He conceived the idea of augmenting his
slender garrisons of Europeans with "sepoys," or carefully drilled
natives, and fortified his capital, Pondicherry, as if for war.
[Sidenote: Trade Disputes between Spain and Great Britain]
To the dangerous rivalry between British and French colonists and
traders in America and in India, during the thirty years which followed
the treaty of Utrecht, was added the continuous bickering which grew
out of the Asiento concluded in 1713 between Great Britain and Spain.
Spaniards complained of British smugglers and protested with justice
that the British outrageously abused their special privilege by keeping
the single stipulated vessel in the harbor of Porto Bello and refilling
it at night from other ships. On the other hand, British merchants
resented their general exclusion from Spanish markets and recited to
willing listeners at home the tale of their grievances against the
Spanish authorities. Of such tales the most notorious was that of a
certain Captain Robert Jenkins, who with dramatic detail told how the
bloody Spaniards had attacked his good ship, plundered it, and in the
fray cut off one of his ears, and to prove his story he is said to have
produced a box containing what purported to be the ear in question.
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