Invasion of Georgia (1742)
The 1742 Invasion of Georgia was a military campaign by Spanish forces, based in Florida, which attempted to seize and occupy disputed territory held by the British colony of Georgia. The campaign was part of a larger conflict. Local British forces under the command of the Governor James Oglethorpe rallied and defeated the Spaniards at the Battle of Bloody Marsh and the Battle of Gully Hole Creek, forcing them to withdraw. Britain's ownership of Georgia was formally recognized by Spain in the subsequent Treaty of Madrid; the colony of Georgia had been an issue of contention between Britain and Spain since its foundation in 1733. Spain claimed the territory for its own colony of Florida and disputed what was regarded as an illegal occupation by the British settlers; the Convention of Pardo in 1739 had attempted to settle the dispute, but Spain still refused to abandon its claim. When the War of Jenkins' Ear broke out that same year, Spain began drawing up plans for an invasion; the British governor of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, organized a small force and launched a British invasion of Florida in 1740, hoping to preempt a Spanish invasion of Georgia.
The British besieged St. Augustine but were forced to withdraw; the stage was set for the Spanish commander Manuel de Montiano to launch his long-awaited attack on Georgia. Because of the pressing demands on British resources in other theatres, no further reinforcements or aid could be dispatched to defend the colony from attack. Spanish governor Don Manuel de Montiano commanded the invasion force, which by some estimates totalled between 4,500 and 5,000 men. Of that number 1,900 to 2,000 were ground assault troops. Oglethorpe's forces, consisting of regulars and native Indians numbered fewer than 1,000; the garrison at Fort St. Simons resisted the invasion with cannonade, but was not able to prevent the landing. On the 5 July 1742 Montiano landed nearly 1,900 men from 36 ships near Gascoigne Bluff, close to the Frederica River. Faced with a superior force, Oglethorpe decided to withdraw from Fort St. Simons before the Spanish could mount an assault, he ordered the small garrison to spike the guns, to slight the fort, to deny the Spanish full use of the military asset.
The Spanish took over the fort the following day. Montanio began gathering intelligence about the strength of British opposition. After landing troops and supplies, consolidating their position at Fort St. Simons, the Spanish began to cautiously reconnoiter beyond their perimeter, they found the road between Fort St. Simons and Fort Frederica, but first assumed the narrow track was just a farm road. On July 18, the Spanish undertook a reconnaissance in force along the road with 115 men under the command of Captain Sebastian Sanchez. One and a half miles from Fort Frederica, Sanchez' column made contact with Oglethorpe's soldiers, under command of Noble Jones; the ensuing skirmish became known as the Battle of Gully Hole Creek. The Spanish were killed or captured. Oglethorpe's forces advanced up Military Road in the direction of Fort St. Simons, in pursuit of the retreating Spanish. Spanish prisoners revealed that a larger Spanish force was advancing in the opposite direction, along the road from Fort St. Simons to Frederica.
Oglethorpe left to gather reinforcements. The British advance party, in pursuit of the defeated Spanish reconnaissance force, engaged in a subsequent skirmish fell back in face of advancing Spanish reinforcements; when the British reached a bend in the road, Lieutenants Southerland and Macoy ordered the column to stop. There, the regiments and allied Indians took cover in the dense forest, they watched as the Spanish broke ranks, stacked arms and, taking out their kettles, prepared to cook dinner. The British forces attacked the Spanish off-guard, killing two hundred Spaniards; the Battle of Bloody Marsh blunted the Spanish advance, proved decisive. Oglethorpe was credited with the victory. Montiano stood poised for a further advance. Oglethorpe continued trying to dislodge them from the island. A few days approaching a Spanish settlement on the south side, he learned of a French man who had deserted the British and gone to the Spanish. Worried that the deserter might report the true number of the small British force, Oglethorpe spread out his drummers, to make them sound as if they were accompanying a larger force.
He wrote to the deserter, addressing him as if a spy for the British, saying that the man just needed to continue his stories until Britain could send more men. The prisoner, carrying the letter took it to the Spanish officers, as Oglethorpe had hoped; the timely arrival of British ships reinforced the misconception among the Spanish that British reinforcements were arriving. The Spanish left St. Simons on 25 July. In the months after the invasion, Oglethorpe considered launching further counter-attacks against Florida, but circumstances were not favourable; the focus of the war had shifted from the Americas to Europe and arms and troops were not available. The region descended into an uneasy peace punctuated by minor skirmishes; the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the war in 1748 and recognised the status of Georgia as a British colony, formally ratified by Spain in the subsequent Treaty of Madrid. Its position was further secured in 1763 when Florida became a British possession as part of the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years' War.
