The shipwreck of the Wager and the mutiny on Wager Island took place in the context of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, which raged from 1738 to 1748. The conflict was named for an incident where a British sea captain, Robert Jenkins, had his ear cut off by Spanish authorities. The actual incident took place in 1731 before the war began. This was part of a broader, ongoing conflict between Britain and Spain over economic and trade supremacy in the Americas and other colonized regions. Both Britain and Spain were major naval powers which held colonies across the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The battles in the War of Jenkins’ Ear were focused on the Caribbean Sea and the coasts of South and Central America.

As David Grann often notes, European treatment of Indigenous Americans was often brutal and cruel. Although some tribes remained independent and even controlled some of their lands, many had been forced away from the more desirable, agriculturally productive territories in the Americas. European settlers also sometimes enslaved Indigenous people.

Europeans found that Indigenous people were much more susceptible to diseases introduced to the Americas by European settlers, such as smallpox.