The larger prize in the second Hundred Years' War was the right to rule the world.
1. The Pirate History Podcast episode “Episode 365 - The Second Hundred Years War” uses England and France’s long conflict as a framing device for the show’s future coverage.
2. Matt hosts the episode and points listeners to Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, which he calls one of his all-time history-book recommendations.
3. His purpose is to connect the second Hundred Years' War to later piracy, colonial warfare, and the broader pattern of European conflict.
4. He starts by summarizing the late medieval crisis: cooling temperatures in 1275, crop declines, and the Great Famine of 1315 to 1318.
5. He then describes the Black Death in the late 1340s and rejects the claim that the plague caused the Little Ice Age.
6. Instead, he says changing climate in Northern Asia likely helped create drought conditions that moved plague-carrying rodents from what is now Kazakhstan.
7. He defines the second Hundred Years' War as a series of distinct conflicts between England and France rather than one continuous war.
8. He lists the Nine Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars.
9. He says the traditional endpoint for that long conflict is Waterloo in 1815.
10. He argues that the Anglo-French Alliance of 1718 weakens any simple claim that the two countries were in nonstop war.
11. He also says the War of the Austrian Succession in 1745 reactivated grievances tied to the Treaty of Utrecht.
12. He describes the larger prize of the second Hundred Years' War as the right to rule the world.
13. He supports that claim by pointing to France’s colonial losses after the Seven Years' War in 1763, including Canada, Louisiana, Florida, and Caribbean islands.
14. He then says the American Revolution mattered because the Anglo-French War of 1778 was a global naval war rather than a minor proxy conflict.
15. He notes that France’s 1783 success financially crippled the kingdom and was followed by more colonial losses.
16. He mentions Haiti in 1801 and Louisiana again in 1803 as examples of that imperial decline.
17. The tone is conversational and sideways, with jokes about “bing bang boom” and “the catastrophically losing colonies at an alarming rate train.”
18. The format shifts from historical argument to personal reflection when Matt explains why he scrapped a planned War of 1812 deep dive.
19. Listeners interested in Anglo-French rivalry, piracy, and early modern imperial history will get the most from this episode.
20. Listeners wanting a tightly focused battle narrative or a short, linear story may skip it.