The War of Jenkins' Ear is commemorated annually on the last Saturday in May at Wormsloe Plantation in Savannah, Georgia. Fo
Galiot
A galiot, galliot or galiote, was a small galley boat propelled by sail or oars. There are three different types of naval galiots. A galiote was a type of French flat-bottom river boat or barge and a flat-bottomed boat with a simple sail for transporting wine. Mediterranean, Historically, a galiot was a type of ship with oars known as a half-galley from the 17th century forward, a ship with sails and oars; as used by the Barbary pirates against the Republic of Venice, a galiot had two masts and about 16 pairs of oars. Warships of the type carried between two and ten cannons of small caliber, between 50 and 150 men, it was a Barbary galiot, captained by Barbarossa I, that captured two Papal vessels in 1504. North Sea A galiot was a type of Dutch or German 20 to 400 GRT trade ship, similar to a ketch, with a rounded fore and aft like a fluyt, they had nearly flat bottoms to sail in shallow waters. These ships were favored for coastal navigation in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. To avoid excessive leeway, or leeward drift due to their flat bottoms, smaller vessels were fitted with leeboards.
After 1830, a modernised type of galiot was developed that featured a sharper bow similar to a schooner. These vessels had leeboards. Naval ships A galiote was a French type of naval warship that might have two masts with lateen sails and a bank of oars, it might be small with only one mast, be little more than a large chaloupe or launch. A galiote a bombes was a French term for a galiote armed with a mortar and functioning as a bomb vessel, i.e. a vessel armed to shell coastal forts and the like. A galiote was a horse-drawn barge pulled along canals or rivers banks, which were popular in France from the mid-17th century through the 19th century. A galiote, or scute was a type of flat-bottomed boat with a simple sail that traveled French rivers transporting wine in the Anjou region as far as Les Ponts-de-Cé. Flatboat Warship Citations ReferencesCarse, Philip The Age of Piracy.. Jonas, Wolfgang. Nordfriesisches Schiffahrtsmuseum Husum, ed. Schiffbau in Nordfriesland. Schriftenreihe des Nordfriesischen Schiffahrtsmuseums Husum.
1. Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft. Pp. 38–39. ISBN 3-88042-522-1. Poitrineau, Abel La Loire – les peuples du fleuve.. Winfield, Rif & Stephen S Roberts French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786 - 1861: Design Construction and Fates.. ISBN 9781848322042 Pictures of a 1738 Baltic Sea galiot model High resolution photos
Robert Jenkins (master mariner)
Robert Jenkins was a Welsh master mariner, famous as the protagonist of the "Jenkins's ear" incident, which became a contributory cause of the War of Jenkins' Ear between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain in 1739. Returning home from a trading voyage in the West Indies in command of the brig HMS Rebecca in April 1731, Jenkins' ship was stopped and boarded by the Spanish guarda-costa or privateer La Isabela on suspicion of smuggling. According to some accounts, her commander, Juan de León Fandiño, had Jenkins bound to a mast sliced off his left ear with his sword and told him to say to his King "the same will happen to him if caught doing the same". Another account, in the Pennsylvania Gazette for 7 October 1731, attributes the assault to the Spanish lieutenant Dorce, who "took hold of his left Ear, with his Cutlass slit it down. On arriving in Britain on 11 June, Jenkins addressed his grievances to the king, gave a deposition, passed to the Duke of Newcastle in his capacity as Secretary for the Southern Colonies.
In his deposition of 18 June 1731, Jenkins stated that the Spanish captain, "took hold of his left Ear and with his Cutlass slit it down, another of the Spaniards took hold of it and tore it off, but gave him the Piece of his Ear again." This report was forwarded to the Commander-in-chief in the West Indies, who complained of Jenkins' treatment to the Governor of Havana. At the time the incident received little attention, but it was reported in The Gentleman's Magazine in June 1731: The Rebecca, Capt. Jenkins, was taken in her passage from Jamaica, by a Spanish Guarde Costa, who put her people to the torture. Being dismissed, the Captain bore away for the Havana, which the Spaniards perceiving stood after her, declared, that if she did not go for the Gulf, they would set the Ship on fire; the Captain laid his case before his Majesty. There is no evidence corroborating the oft-repeated story that in spring 1738 Jenkins told his story with dramatic details before a committee of the House of Commons, producing his severed ear In any case, as a result from the petitions from West India merchants, the opposition in Parliament voted on 28 March to ask the King to seek redress from Spain.
