‘Giving Peace to Europe’

Abstract

This chapter looks at colonial attitudes to British foreign policy during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–8), the brief peace of 1748–57, and the Seven Years War (1757–63). It touches on themes including the balance of power, the Hanoverian connection, the Austrian, Prussian, and Dutch alliances, the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, and the Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) and Paris (1763). It follows how colonists understood struggles with France and Spain in the Americas within these larger conflicts, from the capture of Louisbourg by the Massachusetts militia in 1745 to events in the Ohio Valley in the mid-1750s, and came to view the colonies as part of the European geopolitics system. And it explores how colonial and metropolitan sentiments about European warfare began to diverge during these conflicts.