KING GEORGE'S WAR

KING GEORGE'S WAR (1744–1748). Nominally at peace from 1713 to 1744, France and England conflicted over boundaries of Acadia in Canada and northern New England and over claims in the Ohio Valley. When the War of Jenkins's Ear (England's commercial war with Spain, 1739–1743) merged into the continental War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), England and France declared war on each other. The French at Louisburg (Cape Breton Island) failed in an early attack in which they attempted to take Annapolis (Port Royal). In retaliation, New Englanders captured Louisburg and planned, with English aid, to attack Quebec and Montreal simultaneously. Seven colonies cooperated to raise forces in 1746, but the promised English aid did not arrive, and the colonials finally disbanded the next year.

Meanwhile, France sent a great fleet in June 1746 to recapture Louisburg and devastate English colonial seaports. However, assorted fiascoes—including storms, disease, and the death of the fleet's commander—frustrated the attempt. British squadrons defeated a second French fleet on the open sea in 1747. Gruesome raids along the New England–New York borders by both conflicting parties and their Indian allies characterized the remainder of the war, with no result except a temporary check on frontier settlement. Weary of futile and costly conflict, the warring parties signed the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1748, granting mutual restoration of conquests but leaving colonial territorial disputes unresolved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Merrell, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. New York: Norton, 1999.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1615–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.