1585-1604ANGLO-SPANISH WAR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeEY71r9Vc

SEA SHANTIES

You are on a rover ship, low on provisions, nearing the entrance of a sea passage. Crossing it will take days, the situation on your ship is critical. You can’t get to shore to replenish. You need access to another ship’s resources.

Two ships flying the same colors are approaching the same passage. There smaller one, having been separated from the larger companion in a storm, is leading the way. There are 300 kilometers (200 land miles) distance between the two ships.

You can engage and overpower the first ship—which you do—but the heavily armed companion is approaching, and will inevitably gain on you. You are not in a position to win, and you are not in a position to escape. How do you get away with your life (and loot)?

HOW WOULD YOU SOLVE IT?

• A series of interlocking conflicts

• Fought in: the English Channel, the Atlantic, the Netherlands, Spain, Canary Islands, Portugal, England (Cornwall), the Americas, the Spanish Main, the Azores

WAR?

• The Spanish monopoly on Atlantic trade

• Engagements and provocations The Spanish vs. Drake and Hawkins at San Juan de Ulúa, Mexico, 1568 The English vs. Spanish treasure ships en route to the Netherlands, 1569

• 1585 Elizabeth I officially backs the Dutch Revolt The English land in Galicia, and sack Vigo and Bayona Drake sacks Santo Domingo, and captures Cartagena de Indias

• 1587 Drake burns Spanish ships in harbor at Cadiz Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots Elizabeth I excommunicated by the pope; Philip obtains papal authority to overthrow

her

MAIN REASONS, PROVOCATIONS, FORMAL

OUTBREAK

• Defeat in 1588• Support for the Ulster lords uprising, 1594• Two more failed armada attempts, 1596 and 1597• Final armada in 1601, under Phillip III, to assist in

Southern Ireland

SPANISH ARMADA(S)

• Unsuccessful enterprise under Drake’s and John Norreys’ command. Had 3 main missions

Burn the Spanish navy while refitting in the north of the country

Capture incoming Spanish fleet Expel Spain from Portugal

• Severe monetary loss for England

ENGLISH ARMADA1589

• Costly for both sides

• Served to delineate alliances along religious lines: England sided with the Dutch and French Protestants; Spain sided with the Irish, and the French Catholics

• Each country gained and lost dramatically. Examples from 1595-6:

Drake and Hawkins fail, and die on their last mission in the Spanish Main

Spanish forces raid Penzance, Cornwall Anglo-Dutch expedition sacks Cadiz, leaves it in ruins,

but fails to lay hands on the treasure fleet

MUTUAL WOUNDS

• Peace was arranged between Elizabeth I’s and Phillip II’s successors: James I and Phillip III

• The next conflict of similar scale would be the War of the Spanish succession (1701-1714) between France and Spain on the one hand, and Britain, Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire on the other

• Attacks on ships and settlements evolved from buccaneering and privateering to outright piracy, framed by these two wars. The last surge in piracy followed the War of Spanish Succession, and was squelched in less than two decades

PEACE AND AFTER

• First discovery of the New World

• Second largest island in the Caribbean. Conquering the mainland diverted Spain’s interest from Hispaniola. Phillip III ordered the dwindling population to move closer to Santo Domingo, to avoid pirates (1606)

• French, English and Dutch pirates established bases on the abandoned north and west coasts of the island

• French colonization started in 1665. Saint Dominique became the prosperous colony in the region, like Jamaica forming a slave society based on sugar cane production

• Later in history: importance of post-Revolution France, and the dissemination of ideas to the Americas through the Caribbean ports

HISPANIOLA

• Jamaica was claimed by Columbus in 1494, and remained a Spanish possession until 1655 when in came under England’s rule under the leadership of Sir William Penn and Gen. Robert Venables

• Maroons: slaves who escaped the Spanish, and also slaves who were freed by the Spanish when they fled from the island

• British rule: slave-dependent, sugar exporter

• The Jewish community and its role in making Jamaica a base for Caribbean pirates

JAMAICA

• Tortuga Island, today part of Haiti – not to be confused with the Venezuelan La Tortuga, nor the Peruvian or Costa Rican Tortuga Island(s)

• Originally settled by a handful of Spanish colonists. French and English settlers arrive in 1625, expelled four years later.

• From 1630, divided into French and English colonies that allowed buccaneers to use the island as a base of operations.

• Between 1635-40, then 1654 various recaptures by the Spanish, the English and the French. The French ultimately prevail thanks to the newly settled Dutch

• By 1640 the Brethren of the Coast had emerged

• 1670s: decline of the buccaneer era; the trade of log cutting and wood trading

• 1680: Act of Parliament forbids sailing under foreign flags – legal step against the Caribbean pirates

TORTUGA