Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: War of Jenkins' Ear

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

In the 18th century, Spain and England fought each other in the colonies of Georgia and Florida, a war kicked off by an English sea captain who was mad his ear had been perhaps unfairly lopped off.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry, and this is short stuff, so let's get to it.

We're talking about a war started by an ear go. My favorite thing is how you try to keep us so on track, and now I try to throw us off. You really do, and you're doing it now, and it's making us sweat. I know, I love it. All right, the War of Jenkins Ear, which there's a lot of misnomers in this war, because first of all, the War of Jenkins Ear

was not called that until 110 years later. Is that right? Yeah, an essayist, what was his name? Thomas Carlisle dubbed it the War of Jenkins Ear 110 years later, and what it really was, was just a part of a larger war, the War of Austrian Secession. Yeah, succession, right?

Succession, not succession. It was a question about who was going to take over the throne. Yeah, but I don't want to poo poo it. Let's just go back and tell the story, because it is pretty good. It is, it's a good story. That whole succeeding to the throne thing,

that was a big deal in Europe in the 18th century, and long before the 18th century too, but by this time, Europe had basically formed a really intertwined set of economies and set of governments, so that if you were, say like a prince in Spain, you may end up like running the show as the king of Austria at some point,

because your father married an Austrian princess and you have Austrian blood, and there's no clear heir to the throne, and so you are being called upon, and Spain is like, yes, I'm so glad we have somebody over there in Austria, because now Austria is going to do right by us. And when that didn't happen,

and when their alliance is broken, and when there was a conflict over who had the rightful claim on a throne when it came up for grabs, that's when wars broke out. So you got like Spain, Austria, France, England, all of them are alternately forming alliances, warring with each other, and taking the throne from one another,

taking a seat on one another's throne, which usually brought those two countries together. And that's what happened in this case too, that kicked all of this off. Yeah, this happened in Spain, with King Charles II dying, no clear heir, so obviously all of Europe basically is like, ooh, I want to be the king of Spain,

or someone from our country, because that'll really help us out. So France and Austria got involved, and both says, hey, we have a claim to the Spanish throne, and France and Spain basically, they all started plotting, all these countries started plotting with one another, and the emperor of Austria, and the king of France,

I think while Charles II was still alive, divided up Spanish territory of Italy between them, Charles got upset, willed his throne to a French prince, and then France was like, wait a minute, Austria, did we really have a deal? Right. Because I don't remember that. All I know is that we're next in line in Spain.

Austria got mad, that started the war of Spanish succession. And that is important to this, not because it was the War of Jenkins year, but it just sort of set the stage in that Spain and England, even though France and Austria were fighting, they were sort of involved on the fringe, and just ticked each other off basically. Right, exactly.

So there's already hostilities, and this was not helping things in the colonies, especially in Georgia and Florida, where France and Spain, who were hostile to one another as a result of this war of Spanish succession, were butted up right against one another, and there were a lot of border skirmishes, and I think by the time 1739 rolled around

and the hostilities really came to a head, Georgia had only been formed as an English colony like six years before. So it was real tentative and tenuous, and the Spanish really had a respectable navy that could take out a coastal town if it wanted to, and so Georgia was in a really vulnerable position. So one of the things from that war of Spanish succession

that it addressed, the Treaty of Utrecht that came out of it said, okay, Spain, you and England, we haven't forgotten about you guys, we need to make trade amongst you much more smooth and legal, and maybe that'll keep some of the skirmishes from happening. And so the English were allowed for,

I think the first time to actually trade with Spain from Georgia to Florida, which seems like it would be a good move, but it ultimately led to disaster. Yeah, and what, you know, there were a lot of things at stake here, but we shouldn't whitewash this and leave out that what England was really doing here

and all the battling was trying to improve their trade capabilities in the Caribbean, not just with stuff, but with human beings and slaves. Oh yeah, yeah, true. So it was very, very ugly what was going on. And in the Treaty of Utrecht, they set all these guidelines. England had all these ambitions in that area.