By summer of 1739, all diplomatic efforts having been exhausted, King George II agreed, on 10 July, to direct the Admiralty Board to initiate maritime reprisals against Spain. The Gentleman's Magazine reported that on 20 July 1739 Vice Admiral Edward Vernon and a squadron of warships departed Britain for the West Indies, that on 21 July, "Notice was given by the Lords of the Admiralty, that in pursuance of his Majesty's Commission under the Great Seal, Letters of Marque or General Reprisals against the Ships and Subjects of the King of Spain, were ready to be issued." However, the formal declaration of war against Spain was withheld until Saturday 23 October 1739. Jenkins was subsequently given the command of a ship in the British East India Company's service. In 1741 he was sent from Britain to Saint Helena to investigate charges of corruption brought against the acting governor, from May 1741 until March 1742 he administered the affairs of the island. Thereafter he resumed his career at sea.
He is said to have preserved his own vessel and three others under his care during an engagement with a pirate vessel. As for Juan de León Fandiño, he was taken with his snow the San Juan Bautista consisting of 80 crew, described as "Indians and mulattoes" by Captain Thomas Frankland, of HMS Rose, on 4 June 1742. Frankland recaptured three prizes taken by Fandiño. At the time The London Gazette wrote "Captain Frankland has sent him to England, he is now in Custody at Portsmouth". After 19 months in captivity, Fandiño and his son were released by virtue of an agreement to exchange prisoners signed in Paris, they arrived in San Sebastián on 19 January 1744 and proceeded to Cádiz with the object of returning to Havana. The confrontational nature of British politics in 1738 led many who were opposed to launching a naval war against Spain to doubt the truthfulness of Jenkins' story. No serious research was undertaken until the late 1880s when John Knox Laughton, the founder of the Navy Records Society, uncovered contemporary letters from Jamaica in September and October 1731 which substantiated Jenkin's account of his losing an ear to a Spanish Guarda Costa on 9 April 1731.
Writing from on board HMS Lion at Port Royal, Jamaica on 12 October 1731 to the Admiralty in London, Rear-Admiral Charles Stewart confided, "I was a little surprised to hear of the usage Captain Jenkins met with off the Havana." Earlier, on 12 September 1731, Rear-Admiral Stewart had written to the Governor of Havana to complain of the "violence and villainies" of a Guarda Costa commander named Fandino who, "about the 20th April last sailed out of your harbor in one of those Guarda Costas, met a ship of this island bound for Britain.
Cuba
Cuba the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean meet, it is east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti and north of both Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is capital; the area of the Republic of Cuba is 110,860 square kilometres. The island of Cuba is the largest island in Cuba and in the Caribbean, with an area of 105,006 square kilometres, the second-most populous after Hispaniola, with over 11 million inhabitants; the territory, now Cuba was inhabited by the Ciboney Taíno people from the 4th millennium BC until Spanish colonisation in the 15th century. From the 15th century, it was a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, when Cuba was occupied by the United States and gained nominal independence as a de facto United States protectorate in 1902.
As a fragile republic, in 1940 Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in a coup and subsequent dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Open corruption and oppression under Batista's rule led to his ousting in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement, which afterwards established communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba; the country was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war nearly broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Cuba is one of few Marxist–Leninist socialist states, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of numerous human rights abuses, including arbitrary imprisonment. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, it is a multiethnic country whose people and customs derive from diverse origins, including the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the long period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves and a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Cuba is a sovereign state and a founding member of the United Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African and Pacific Group of States, ALBA and Organization of American States. The country is a middle power in world affairs, it has one of the world's only planned economies, its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco and skilled labor. According to the Human Development Index, Cuba has high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America, though 67th in the world, it ranks in some metrics of national performance, including health care and education. It is the only country in the world to meet the conditions of sustainable development put forth by the WWF. Historians believe the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language, however "its exact derivation unknown"; the exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as'where fertile land is abundant', or'great place'. Fringe theory writers who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Taíno, the Guanahatabey and the Ciboney people; the ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, with the earliest sites dated to 5,000 BP. The Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D; when Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having an estimated population of 150,000. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as hunter-gatherers. After first landing on an island called Guanahani, Bahamas, on 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus commanded his three ships: La Pinta, La Niña and the Santa María, to land on Cuba's northeastern coast on 28 October 1492. Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa. Other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which became the capital.
