page_title: Colonial history of Missouri
section_title: Competition with the British
hierarchical_section_title: Colonial history of Missouri / Competition with the British
caption_attribution_description: English: Line art drawing of a bateau.
context_page_description: The Colonial history of Missouri covers the French and Spanish exploration and colonization: 1673–1803, and ends with the American takeover through the Louisiana Purchase
context_section_description: Local administrators of Ste. Genevieve also were Spaniards, but frequently were forced to acquiesce to local customs.  Throughout the 1770s, Spanish officials were forced to contend not only with the wishes of their predominantly French populations, but also with repeated incursions from British traders and hostile indigenous tribes. Furthermore, American settlers were starting to arrive.
  To reduce the influence of British traders, Spain renewed efforts to encourage French settlers to decamp from Illinois to Missouri, and in 1778, the Spanish granted land and basic supplies to Catholic immigrants to Missouri; however, few settlers actually took up the offers to move to the region. A second effort by the Spanish against the British found greater success: starting in the late 1770s, the Spanish officials began openly supporting American rebels fighting against British rule in the American War of Independence. Spanish officials in both St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve were instrumental in supplying George Rogers Clark during his Illinois campaign of 1779.
  However, Spanish aid to the Americans came with the risk of a British attack. In June 1779, Spain declared war on Britain. By March 1780, St. Louis was warned of an impending British attack, and the Spanish built Fort San Carlos.  In late May 1780, a British war party attacked the town of St. Louis; although the town was saved, 21 were killed, 7 were wounded, and 25 were taken prisoner.
  After the American victory in its war of independence, Spain retained Louisiana, but the region east of the Mississippi River became part of the United States. American settlers started coming across. Rather than attempt to stifle the immigration of American Protestants, however, Spanish officials began encouraging it in an effort to create an economically successful province.
  As part of this effort, in 1789 Spanish diplomats in Philadelphia encouraged George Morgan, an American military officer, to set up a semi-autonomous colony in southern Missouri across from the mouth of the Ohio River. Named New Madrid, the colony began auspiciously but was discouraged by Louisiana's governor, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, who considered Morgan's infant colony as flawed due to its lack of provisos for ensuring the settlement's loyalty to Spain. New Madrid's early American settlers departed, as did Morgan, and New Madrid became primarily a hunting and trading outpost rather than a full-fledged agricultural city.
  In the early 1790s both Governor Miró and his successor, Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, were cool toward the idea of American immigration to Missouri.  However, with the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1796, Spain again needed an influx of settlement to defend the region.  To that end, Spain began advertising free land and no taxes in Spanish territory throughout American cities, and Americans responded in a wave of immigration. Among these American pioneers was Daniel Boone, who settled with his family after encouragement from the territorial governor.
  To better govern the region of Missouri, the Spanish split the province into five administrative districts in the mid-1790s: St. Louis, St. Charles, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau and New Madrid. Of the five administrative districts, the newest was Cape Girardeau, founded in 1792 by trader Louis Lorimier as a trading post and settlement for newly arriving Americans. The largest district, St. Louis, was the provincial capital and center of trade; by 1800, its district population stood at nearly 2,500. Aside from Carondelet, other settlements in the St. Louis district included Florissant, located 15 miles northwest of St. Louis and settled in 1785, and Bridgeton, located 5 miles southwest of Florissant and settled in 1794.  All three settlements were popular with immigrants from the United States.
  American settlers fundamentally changed the makeup of Missouri; by the mid-1790s, Spanish officials realized the American Protestant immigrants were not interested in converting to Catholicism or in serious loyalty to Spain. Despite a brief attempt to rest
caption: Most Missourians traveled longer distances by water, and large cargo was transported by bateaux (shown above).
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