The main provisions of the treaties confirmed that Louis XIV's grandson Philip V would remain on the throne of Spain, and retain Spain's new world colonies. Many of Spain's other territories were partitioned out among the allied powers. The Emperor received the Spanish Netherlands, the Duchy of Milan, Naples, and Sardinia. The Duke of Savoy received Sicily and some strips of land in Lombardy. The British received Gibraltar and Minorca, which they had captured during the war.
There were also some colonial provisions pertaining to North America: France recognized British control of the Hudson Bay Territory and Newfoundland and ceded Acadia to the British. France retained Cape Breton Island, the St. Lawrence Islands, and fishing rights off Newfoundland.
This was the treaty whereby the struggle between Great Britain and France known in Europe as the War of the Spanish Succession, and in America sometimes as "Queen Anne's War", was brought to a close in 1713.
But the treaty was little more than a temporary truce, for its provisions left the door open to further disputes, which ultimately culminated in the Seven Years' War.
No attempt was made to define the extent of the Hudson bay territories; France retained in Newfoundland certain fishing rights, which were what she most valued; and in ceding Acadia, she did so "according to its ancient limits", which had never been laid down.
TREATY OF UTRECHT, the general name given to the important series of treaties which in 1713 and 1714 concluded the great European war of the Spanish Succession, and by which inter alia England obtained possession of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Gibraltar.
A second barrier treaty between England and the United Provinces was signed on the 30th of January 1713, and a third treaty signed at Antwerp on the 15th of November 1715 clinched the matter.
The text of the treaty of Utrecht is published as the Actes, memoires et autres pieces authentiques concernant la paix d'Utrecht (Utrecht, 1714-1715); and by C. von Koch and F. Scholl in the Histoire abregee des traites (1817-1818).
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