Chapter XVI Texas, Pimería Alta and the Franco-Spanish Border Conflict (1687-1763)
The advance of the French into Louisiana and the Trans-Mississippi West stimulated a new counter movement northeastward by the Spaniards from Chihuahua, New Mexico, and Coahuila, and there ensued on the Franco-Spanish border a contest for the control of Texas and all the plains country as far north as the Platte River—a contest much like the better-known “half-century of conflict” between the English and the French on the other border. At the same time, the Spanish frontier forged slowly northwestward into Lower California and southern Arizona. On the other hand, the Florida frontier, which in the seventeenth century had been pushed back by the English colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas, was now still further contracted by the establishment of French Louisiana and English Georgia, while in the West Indies and Honduras Spanish rule suffered a like diminution through the continued advance of the English, French, and Dutch. The Asiento of 1713 with Great Britain was a particularly hard blow at Spain’s commercial independence, and was made worse by England’s gross violation of the compact.