Alpha Book

Taken all in all, the situation was favorable to Great Britain. As long
as French monarchs wasted the resources of France in Europe, they could
scarcely hope to cope with the superior navy, the thriving commerce,
and the more populous colonies, of their ancient enemies.

PRELIMINARY ENCOUNTERS, 1689-1748
[Sidenote: War of the League of Augsburg]
Colonial and commercial rivalry could hardly bring France and Great
Britain to blows while the Stuart kings looked to Louis XIV for
friendly aid in the erection of absolutism and the reinstatement of
Catholicism in England.
The Revolution of 1689, which we have already discussed [Footnote: See
above, pp. 286 ff.] in its political significance, was important in its
bearing on foreign relations, for it placed on the English throne the
arch-enemy of France, William III, whose chief concern was the
protection of his ancestral possessions--the Dutch Netherlands--against
the encroachments of Louis XIV. The support given by the latter to the
pretensions of James II was a second cause of war.


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