THE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION - DELASALLE HIGH SCHOOL
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Chapter 4 THE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION THE BOSTON MASSACRE (1770), BY PAUL REVERE This is one of many sensationalized engravings, by Revere and others, of the conflict between British troops and Boston laborers that became important propaganda documents for the Patriot cause in the 1770s. Among the victims of the massacre listed by Revere was Crispus Attucks, probably the first black man to die in the struggle for American independence. (Library of Congress)
A S LATE AS THE 1750s, few Americans saw any reason to object to their
membership in the British Empire. The imperial system provided them with
many benefits: opportunities for trade and commerce, military protection,
political stability. And those benefits were accompanied by few costs; for
the most part, the English government left the colonies alone. While Britain did
attempt to regulate the colonists’ external trade, those regulations were laxly
administered and easily circumvented. Some Americans predicted that the
SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
1713 ◗ Treaty of Utrecht concludes Queen Anne’s War
1718 ◗ New Orleans founded to serve French plantation
economy in Louisiana
1744–1748 ◗ King George’s War
1749 ◗ French construct fortresses in Ohio Valley
1754 ◗ Albany Plan for intercolonial cooperation rejected
◗ Battle of Fort Duquesne begins French and Indian
War
1756 ◗ Seven Years’ War begins in Europe
colonies would ultimately develop to a point where greater autonomy would 1757 ◗ British policies provoke riots in New York
become inevitable. But few expected such a change to occur soon. 1758 ◗ Pitt returns authority to colonial assemblies
By the mid-1770s, however, the relationship between the American colonies ◗ British capture Louisbourg fortress and Fort
Duquesne
and their British rulers had become so strained, so poisoned, so characterized by 1759 ◗ British forces under Wolfe capture Quebec
suspicion and resentment that the once seemingly unbreakable bonds of empire 1760 ◗ George III becomes king
◗ French army surrenders to Amherst at Montreal
were ready to snap. And in the spring of 1775, the first shots were fired in a war 1763 ◗ Peace of Paris ends Seven Years’ (and French and
that would ultimately win America its independence. Indian) War
◗ Grenville becomes prime minister
The revolutionary crisis emerged as a result of both long-standing differences ◗ Proclamation of 1763 restricts western settlement
between the colonies and England and particular events in the 1760s and 1770s. ◗ Paxton uprising in Pennsylvania
Ever since the first days of settlement in North America, the ideas and institutions 1764 ◗ Sugar Act passed
◗ Currency Act passed
of the colonies had been diverging from those in England in countless ways. Only 1765 ◗ Stamp Act crisis
because the relationship between America and Britain had been so casual had ◗ Mutiny Act passed
1766 ◗ Stamp Act repealed
those differences failed to create serious tensions in
Sources of Crisis ◗ Declaratory Act passed
the past. Beginning in 1763, however, the British 1767 ◗ Townshend Duties imposed
government embarked on a series of new policies toward its colonies—policies 1768 ◗ Boston, New York, and Philadelphia merchants
make nonimportation agreement
dictated by changing international realities and new political circumstances 1770 ◗ Boston Massacre
within England itself—that brought the differences between the two societies into ◗ Most Townshend Duties repealed
1771 ◗ Regulator movement quelled in North Carolina
sharp focus. In the beginning, most Americans reacted to the changes with
1772 ◗ Committees of correspondence established in
relative restraint. Gradually, however, as crisis followed crisis, a large group of Boston
◗ Gaspée incident in Rhode Island
Americans found themselves fundamentally disillusioned with the imperial
1773 ◗ Tea Act passed
relationship. By 1775, that relationship was damaged beyond repair. ◗ Bostonians stage tea party
1774 ◗ Intolerable Acts passed
◗ First Continental Congress meets at Philadelphia
◗ North Carolina women sign Edenton Proclamation
calling for boycott of British goods
1775 ◗ Clashes at Lexington and Concord begin American
Revolution
105
106 CHAPTER FOUR
LOOSENING TIES laws at home as well as overseas; none could concentrate
on colonial affairs alone. To complicate matters further,
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England and the there was considerable overlapping and confusion of
collapse of the Dominion of New England in America, the authority among the departments.
