though the fact the Choctaw fell into a civil war from 1747 to 1750 over whether or not to switch sides likely helped quite a bit.  Either way, by the middle of the century the deer were largely gone and both sides were fairly devastated and dependent upon European goods for survival. 

Further east, the Creek and Cherokee fared little better.  As deer populations declined, desperate to retain their access to European trade goods, the two groups increasingly came into conflict with one another.  During this period, both sides encouraged their women to marry British traders, hopeful that it would help secure better trading rights.  The offspring of these unions, who had a knowledge of both the American and European worlds, later rose to leadership positions, speeding along the adoption of many European practices, including farming techniques and metal forging, which in turn allowed both groups to later stabilize their positions.  Though by the 1770s, increasingly in debt, many bands of both groups began selling their lands to colonists and moving further west and south.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the number of European colonists continued to grow, moving inland, at first to hunt deer, and then to establish new plantations and farms.  Though they too at times came into conflict with both the Cherokee and Creek, both sides avoided significant conflict, so as not to disrupt the value buckskin trade.  In 1733, the colony of Georgia was founded in what had once been a no man’s land between the British colony of South Carolina and Spanish Florida, an area which had largely been depopulated during Queen Anne’s War.  Originally created by philanthropic members of the British Parliament to be a colony for the poor of Britain to have a new start, it was split into small parcels and slavery was made illegal.  However, by 1750 all of that had gone out the window and it was basically just a new version of South Carolina, with Savannah a new major trading port and gateway for further European incursions into native lands.         

American History - Buckskin

Beginning in 1709, a fun little disease called rinderpest spread across Europe, ravaging the cattle herds of many nations and creating a leather shortage that would persist throughout the eighteenth century.  In total three major outbreaks of the disease occurred between 1709 and 1786, which wasn’t all that great given leather was a rather important product at the time, being used for shoes, harnesses, saddles, book binding, hats, gloves, upholstery, and a shit ton of other things you don’t really think much about until there’s a shortage of them.  As a result, demand skyrocketed for alternative sources for leather, and as was common at the time, the New World quickly became the primary source for said alternatives. 

Now while most European powers of the time tended to get the most hot and bothered about the trade for beaver pelts when thinking about North America, trade for other types of pelts existed as well, such as fox, rabbit, mink, and deer just to name a few.  The most prominent of these other pelt markets was the deerskin market, also called buckskins, because they could be made into a soft leather perfect for clothing, gloves, and bookbinding.  First established in the 1680s, the buckskin trade was particularly prominent in what was to become the southeastern United States, an area that had lots of deer and few to any beavers, though it was somewhat secondary to the more profitable market of Native American enslavement.  However, that all changed thanks to rinderpest, which quickly made the buckskin trade pretty damn important, to the point that we still refer to money as bucks to this day.

Anyways, the sudden demand for deer pelts completely upturned the social order of the various native tribes who engaged in it, which had been upturned pretty significantly up to this point already.  In the northeast, groups like the Iroquois, who found themselves increasingly disengaged from the westward moving beaver trade, cutting them off from easy access to valuable and now essential European trade goods, found themselves with a new product to sell, which they began selling with a gusto, returning to the portions of the Ohio Country which they had depopulated a few centuries earlier, only to depopulate again as they fought rivals like the Shawnee for dominance over valuable hunting grounds.  Meanwhile, in the southeast, the buckskin trade sparked a veritable battle royale which lasted for the better part of the century, pitting various tribes and nations against each other in a bloodbath that did nothing but weaken all of them.  The only good thing to come out of it was that Europeans came to see them as being more valuable as hunters rather than slaves, though this was less than great for Africa given the colonists just began importing more slaves from that continent to meet there needs.

Things only got worse as time moved on.  The demand for buckskins was so great that the colonists themselves began to get in on the act.  Arriving new immigrants, many of them Scot-Irish, arriving to find most of the good farmland along the Atlantic coast already taken, began mounting hunting expeditions into the Appalachian Mountains and beyond, which in turn led to them starting to carve out farms in what they viewed as a largely uninhabited wilderness, drawing even more people with the promise of new opportunities.  This of course put them in conflict with the natives who already controlled those territories and valuable hunting grounds, sparking a never-ending tit for tat of incursions, kidnappings, and killings beyond the control of the colonial governments.

By the middle of the century, many of the once rich hunting grounds in the area of the Appalachian Mountains were completely depleted of deer, putting many native tribes in a bit of a bad position.  Since individuals were allowed to buy European goods on credit which could then be paid off by the next autumn’s deer hunt, they were forced to either travel further west to hunt, putting them in conflict with other tribes, or increasingly sell their lands to colonists to pay their debts.  The near extinction of the deer in many areas also caused the near extinction of the predators who depended upon them, which in turn caused a ridiculously large explosion in the squirrel population, which had devastating affects on the farms of colonists and natives alike.  Though the buckskin trade began to decline by the end of the eighteenth century, as cattle supplies returned to levels able to meet demand and deer populations plummeted, it continued into the early nineteenth century.