Why did England and Spain fight over an ear?

When the Spanish Coast Guard caught English Captain Jenkins smuggling, they cut off his ear as punishment. Could this insult have sent two countries to war? Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn whether this is fact or fiction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson. Joint Today by Josh Curious like
a cat clark, that is true. How are you? I'm good?

(00:20):
How are you? I'm fabulous? So I've got a question
for you. Okay, you know much about yours a lot?
Do you know much about colonial America a lot? Then
you may be able to help me. I think I will. So,
you know, just a few hundred years ago, there were
several distinct nations who all had claims staked here in
what's now the United States, and um, they didn't really

(00:41):
get along all that well. There were all sorts of
commercial shipping ventures where you know, England, Spain, France were
exploiting the natural resources as raw materials to ship back
to Europe, and they were shipping the goods produced from
these materials back to America are to be sold. There's
a lot of money to be made from all this, right,

(01:03):
That's one reason why people were fighting one another over here.
But another reason is that they just simply didn't get
along over in Europe. There were plenty of wars fought
over who owned what territory and who had access to
what throne, and those kind of spilled over to the
New World, which is what we now call America, right indeed. Okay,

(01:25):
so my question is it has to do with an ear.
As I said earlier, one of these wars, as I understand,
was fought between England and Spain over an ear, which
doesn't doesn't sound right to me. It sounds fabricated. Is
that fact or fiction? If you will lend me your ears,
I will deem this defy this story. And I'm pleased

(01:48):
to know that's actually a fact. As fanciful as it
may seem, an ear really did start a war. How So, well,
back on April nine thirty one, Captain Robert Jenkins was
sailing his vest through what may or may not have
been Spanish waters and a Spanish captain, wander Leon Fandino,
called him out. And he didn't just call him out verbally,

(02:10):
he cut off his ear. And I'm not quite sure
why he thought that was a proper mode of retaliation,
but he did. And what's more, he told Robert Jenkins,
if the King of England had been right in front
of me, I would have done the same to him.
So those our fighting words, and I think Robert needed
some time to really mull them over and think about them,
because it took him seven years before he worked up

(02:30):
the courage to march his ear, which he had had
the foresight to pickle to Parliament and he lodged to
complaint with the House of Commons and they were pretty irritated,
as it was with Spain. Essentially, this was a really
too multivous time in Europe, and it all started back
with the War of Spanish Secession, when King Charles the
Second of Spain didn't have an heir to his throne

(02:51):
and he was about to kick the bucket. France and
Austria were both vying for Spain's territories and he was
feeling sort of, you know, vile in his old age
to meek state, so he decided to cause controversy by
giving his throwne to France. That lunch France in Austria
into a war, and then it was almost like a
domino effect with these other nations sort of you know,

(03:11):
taking sides with one of the superpowers and ganging up
on each other. And that's exactly what happened with England
and Spain. So they were mad about the worst Spanish secession.
They were mad about border disputes in the New World
between the British Colony of Georgia and the Spanish Colony
of Florida, and it just multiplied. So how does the
in it was called the War of Jenkins Ear, one

(03:32):
of the many battles that resulted. Yes, indeed, Well, my
only question that remains is whether Jenkins Gil pickled his
ear or bread and butter. Oh that's an earful. If
you want to learn more about this topic, you'll have
to read why did England and Spain Fight over an Ear?
On the house staff works dot com for more on

(03:52):
this than thousands of other topics. Because at house staff
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