11 sentences with “colonial”

France and Britain fought repeatedly in the 18th century over their colonial possessions.

Native Americans were called "justly conquered" and were enslaved or conscripted as serfs in the service of Spanish colonial masters.

This was a particularly bloody conflict, especially for Native American tribes who allied themselves with French or British colonial forces.

This, in turn, led to widespread piracy and conflict between the powers of Europe in their colonial territories, as they sought to seize profitable lands and assert their respective monopolies.

Sugar quickly became the colonial commodity, enormously valuable in Europe and relatively easy to cultivate (compared to exotic products such as spices, which could only be obtained from Asian sources).

The Bourbons' greatest rivals during most of that period were the Habsburg royal line, who held the Austrian Empire, were the nominal heads of the Holy Roman Empire, and by the 16th century also had control of Spain and its huge colonial empire.

An important note regarding European colonial power: this period saw the consolidation of European possessions in the New World and the beginning of empires in places like India, but did not include major land holdings in Africa, the Middle East or East Asia.

The main impact of the colonial wars between France and Britain in 18th century France was to push the state to the brink of bankruptcy - even as Britain financed its wars through the sale of official national bank bonds, the French state struggled to raise revenue.

Indeed, historians have now shown that not only Europe, but also the world's major states, from Ming China, to the Ottoman Empire, to European colonial regimes in America, all suffered civil wars, invasions or religious conflicts at that time, and that climate was a major causal factor.

In short, the monarch's central government was given more royal power and money than ever before, which contributed to the expansion of military and colonial power in the same period, as well as to a dazzling cultural spectacle of that power exemplified by the French "sun king", Louis XIV.

William of Orange had already been at war with Louis XIV before he came to England, and once he was king, Britain went to war with France in 1690 over colonial conflicts and Louis' constant attempts to seize territory on the continent. The result was more than twenty years of constant warfare from 1690 to 1714.