Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

England had attacked France in two costly wars: in King William's War
and Queen Anne's War, which had ended with the Peace of Utrecht in
1713. Now Walpole resolved that the peace would remain unbroken. The
French, despite their losses in Canada at the Peace of Utrecht, were able to
construct a mighty defensive fort at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, to
guard against further English aggression against Quebec. In a far greater
feat, they explored and began to develop the Mississippi and the Ohio valleys.
New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718, and the fur trade
developed in the Ohio Valley and defensive forts built there. France not
only had survived the English attempt to throw her out of the New World,
but was able to expand its settlements and outcompete its rivals.
The professional patriots, the warmongers, and Francophobes were looking
for any excuse for aggression, and they thought they had found their
opportunity in the War of the Polish Succession, which broke out in Europe
in the 1730s. Walpole, seeing no English interest involved, stood out alone
for peace—even against King George II, John Carteret, and other opposition
leaders in the House of Commons. Resisting the war pressure successfully,
Walpole proudly told Queen Caroline in 1734: "Madame, there are
fifty thousand men slain this year in Europe and not one Englishman."
The war party was unable to prevail in the War of the Polish Succession,
though it did drag Britain into war with Spain amidst whipped-up hysteria
over Captain Jenkins' ear. For the war party, such an opportunity to grab
Spanish territory was even as welcome as a war with France. Effective in
leading the war hawks in the Commons was the fiery and maniacal orator,
William Pitt.
The War of Jenkins' Ear was a classic example of the use of patriotic
myth to whip up popular hysteria fomented for other goals. In 1731, Captain
Robert Jenkins returned from the Caribbean with a harrowing tale that
Spanish officers in searching his ship had cut off his ear. This tale was taken
up by the war crowd seven years later, even though Jenkins' ear was apparently
intact, and used by the prowar press to foment aggression against
Spain.
The actual mainspring of the aggressive war against Spain had nothing to
do with national honor or Captain Jenkins. It stemmed instead from longstanding
maneuvers by leading London merchants to acquire a monopoly of
the West Indian slave trade. In 1663, Charles II had granted the Royal
African Company the exclusive monopoly of carrying slaves from Africa to
the English colonies, as well as the exclusive right to own land in Africa.
After waging a successful war against a competing Dutch company to gain
a monopoly of the slave trade, the Royal African Company after 1680 specialized
in slave exports to New Spain. The Spanish government sold to
private firms the coveted privilege of the assiento—the exclusive monopoly
of supplying Spanish colonies with slaves. And the Royal African Company
216