English government (which became the British govern- Few of the London officials, moreover, had ever visited
ment after 1707, when a union of England and Scotland America; few knew very much about conditions there.
created Great Britain) made no serious or sustained effort What information they did gather came in large part from
to tighten its control over the colonies for over seventy agents sent to England by the colonial assemblies to lobby
years. During those years, it is true, an increasing number for American interests, and these agents, naturally, did
of colonies were brought under the direct control of the nothing to encourage interference with colonial affairs.
king. New Jersey in 1702, North and South Carolina in (The best known of them, Benjamin Franklin, represented
1729, Georgia in 1754—all became royal colonies, bring- not only his own colony, Pennsylvania, but also Georgia,
ing the total to eight; in all of them, the king had the New Jersey, and Massachusetts.)
power to appoint the governors and other colonial offi- It was not only the weakness of administrative author-
cials. During those years, Parliament also passed new laws ity in London and the policy of neglect that weakened
supplementing the original Navigation Acts and strength- England’s hold on the colonies. It was also the character
ening the mercantilist program—laws restricting colonial of the royal officials in America—among them the gover-
manufactures, prohibiting paper currency, and regulating nors, the collectors of customs, and naval officers. Some
trade. On the whole, however, the British government of these officeholders were able and intelligent men; most
remained uncertain and divided about the extent to were not. Appointments generally came as the result of
which it ought to interfere in colonial affairs.The colonies bribery or favoritism, not as a reward for merit. Many
were left, within broad limits, to go their separate ways. appointees remained in England and, with part of their
salaries, hired substitutes to take their places in America.
Such deputies received paltry wages and thus faced great
A Tradition of Neglect temptations to augment their incomes with bribes. Few
In the fifty years after the Glorious Revolution, the British resisted the temptation. Customs collectors, for example,
Parliament established a growing supremacy over the king. routinely waived duties on goods when merchants paid
During the reigns of George I them to do so. Even honest and well-paid officials usually
Growing Power of (1714–1727) and George II found it expedient, if they wanted to get along with their
Parliament
(1727–1760), both of whom were neighbors, to yield to the colonists’ resistance to trade
German born and unaccustomed to English ways, the restrictions.
prime minister and his fellow cabinet ministers began to Resistance to imperial authority centered in the colo-
become the nation’s real executives.They held their posi- nial legislatures. By the 1750s, the American assemblies
tions not by the king’s favor but by their ability to control had claimed the right to levy taxes, make appropriations,
a majority in Parliament. approve appointments, and pass laws for their respective
These parliamentary leaders were less inclined than colonies. Their legislation was subject to veto by the gov-
the seventeenth-century monarchs had been to try to ernor or the Privy Council. But
tighten imperial organization. They depended heavily on the assemblies had leverage over Powerful Colonial
Legislatures
the support of the great merchants and landholders, most the governor through their con-
of whom feared that any such experiments would require trol of the colonial budget, and they could circumvent the
large expenditures, would increase taxes, and would Privy Council by repassing disallowed laws in slightly
diminish the profits they were earning from the colonial altered form. The assemblies came to look upon them-
trade. The first of the modern prime ministers, Robert selves as little parliaments, each practically as sovereign
Walpole, deliberately refrained from strict enforcement of within its colony as Parliament itself was in England.
the Navigation Acts, believing that relaxed trading restric-
tions would stimulate commerce.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day administration of colonial The Colonies Divided
affairs remained decentralized and inefficient. There was Despite their frequent resistance to the authority of
no colonial office in London. The nearest equivalent was London, the colonists continued to think of themselves as
the Board of Trade and Planta- loyal English subjects. In many respects, in fact, they felt
Decentralized Colonial tions, established in 1696—a stronger ties to England than they did to one another.“Fire
Administration
mere advisory body that had little and water,” an English traveler wrote, “are not more het-
role in any actual decisions. Real authority rested in the erogeneous than the different colonies in North America.”
Privy Council (the central administrative agency for the New Englanders and Virginians viewed each other as
government as a whole), the admiralty, and the treasury. something close to foreigners. A Connecticut man
But those agencies were responsible for administering denounced the merchants of New York for their “frauds
THE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 107
appointed and paid by the king (just as colonial gover-
nors were) and a legislature (a “grand council”) elected
by the colonial assemblies.
War with the French and Indians was already begin-
ning when this Albany Plan was presented to the colo-
nial assemblies. None approved it. “Everyone cries, a
union is necessary,” Franklin wrote to the Massachu-
setts governor,“but when they come to the manner and
form of the union, their weak noodles are perfectly
distracted.”
