The peace of Utrecht left England in the very front rank of European powers, bound by treaty obligations to maintain the settlement then made, and taught by many victories to assume that her intervention would be effective. Moreover a new influence tended in the same direction: her kings had through their Hanoverian dominions a personal interest in continental affairs, and naturally tried to obtain English support in Hanoverian quarrels. Naturally also France was permanently jealous of the power which had destroyed her dream of naval supremacy, and had played the leading part in humbling Louis XIV. Thus it was to be expected that England would be involved more or less in most European wars, and also that she would habitually have France as her antagonist. She had private troubles in addition, in the shape of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the revolt of the American colonies. The former could hardly have taken place had England not been at war with France: the latter succeeded very largely because France and the other European opponents of England seized the opportunity to coalesce against her. France and England were in truth pitted against each other all the world over. In North America they began the rivalry of the eighteenth century on fairly equal terms, so far as that continent was concerned. But the naval and commercial superiority of Great Britain, which grew more and more pronounced as time passed, insured her ultimate triumph in America in spite of all that France could do; while nearer home England found her advantage in supporting with money and men the continental enemies of her rival.