And Spain though says, all right, you know what though, we're gonna act as the, I guess sort of the Coast Guard and the cops of the high seas. And if we think that you're smuggling something, you shouldn't be smuggling, we're gonna board your ship. And maybe we should take a break here and finish the story right after this. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so the Spanish Armada, the Spanish Navy, is acting as the Coast Guard because technically

the English traders are allowed into trade, but they're supposed to be like, their cargo is supposed to have paid taxes, tariffs, duties, all this stuff. The problem is, is that the English were rampant smugglers. And it was way easier to say like, oh, hey, you in Florida, you need scissors and yarn, and I want some of your silver. So I'm just gonna sneak some of those things

past the Spanish Coast Guard in the hopes that they won't find it, and then we can trade. And that's what the Spaniards called contraband. And so the Spanish was well aware that this was going on. So they would board ships routinely and search them. And on, I believe, April 9th, 1731, they happened to board a ship in particular called the Rebecca that was captain

by a guy named Robert Jenkins. Yeah, and this was one of those Spanish patrol boats. It was called Isabella. And they said, we're coming aboard, and we're gonna check out what you got here. There was a bit of a, well, they found them out. They were smuggling things that they shouldn't have had after they inspected the manifest in the cargo.

And there was a punishment levied, Juan de Leon Fandino, who was the Spanish captain tried to send a message straight to the king and said, with his sword, you like that? He said, with his sword off with your ear and cut off Captain Jenkins' ear, and Captain Jenkins ostensibly picked it up, put it in his pocket, and later pickled it.

He did pickle it, and he carried it around with him for like seven years. And finally, one day, I don't know how, but he managed to get into the House of Commons and said, look at this. Look at what the Spanish captain did to my ear, just for trying to be like a respectable businessman, smuggling a little contraband into Florida.

And he said that if the King of England were here and in violation of the law, he would have done it to the King of England too. And Parliament said, that is it. We are declaring war on Spain. Georgia, go get them. Yeah, he was actually called in to testify. So he was an important witness, I guess,

to the activities down there. Maybe that's why they called him in. The one bad part about that story is, supposedly there is no evidence that he actually presented his ear, and people think that it may have just been sort of gussied up through history and telling of this tale. But he did testify, we know that,

but it certainly makes for a great story that he actually held his ear up and said, look at this pickled ear. I'm hoping that at the very least, they inspected to make sure he was missing an ear. Yeah, that would be a dead giveaway. It would be. So obviously, I think we should say,

like no one ever started a war over somebody's ear being lopped off. That just became shorthand. Again, the tensions between England and Spain and the tensions between their colonial presence was already simmering. There had been a lot of overland skirmishes between Georgia and Florida.

And this was pointed to historically as the straw that broke the camel's back, I guess. Yeah, and sort of the anti-climax of this story is the War of Jinkensere was not much of a war. Like we said, it was sort of part of smaller wars that they just gave a name to 110 years later. But there wasn't much that got accomplished during the War of Jinkensere over that few years

that they had these battles. Well, a couple of things did come out of it. One, there was something called the Battle of Bloody Marsh. So you're thinking like, oh man, a lot of people died. No, it was called Bloody Marsh already. That just happened to be where the battle was staged on St. Simon's Island in Georgia. But in that battle, like 5,000 Spanish troops

sailed to Georgia and landed and came into Georgia and were repelled by the Georgian colonial defense people. The Georgia defensive line. Exactly. They pushed them back, pushed them back way back, right? And that was huge for them because up to this point, remember the Spanish were like inconceivably powerful. And Georgia said, oh wait, we actually can defeat them.

So that was one big thing. And then it also solidified Georgia's position safely as an English colony. That it was like, hey man, we're here to stay. You stay down in Florida. We'll stay up here in Georgia. We're an English colony, you're a Spanish colony. Don't mess with us anymore.

So those two things did kind of come out of it, actually. Yeah, in Oglethorpe, he mounted his own campaign to invade St. Augustine and did okay there, but eventually retreated and even left his armaments and weapons and stuff. So there, I mean, there were some major battles, but I think in the end, the War of Jinkensir is just sort of a bit of a historical footnote

in a lot of ways. Yeah, historically it got absorbed in the larger King George's War. Which was a part of the War of Austrian succession, I think. Right, exactly. So it was a war within a war, within a war. It was like inception in colonial America.

And Ellen Page will be here in just a minute to fully explain it over and over. Right, thank you for listening to our attempt at explaining the War of Jinkensir. We'll see you next time on Short Stuff. Come on.