THE STRUGGLE FOR
THE CONTINENT
AN APPEAL FOR COLONIAL UNITY This sketch, one of the first American In the late 1750s and early 1760s, a great war raged
editorial cartoons, appeared in Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia
through North America, changing forever the balance of
newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, on May 9, 1754. It was meant
to illustrate the need for intercolonial unity and, in particular, for the power both on the continent and throughout the world.
adoption of Franklin’s Albany Plan. (Library Company of Philadelphia) The war in America was part of a titanic struggle
between England and France for dominance in world
trade and naval power. The British victory in that strug-
gle, known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War, rearranged
and unfair practices,” while a New Yorker condemned global power and cemented England’s role as the world’s
Connecticut because of the “low craft and cunning so great commercial and imperial nation. It also cemented
incident to the people of that country.” Only an accident its control of most of the settled regions of North
of geography, it seemed, connected these disparate socie- America.
ties to one another. In America, however, the conflict was the final stage in
Yet, for all their differences, the colonies could a long battle among the three principal powers in north-
scarcely avoid forging connections with one another. eastern North America: the En-
The growth of the colonial population produced an glish, the French, and the Iroquois. An Uneasy Balance
of Power
almost continuous line of settlement along the seacoast For more than a century prior to
and led to the gradual construction of roads and the rise the conflict—which was known in America as the French
of intercolonial trade. The colonial postal service helped and Indian War—these three groups had maintained an
increase communication. In 1691, it had operated only uneasy balance of power. The events of the 1750s upset
from Massachusetts to New York and Pennsylvania. In that balance, produced a prolonged and open conflict,
1711, it extended to New Hampshire in the North; in and established a precarious dominance for the English
1732, to Virginia in the South; and ultimately, all the way societies throughout the region.
to Georgia. The French and Indian War was important to the
Still, the colonists were loath to cooperate even English colonists in America for another reason as well.
when, in 1754, they faced a common threat from their By bringing the Americans into closer contact with
old rivals, the French, and British authority than ever before, it raised to the sur-
Albany Plan
France’s Indian allies. A confer- face some of the underlying tensions in the colonial
ence of colonial leaders—with delegates from Pennsyl- relationship.
vania, Maryland, New York, and New England—was
meeting in Albany in that year to negotiate a treaty with
the Iroquois, as the British government had advised the New France and the Iroquois Nation
colonists to do. The delegates stayed on to talk about The French and the English had coexisted relatively peace-
forming a colonial federation for defense against the fully in North America for nearly a century. But by the
Indians. Benjamin Franklin proposed, and the delegates 1750s, religious and commercial tensions began to pro-
tentatively approved, a plan by which Parliament would duce new frictions and conflicts. The crisis began in part
set up in America “one general government” for all the because of the expansion of the French presence in
colonies (except Georgia and Nova Scotia). Each colony America in the late seventeenth
would “retain its present constitution,” but would grant century—a result of Louis XIV’s New Sources
of Conflict
to the new general government such powers as the search for national unity and
authority to govern all relations with the Indians. The increased world power. The lucrative fur trade drew
central government would have a “president general” immigrant French peasants deeper into the wilderness,
108 CHAPTER FOUR
while missionary zeal drew large numbers of French Whatever alignments they formed with the European
Jesuits into the interior in search of potential converts. societies growing up around them were generally mar-
The bottomlands of the Mississippi River valley attracted riages of convenience, determined by which group
French farmers discouraged by the short growing season offered the most attractive terms.
in Canada. The English—with their more advanced commercial
By the mid-seventeenth century, the French Empire economy—could usually offer the Indians better and
in America comprised a vast territory. Louis Joliet and more plentiful goods. But the French offered something
Father Jacques Marquette, French explorers of the that was often more important: tolerance. Unlike the En-
1670s, journeyed together by canoe from Green Bay on glish settlers, most of whom tried to impose their own
Lake Michigan as far south as the junction of the Arkan- social norms on the Native Americans they encountered,
sas and Mississippi Rivers. A year later, René Robert the French settlers in the interior generally adjusted their
Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, began the explorations that in own behavior to Indian patterns. French fur traders fre-
1682 took him to the delta of the Mississippi, where he quently married Indian women and adopted tribal ways.
claimed the surrounding country for France and named Jesuit missionaries interacted comfortably with the natives
it Louisiana in the king’s honor. Subsequent traders and and converted them to Catholicism by the thousands
missionaries wandered to the southwest as far as the without challenging most of their social customs. By the
Rio Grande; and the explorer Pierre Gaultier de mid-eighteenth century, therefore, the French had better
Varennes, Sieur de La Verendrye, pushed westward in and closer relations with most of the tribes of the interior
1743 from Lake Superior to a point within sight of the than did the English.
