King George's War

      

                                                                                                          This is William Shirley

                King George’s War, also known as the War of Austrian Succession 1740-1748, took place in the mid-18^th century involving France and Great Britain in the colonies of New York, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia. The war began because there was an issue between the boundary lines of these colonies due to the fact that the French and the British wanted dominance in the European colonies and also wanted control over the Ohio Valley. Both of the countries had amalgamated with the Native Americans to attain a copious amount of solders to fight the bloody gruesome war. The attacks for the French and also the British were mainly raids against each other; it was not a planned time or place it was about the element of surprise to gain the upper hand in the battle. In which the Native Americans would help their allies through the land because they knew how to navigate around the grounds, the French and the British were grateful to include them in their army but would still put the Natives in the beginning rows of their troops just because there were not afraid to lose them in the bloody battle.

However, during one of these raids the French were defeated in 1745 by the William Shirley the governor of Massachusetts who seized the French’s fortress of Louisbourg located on the Island of Cape Breton on the province of Nova Scotia. In which the French did not gain back until the end of the war three years later, which was in gratitude to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. During the battles of the British and the French they lost many adult males in the colonies, however, it pierced the northern British colonies a bit more in their population because their loss was about 8 percent. The war was resolved but at the end nothing actually changed because the territorial issues were still occurring and no one was a peace. The treaty would return Louisbourg to France and would help the French empire gain some of their economic status back because it was decreasing.

King George’s War affected the economic status on the French Colonial Empire because Fort Louisbourg was a money maker for fur trade in which ended once it was captured by the British. The fort has access to the St. Lawrence River which was one of Frances major part of the empire in Quebec and Montreal that would rely on to reach the Atlantic Ocean. The British destroyed the communication between the French and the Native Americans when Louisbourg was attained, in which the fur trade was greatly affected. The British had cut off the economic flow because the French merchants could not attain any good to trade with Native Americans for money in which affected the French colonies a great deal. However, when the French were losing loads of money the British were gaining money through the fur trade and became partners with many of the Native Americans in the region. 

Primary Source:  http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/558549