The War of Spanish Succession was fought in Europe and the colonies between 1701 and 1714. The theatre of war in the Americas was known as Queen Anne’s War and involved a series of smaller wars fought by British colonists against the French and their native American allies.
In 1700 King Charles II, the last Spanish King of the House of Habsburg, died with no direct heir to take over the throne of Spain. Before he died, he had named his half sister’s grandson, the Duke of Anjou, Phillip of Bourbon, as his successor to the Spanish crown under the name Felipe V. Felipe was also in the line of succession to the French throne. A Bourbon monarch on the throne of France and Spain would greatly shift the balance of power in Europe and quash the ambitions of Britain and the Dutch Republic.
Although Felipe V’s sovereignty was grudgingly accepted at first, it was when the Bourbon’s cut off England and the Dutch Republic from Spanish trade that war broke out between the two main factions in Europe – the conflict being known as the War of the Spanish Succession.…
In the prologue of the first novel William Benton explains that he stayed with a group of maroons after he jumped ship. Nathaniel Bagshaw was unaware of the term. Benton explains that they were communities of escaped black slaves. A large community began to flourish on the island of Jamaica, which was ruled by the Spanish at the time, from 1530 onwards after several slave revolts in the colonies of New Spain. The Spanish called them maroons, which is believe to come from the word ‘cimarron’, meaning ‘fierce’ or ‘unruly’. They were known to often ally themselves with buccaneers.