Second Hundred Years' War



"The Second Hundred Years' War" (c. 1689 - c. 1815) is an periodization or "historical era" term used by some historians  to describe the series of military conflicts between the Kingdom of England (later Kingdom of Great Britain after 1707, and still later  United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after 1801), and the nation of France (with the various regimes of the  Kingdom of France, the First French Republic and the First French Empire of Emperor Napoleon I) that occurred from about 1689 (or some say 1714) to 1815. The term appears to have been coined by J. R. Seeley in his influential work "The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures" (1883).

Like "The Hundred Years' War", this term does not describe a single military event but a persistent general state of war between the two primary belligerents. The use of the phrase as an overarching category indicates the interrelation of all the wars as components of the rivalry between France and Britain for world power. It was a war between and over the future of each state's colonial empires.

The various wars between the two states during the 18th century usually involved other European countries in large alliances; except for the "War of the Quadruple Alliance" when they were bound by the Anglo-French Alliance, France and Britain always opposed one another. Some of the wars, such as the "The Seven Years' War", have been considered world wars and included battles in the growing colonies in India, the Americas, and ocean shipping routes around the globe.

The series of wars began with the accession of the Dutch William III as King of England in the Revolution of 1688. The later Stuarts, as converts to Roman Catholicism, had sought friendly terms with Louis XIV. James I and Charles I, both Protestants, had avoided involvement as much as possible in the Thirty Years' War; they, too, had sought peaceful terms with France during the seventeenth century. Charles II and James II had even actively supported Louis XIV in his War against the Dutch Republic. William III, however, sought to oppose Louis XIV's Catholic regime and styled himself as a Protestant champion. Tensions continued in the following decades, during which France protected Jacobites who sought to overthrow the later Stuarts and, after 1715, the Hanoverians.

After William III, the opposition of France and Britain shifted from religion to economy and trade: the two nations vied for colonial domination in the Americas and Asia. The "The Seven Years' War" was one of the greatest and most decisive conflicts. France's alliance and backing of the Thirteen Colonies' revolt against Britain was successful in undermining British colonial hegemony in North America, but in turn debts from that conflict sowed the economic seeds of France's own revolution shortly thereafter.

The military rivalry continued with British opposition of the French Revolution and the ensuing wars with first the new French Republic and then the First French Empire of Napoleon. His defeat in 1813 at the "Battle of Leipzig", followed in 1815 by "The Hundred Days" and the second defeat at the "Battle of Waterloo", effectively ended the recurrent war between France and Britain. However, the Coalition goal of restoring the French Bourbon monarchy in the Treaty of Paris and the subsequent Congress of Vienna and preventing further revolutions in Europe ultimately failed with the later events of The European Revolutions of 1848. The recurrent rhetoric used in each country shifted from references to a "natural enemy" to an agreement to tolerate one another. Common interests led the two to cooperate in the "Crimean War" of the 1850's. A century after fighting one another (and with the mutual interest in checking the growing power of a united Germany with its Empire), the two were able to establish the "Entente Cordiale" by 1904, demonstrating that the "First" and "Second" Hundred Years' Wars were in the past; cultural differences continued, but violent conflict was over and soon by the second-half of the 20th Century after having nearly been annihilated by that other opposing power (Nazi Germany), both Western nations discovered their commonality in their growing democratic traditions, friendship with their common step-child - the United States, and a large role in devising the structures for a new type of united Europe through the "Common Market", and later the other advances and treaties for the peaceful and consultative process with nations led into the "European Union", rather than a violent, conquering, dictatorial "European Empire".

"Carthage" and "Rome"
Many in France referred to Great Britain as "Perfidious Albion," suggesting that it was a fundamentally untrustworthy nation. French people compared Britain and France to ancient Carthage and Rome, respectively, with the former being cast as a greedy imperialist state that collapsed, while the latter was an intellectual and cultural capital that flourished: "The republicans knew as well as the Bourbons that British control of the oceans weighed in Continental power politics, and that France could not dominate Europe without destroying Britain. 'Carthage'—vampire, tyrant of the seas, 'perfidious' enemy and bearer of a corrupting commercial civilization—contrasted with 'Rome', bearer of universal order, philosophy and selfless values."

Wars included in the extended conflict

 * Nine Years' War (1688–1697)
 * King William's War (1689–1697)
 * War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714)
 * Queen Anne's War (1702–1713)
 * War of the Austrian Succession (1742–1748)
 * King George's War (1744–1748)
 * Seven Years' War (1756–1763)
 * French and Indian War (1754–1763)
 * American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
 * French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802)
 * War of the First Coalition (1792–1797)
 * War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802)
 * Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815)
 * War of the Third Coalition (1803–1806)
 * War of the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807)
 * Peninsular War (1808–1814)
 * War of the Fifth Coalition (1809)
 * War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814)
 * Hundred Days (1815)