ABSTRACT
Anglo-French hostility had boiled over into near war in the Duke of York's province of New York after 1685. The central strategic issue of the war was not dissimilar to the one which was to dominate strategic argument in the United Kingdom during the First World War. The composite Atlantic monarchy to which Queen Anne succeeded after William's death in 1702 was therefore a deeply divided structure with acute tensions, not just between the different political nations of which it was composed, but also within the communities over which those nations presided. The War of the Spanish Succession, misnamed Queen Anne's War in English America, involved conflict there on both Anglo-French and AngloSpanish borders. Decision in the War of the Spanish Succession was sought by concentrating on Europe. It was the strategy of William III more effectively executed.