Rocky Mountains. The French had by then revealed the The most powerful native group, however, had a different
outlines of, and laid claim to, the whole continental relationship with the French.The Iroquois Confederacy—
interior. the five Indian nations (Mohawk,
To secure their hold on these enormous claims, they Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and The Iroquois
Confederacy
founded a string of widely separated communities, for- Oneida) that had formed a defen-
tresses, missions, and trading sive alliance in the fifteenth century—had been the most
France’s North posts. Fort Louisbourg, on Cape powerful tribal presence in the Northeast since the
American Empire
Breton Island, guarded the 1640s, when they had fought—and won—a bitter war
approach to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Would-be feudal against the Hurons. Once their major competitors were
lords established large estates (seigneuries) along the largely gone from the region, the Iroquois forged an
banks of the St. Lawrence River; and on a high bluff above important commercial relationship with the English and
the river stood the fortified city of Quebec, the center of Dutch along the eastern seaboard—although they contin-
the French Empire in America.To the south was Montreal, ued to trade with the French as well. Indeed, the key to
and to the west Sault Sainte Marie and Detroit. On the the success of the Iroquois in maintaining their indepen-
lower Mississippi emerged plantations much like those in dence was that they avoided too close a relationship with
the southern colonies of English America, worked by either group and astutely played the French and the En-
black slaves and owned by “Creoles” (white immigrants of glish against each other.As a result, they managed to main-
French descent). New Orleans, founded in 1718 to service tain an uneasy balance of power in the Great Lakes
the French plantation economy, soon was as big as some region.
of the larger cities of the Atlantic seaboard; Biloxi and The principal area of conflict among these many
Mobile to the east completed the string of French groups was the Ohio Valley.The French claimed it. Several
settlement. competing Indian tribes (many of them refugees from
But the French were not, of course, alone in the conti- lands farther east, driven into the valley by the English
nental interior. They shared their territories with a large expansion) lived there. English settlement was expanding
and powerful Indian population—in regions now often into it. And the Iroquois were trying to establish a pres-
labeled the “middle grounds” (see pp. 61–62)—and their ence there as traders. With so many competing groups
relations with the natives were crucial to the shaping of jostling for influence, the Ohio Valley quickly became a
their empire.They also shared the interior with a growing potential battleground.
number of English traders and settlers, who had been
moving beyond the confines of the colonial boundaries in
the East. Both the French and the English were aware that Anglo-French Conflicts
the battle for control of North America would be deter- As long as England and France remained at peace in
mined in part by which group could best win the alle- Europe, and as long as the precarious balance in the North
giance of native tribes—as trading partners and, at times, American interior survived, the tensions among the En-
as military allies. The Indians, for their part, were princi- glish, French, and Iroquois remained relatively mild. But
pally concerned with protecting their independence. after the Glorious Revolution in England, the EnglishTHE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 109
throne passed to one of Louis XIV’s principal enemies, maintain for so long rapidly disintegrated, and the five
William III, who was also the Indian nations allied themselves with the British and
European Seeds stadholder (chief magistrate) of assumed an essentially passive role in the conflict that
of Conflict
the Netherlands and who had followed.
long opposed French expansionism. William’s successor, For the next five years, tensions between the English
Queen Anne (the daughter of James II), ascended the and the French increased. In the summer of 1754, the
throne in 1702 and carried on the struggle against France governor of Virginia sent a militia force (under the com-
and its new ally, Spain. The result was a series of Anglo- mand of an inexperienced
Fort Necessity
French wars that continued intermittently in Europe for young colonel, George Washing-
nearly eighty years. ton) into the Ohio Valley to challenge French expan-
The wars had important repercussions in America. sion. Washington built a crude stockade (Fort Necessity)
King William’s War (1689–1697) produced a few, indeci- not far from the larger French outpost, Fort Duquesne,
sive clashes between the English and French in northern on the site of what is now Pittsburgh. After the Virgin-
New England. Queen Anne’s War, which began in 1701 ians staged an unsuccessful attack on a French detach-
and continued for nearly twelve years, generated substan- ment, the French countered with an assault on Fort
tial conflicts: border fighting with the Spaniards in the Necessity, trapping Washington and his soldiers inside.
