After a somewhat slow start (1688–92), construction of privateering vessels had reached its peak by the end of the 17th century. The phenomenon continued throughout the 18th and into the early 19th centuries – a period of constant conflict that included the War of the Austrian Succession (1744–1748), the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the American Revolutionary War (1778–1783), the wars of the French Revolution and the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Commerce raiding was not abolished until the Treaty of Paris in 1856. The United States did not ratify the text, which explains the presence of Confederate raiders in international waters, the Atlantic in particular, during the American Civil War.