Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Empire, 1700–1713

Just three years after the War of the League of Augsburg, Indians took advantage of another conflict rooted in faraway places to bear down on English ships, settlers, and settlements, to forge a homeland ruled by its flourishing people. Manipulating English and French neighbors engrossed in debilitating feuds of their own had proven such an effective method of reinforcing sovereignty in 1676 and 1688 that Indians again rallied to execute it after the War of Spanish Succession reached their shores in 1702. The success of their blue-water strategy lay in its successful consolidation of an expanding militancy afloat and ashore with an evolving diplomacy of transatlantic politics. As it did twice before, the strategy forced English subjects from the borderlands to Boston to London to entertain troubling questions about their empire’s wherewithal in the face of Native power.