South as well as with the French and their Indian allies in After a third of them died in the fighting, Washington
the North. The Treaty of Utrecht, which brought the con- surrendered.
flict to a close in 1713, transferred substantial areas of That clash marked the beginning of the French and
French territory in North America to the English, includ- Indian War, the American part of the much larger Seven
ing Acadia (Nova Scotia) and Newfoundland.Two decades Years’War that spread through Europe at the same time. It
later, European rivalries led to still more conflicts in was the climactic event in the long Anglo-French struggle
America. Disputes over British trading rights in the Span- for empire.
ish colonies produced a war between England and Spain
and led to clashes between the British in Georgia and the
Spaniards in Florida. (It was in the context of this conflict The Great War for the Empire
that the last English colony in America, Georgia, was The French and Indian War lasted nearly nine years, and it
founded in 1733; see p. 61.) The Anglo-Spanish conflict proceeded in three distinct phases. The first of these
soon merged with a much larger European war, in which phases lasted from the Fort Necessity debacle in 1754
England and France lined up on opposite sides of a terri- until the expansion of the war to Europe in 1756. It was
torial dispute between Frederick the Great of Prussia and primarily a local, North American conflict, which the En-
Maria Theresa of Austria.The English colonists in America glish colonists managed largely on their own.
were soon drawn into the struggle, which they called The British provided modest assistance during this
King George’s War; and between 1744 and 1748, they period, but they provided it so
Braddock Defeated
engaged in a series of conflicts with the French. New ineptly that it had little impact
Englanders captured the French bastion at Louisbourg on the struggle. The British fleet failed to prevent the
on Cape Breton Island; but the peace treaty that finally landing of large French reinforcements in Canada; and
ended the conflict forced them (in bitter disappoint- the newly appointed commander in chief of the British
ment) to abandon it. army in America, General Edward Braddock, failed mis-
In the aftermath of King George’s War, relations erably in a major effort in the summer of 1755 to retake
among the English, French, and Iroquois in North Amer- the crucial site at the forks of the Ohio River where
ica quickly deteriorated. The Iroquois (in what in retro- Washington had lost the battle at Fort Necessity. A
spect appears a major blunder) began to grant trading French and Indian ambush a few miles from the fort left
concessions in the interior to English merchants. In the Braddock dead and what remained of his forces in
context of the already tense Anglo-French relationship in disarray.
America, that decision set in motion a chain of events The local colonial forces, meanwhile, were preoccu-
disastrous for the Iroquois Confederacy. The French pied with defending themselves against raids on their
feared that the English were using the concessions as a western settlements by the Indians of the Ohio Valley.
first step toward expansion into French lands (which to Virtually all of them (except the Iroquois) were now
some extent they were). They began in 1749 to con- allied with the French, having interpreted the defeat of
struct new fortresses in the Ohio Valley. The English the Virginians at Fort Duquesne as evidence of British
interpreted the French activity as a threat to their west- weakness. Even the Iroquois, who were nominally allied
ern settlements. They protested and began making mili- with the British, remained fearful of antagonizing the
tary preparations and building fortresses of their own. French. They engaged in few hostilities and launched no
The balance of power that the Iroquois had strove to offensive into Canada, even though they had, under110 CHAPTER FOUR
THE SIEGE OF LOUISBOURG, 1758 The fortress of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, was one of the principal French outposts in
eastern Canada during the French and Indian War. It took a British fleet of 157 ships nearly two months to force the French garrison to surrender.
“We had not had our Batteries against the Town above a Week,” wrote a British soldier after the victory, “tho we were ashore Seven Weeks; the
Badness of the Country prevented our Approaches. It was necessary to make Roads for the Cannon, which was a great Labour, and some Loss of
Men; but the spirits the Army was in is capable of doing any Thing.” (The New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB)
heavy English pressure, declared war on the French. By issuing orders to the colonists. Military recruitment had
late 1755, many English settlers along the frontier had slowed dramatically in America after the defeat of Brad-
withdrawn to the east of the Allegheny Mountains to dock. To replenish the army, British commanders began
escape the hostilities. forcibly enlisting colonists (a practice known as
The second phase of the struggle began in 1756, when “impressment”). Officers also began to seize supplies
the governments of France and England formally opened and equipment from local farmers and tradesmen and
hostilities and a truly international conflict (the Seven compelled colonists to offer shelter to British troops—
Years’ War) began. In Europe, the war was marked by a all generally without compensation. The Americans had
realignment within the complex system of alliances. long ago become accustomed to running their own
France allied itself with its former enemy, Austria; England affairs and had been fighting for over two years without
joined France’s former ally, Prussia. The fighting now much assistance or direction from the British. They
spread to the West Indies, India, and Europe itself. But the resented these new impositions and fi rmly resisted
principal struggle remained the one in North America, them—at times, as in a 1757 riot in New York City, vio-
where so far England had suffered nothing but frustration lently. By early 1758, the friction between the British
and defeat. authorities and the colonists was threatening to bring
Beginning in 1757, William Pitt, the English secretary the war effort to a halt.