The native Taíno were forced to work under the encomienda system, which resembled a feudal system in Medieval Europe. Within a century the indigenous people were wiped out due to multiple factors Eurasian infectious diseases, to which they had no natural resistance, aggravated by harsh conditions of the repressive colonial subjugation. In 1529, a measles outbreak in Cuba killed two-thirds of those few natives who had survived smallpox. On 18 May 1539, Conquistador Hernando de Soto departed from Havana at the head of some 600 followers into a vast expedition through the Southeastern United States, starting at La Florida, in search of gold, treasure and power. On 1 September 1548, Dr. Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of Cuba, he arrived in Santiago, Cuba on 4 November 1549 and declared the liberty of all natives. He became Cuba's first permanent governor to reside in Havana instead of Santiago, he built Havana's first church made of maso
Colony
In history, a colony is a territory under the immediate complete political control and occupied by settlers of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would found their own colonies; some colonies were countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception. The metropolitan state is the state. In Ancient Greece, the city that founded a colony was known as the metropolis. "Mother country" is a reference to the metropolitan state from the point of view of citizens who live in its colony. There is a United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Unlike a puppet state or satellite state, a colony has no independent international representation, its top-level administration is under direct control of the metropolitan state; the term informal colony is used by some historians to refer to a country under the de facto control of another state, although this term is contentious. The word "colony" comes from the Latin word colōnia.
This in turn derives from the word colōnus, which means colonist but implies a farmer. Cologne is an example of a settlement preserving this etymology. Other, less obvious settlements that began as Roman colonia include cities from Belgrade to York. A tell-tale sign of a settlement once being a Roman colony is a city centre with a grid pattern; the terminology is taken from architectural analogy, where a column pillar is beneath the head capital, a biological analog of the body as subservient beneath the controlling head. So colonies are not independently self-controlled, but rather are controlled from a separate entity that serves the capital function. Roman colonies first appeared; these were small farming settlements. A colony could take many forms, as a military base in enemy territory, its original definition as a settlement created by people migrating from a central region to an outlying one became the modern definition. Carthage formed as a Phoenician colony Cadiz formed as a Phoenician colony Cyrene was a colony of the Greeks of Thera Sicily was a Phoenician colony Durrës formed as a Greek colony Sardinia was a Phoenician colony Marseille formed as a Greek colony Malta was a Phoenician colony Cologne formed as a Roman colony, its modern name refers to the Latin term "Colonia".
Kandahar formed as a Greek colony during the Hellenistic era by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Alaska: a colony of Russia from the middle 18th century until sold to the United States in 1867, it became the 49th American state in 1959. Angola: a colony of Portugal since the 16th century. Independent since 1975. Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1810. Australia was formed as an independent country in 1901 from a federation of six distinct British colonies which were founded between 1788 and 1829. Barbados: was a colony of Great Britain important in the Atlantic slave trade, it gained its independence in 1966. Brazil: a colony of Portugal since the 16th century. Independent since 1822. Canada: was colonized first by France as New France and England under British rule, before achieving Dominion status and losing "colony" designation. Democratic Republic of the Congo: a colony of Belgium from 1908 to 1960. French Indochina was formed in October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin and the Kingdom of Cambodia.
The federation lasted until 1954. In the four protectorates, the French formally left the local rulers in power, who were the Emperors of Vietnam, Kings of Cambodia, Kings of Luang Prabang, but in fact gathered all powers in their hands, the local rulers acting only as figureheads. Ghana: Contact between Europe and Ghana began in the 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese; this soon led to the establishment of several colonies by European powers: Portuguese Gold Coast, Dutch Gold Coast, Swedish Gold Coast, Danish Gold Coast and Prussian Gold Coast and British Gold Coast. In 1957, Ghana was the first African colony south of the Sahara to become independent. Greenland was a colony of Denmark-Norway from 1721 and was a colony of Denmark from 1814 to 1953. In 1953 Greenland was made an equal part of the Danish Kingdom. Home rule was granted in 1979 and extended to self-rule in 2009. See Danish colonization of the Americas. Guinea-Bissau: a colony of Portugal since the 15th century. Independent since 1974.
Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 to 1997. Is now a Special Administrative Region of China. India was an imperial political entity comprising present-day India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates with regions under the direct control of the Government of the United Kingdom from 1858 to 1947. From the 15th century until 1961, Portuguese India was a colony of Portugal. Pondicherry and Chandernagore were part of French India from 1759 to 1954. Small Danish colonies of Tharangambadi and the Nicobar Islands) from 1620 to 1869 were known as Danish India. Indonesia was a Dutch colony for 350 years, from 1602 to full independence in 1949. Jamaica was part of the Spanish West Indies in the seventeenth centuries, it became an English colony in 1655. Liberia a colony set up in 1821 by American private citizens for the migration of African American freedmen. Liberian Declaration of Independ
Ferdinand VI of Spain
Ferdinand VI, called the Learned and the Just, King of Spain from 9 July 1746 until his death in 1759, was the third ruler of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty. He was his first wife Maria Luisa of Savoy. Born at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid, Ferdinand endured a lonely childhood, his stepmother, the domineering Elisabeth Farnese, had no affection except for her own children, looked upon Ferdinand as an obstacle to their fortunes. The hypochondria of his father left Elisabeth mistress of the palace. Ferdinand was by temperament melancholic and distrustful of his own abilities; when complimented on his shooting, he replied, "It would be hard if there were not something I could do." Shooting and music were his only pleasures, he was the generous patron of the famous singer Farinelli, whose voice soothed his melancholy. Ferdinand was married in 1729 to Infanta Barbara of Portugal, daughter of John V of Portugal and Maria Anna of Austria; when he came to the throne, Spain found itself in the War of the Austrian Succession which ended without any benefit to Spain.
He started his reign by eliminating the influence of the widow Queen Elisabeth of Parma and her group of Italian courtiers. As king he followed a steady policy of neutrality in the conflict between France and Britain, refused to be tempted by the offers of either into declaring war on the other. Prominent figures during his reign were the Marquis of a Francophile; the fight between both ended in 1754 with the death of Carvajal and the fall of Ensenada, after which Ricardo Wall became the most powerful advisor to the monarch. The most important tasks during the reign of Ferdinand VI were carried out by the Marquis of Ensenada, the Secretary of the Treasury and Indies, he suggested. To him, this was necessary to maintain a position of exterior strength so that France and Great Britain would consider Spain as an ally without supposing Spain's renunciation of its claim to Gibraltar. Among his reform projects were: New model of the Treasury suggested by Ensenada in 1749, he proposed substitution of the traditional taxes with a special tax, the cadastre, that weighed the economic capacity of each contributor based on their property holdings.
He proposed a reduction of subsidies by the state to the Cortes and the army. The opposition by the nobility caused the abandonment of the project; the creation of the Giro Real in 1752, a bank favoring the transfer of public and private funds outside of Spain keeping all of the foreign exchanges in the hands of the Royal Treasury, enriching the State. It is considered the predecessor to the Bank of San Carlos, introduced during the reign of Charles III; the stimulation of commerce in the Americas, which tried to end the monopoly in the Indies and eliminate the injustices of colonial commerce. Thus he leaned toward registered ships rather than fleets of ships; the new system consisted of the substitution of the fleets and galleons so that a Spanish ship authorized, could conduct trade in the Americas. This decreased the fraud. So, this system provoked many protests among merchants in the private sector; the modernization of the Navy. According to Ensenada, a powerful navy was fundamental to power of an overseas empire and aspirations of being respected by France and Great Britain.
He increased the navy's budget and expanded the capacity of the shipyards of Cádiz, Ferrol and Havana which marked a commitment to extending the naval policies underway in his predecessor's reign. Church relations which were tense from start of the reign of Philip V because of the recognition of Charles VI as the King of Spain by the Pope. A regalist policy was maintained that pursued as much political as fiscal objectives and whose decisive achievement was the Concord of 1753. From this the right of Universal Patronage was obtained from Pope Benedict XIV, giving important economic benefits to the Crown and a great control over the clergy. Cultural advancement, he helped create the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1752. The noted composer Domenico Scarlatti, music teacher to Barbara, wrote many of his 555 harpsichord sonatas at Ferdinand's court. During the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, Spain reinforced its military might; the main conflict was its confrontation with Portugal over the colony of Sacramento, from which British contraband was transferred down the Río de la Plata.
In 1750 José de Carvajal helped Portugal strike a deal. Portugal agreed to renounce its claim to free navigation down the Río de la Plata. In return, Spain ceded to Portugal two regions on the Brazilian border, one in the Amazon and the other to the south, in which were seven of the thirty Jesuit Guaraní towns; the Spanish had to expel the missionaries, generating a conflict with the Guaraní people that lasted eleven years. The conflict over the towns provoked a crisis in the Spanish Court. Ensenada, favorable to the Jesuits, Father Rávago, confessor of the King and members of the Society of Jesus, were fired, accused of hindering the agreements with Portugal; the death of his wife Barbara, devoted to him, who abstained from political intrigue, broke his heart. Between the date of her death in August 1758 and his own on 10 August 1759, he fell into a state of prostration in which he would not dress, but wandered unshaven, unwashed and in a nightgown about his park; the memoirs of the count of Fernán Núñez give a shocking picture of his deathbed.
As the couple had no children, Ferdinand VI