of state (and future prime minister), began to transform Beginning in 1758, therefore, Pitt initiated the third and
the war effort in America by final phase of the war by relaxing many of the policies
William Pitt Takes bringing it for the first time fully that Americans found obnoxious. He agreed to reimburse
Charge
under British control. Pitt him- the colonists for all supplies requisitioned by the army. He
self began planning military strategy for the North Amer- returned control over military recruitment to the colonial
ican conflict, appointing military commanders, and assemblies (which resulted in an immediate and dramaticTHE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 111
increase in enlistments).And he dispatched large numbers At the same time, it greatly enlarged Britain’s debt;
of additional troops to America. financing the vast war had been a major drain on the
Finally, the tide of battle began to turn in England’s treasury. It also generated substantial resentment
favor. The French had always been outnumbered by the toward the Americans among British leaders, many of
British colonists; after 1756, the French colonies suffered whom were contemptuous of the colonists for what
as well from a series of poor harvests. As a result, they they considered American military ineptitude during
were unable to sustain their early military successes. By the war. They were angry as well that the colonists had
mid-1758, the British regulars in America (who did the made so few financial contributions to a struggle waged
bulk of the actual fighting) and the colonial militias were largely for American benefit; they were particularly bit-
seizing one French stronghold after another.Two brilliant ter that some colonial merchants had been selling food
English generals, Jeffrey Amherst and James Wolfe, cap- and other goods to the French in the West Indies
tured the fortress at Louisbourg in July 1758; a few throughout the conflict. All these factors combined to
months later Fort Duquesne fell without a fight.The next persuade many English leaders that a major reorganiza-
year, at the end of a siege of Que- tion of the empire, giving London increased authority
Siege of Quebec
bec, supposedly impregnable over the colonies, would be necessary in the aftermath
atop its towering cliff, the army of General James Wolfe of the war.
struggled up a hidden ravine under cover of darkness, The war had an equally profound but very different
surprised the larger forces of the Marquis de Montcalm, effect on the American colonists. It forced them, for the
and defeated them in a battle in which both command- first time, to act in concert against a common foe. The
ers died. The dramatic fall of Quebec on September 13, friction of 1756–1757 over Brit-
1759, marked the beginning of the end of the American ish requisition and impressment Consequences of the
Seven Years’ War
phase of the war. A year later, in September 1760, the policies, and the 1758 return of
French army formally surrendered to Amherst in authority to the colonial assemblies, established an
Montreal. important precedent in the minds of the colonists: it
Not all aspects of the struggle were as romantic as seemed to confirm the illegitimacy of English interfer-
Wolfe’s dramatic assault on Quebec.The British resorted ence in local affairs. For thousands of Americans—the
at times to such brutal military expedients as popula- men who served in the colonial armed forces—the war
tion dispersal. In Nova Scotia, for example, they was an important socializing experience. The colonial
uprooted several thousand French inhabitants, whom troops, unlike the British regiments, generally viewed
they suspected of disloyalty, and scattered them themselves as part of a “people’s army.” The relationship
throughout the English colonies. (Some of these Acadi- of soldiers to their units was, the soldiers believed, in
ans eventually made their way to Louisiana, where they some measure voluntary; their army was a communal,
became the ancestors of the present-day Cajuns.) Else- not a coercive or hierarchical, organization. The contrast
where, English and colonial troops inflicted even worse with the British regulars, whom the colonists widely
atrocities on the Indian allies of the French—for exam- resented for their arrogance and arbitrary use of power,
ple, offering “scalp bounties” to those who could bring was striking; and in later years, the memory of that con-
back evidence of having killed a native. The French and trast helped to shape the American response to British
their Indian allies retaliated, and hundreds of families imperial policies.
along the English frontier perished in brutal raids on For the Indians of the Ohio Valley, the third major
their settlements. party in the French and Indian War, the British victory
Peace finally came after the accession of George III to was disastrous. Those tribes that had allied themselves
the British throne and the resignation of Pitt, who, unlike with the French had earned the enmity of the victori-
the new king, wanted to continue hostilities. The British ous English. The Iroquois Confederacy, which had allied
achieved most of Pitt’s aims nev- itself with Britain, fared only slightly better. English offi-
Peace of Paris
ertheless in the Peace of Paris, cials saw the passivity of the Iroquois during the war (a
signed in 1763. Under its terms, the French ceded to result of their effort to hedge their bets and avoid antag-
Great Britain some of their West Indian islands and most onizing the French) as evidence of duplicity. In the
of their colonies in India. They also transferred Canada aftermath of the peace settlement, the Iroquois alliance
and all other French territory east of the Mississippi, with the British quickly unraveled, and the Iroquois
except New Orleans, to Great Britain. They ceded New Confederacy itself began to crumble from within. The
Orleans and their claims west of the Mississippi to Spain, Iroquois nations would continue to contest the English
thus surrendering all title to the mainland of North for control of the Ohio Valley for another fifty years; but
America. increasingly divided and increasingly outnumbered,
The French and Indian War had profound effects on they would seldom again be in a position to deal with
the British Empire and the American colonies. It greatly their white rivals on terms of military or political
expanded England’s territorial claims in the New World. equality.112 CHAPTER FOUR
British victory
French victory E
C
British advance N
A
R
French advance F
W
E
N British forces led by Wolfe
capture Quebec on Sept. 18, 1759
. French surrender
N eR Louisbourg
Q UI re
nc on July 26, 1758
ON
aw
G
AL
.L
St IA
OT
French surrender Montreal SC
MAINE A
OV
on Sept. 8, 1760 Port Royal
(PART OF MASS.) N
British troops capture
Lake British deport 6,000 Acadian
Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga)
on July 8, 1758 Champlain farmers and disperse them
Fort Frontenac captured by
Colonial troops defeated at among the colonies,
the British on August 28, 1758
Crown Point fall of 1755 summer of 1755
British surrender Fort Willliam
ntario
L ak e O Henry on August 9, 1757
Ft. N.H.
Ft. Oswego AT L A N T I C
Niagara
S Albany Boston OCEAN
OI
Q U NEW YORK MASS.
ie I RO
e Er R.I.
Lak CONN.
PENNSYLVANIA
Braddock defeated by French
and Indian troops at Fort
Duquesne on July 9, 1755 New York
Washington surrenders at N.J.
Fort Necessity on July 4, 1754
.R
Philadelphia Havana
io
1762 Manila
Oh
MARYLAND
1762
French
sugar islands Senegal
1758 Pondicherry
DELAWARE 1759 1761
VIRGINIA
THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR After Washington’s surrender and Braddock’s defeat in the Pennsylvania backcountry, the British and French waged
their final contest for supremacy in North America in northern New York and Canada. But the rivalry for empire between France and Britain was
worldwide, with naval superiority providing the needed edge to Britain.
and grudgingly. Unwilling to be taxed by Parliament to
THE NEW IMPERIALISM support the war effort, the colonists were generally reluc-
tant to tax themselves as well. Defiance of imperial trade
With the treaty of 1763, England found itself truly at peace
regulations and other British demands continued, and
for the first time in more than fifty years. But saddled with
even increased, through the last years of the war.
enormous debts and responsible for vast new lands in the
The problems of managing the empire became more
New World, the imperial government could not long avoid
difficult after 1763 because of a basic shift in Britain’s
expanding its involvement in its colonies.
imperial design. In the past, the English had viewed
their colonial empire primarily in terms of trade; they had
Burdens of Empire opposed acquisition of territory for its own sake. But by
The experience of the French and Indian War, however, the mid-eighteenth century, a
suggested that such increased involvement would not be growing number of English and Commercial Versus
Territorial Imperialists
easy to achieve. Not only had the colonists proved so American leaders (including both
resistant to British control that Pitt had been forced to William Pitt and Benjamin Franklin) were beginning to
relax his policies in 1758, but the colonial assemblies had argue that land itself was of value to the empire—because
continued after that to respond to British needs slowly of the population it could support, the taxes it couldTHE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 113
HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY
QUEBEC
Quebec
MAINE
(Mass.)
Montreal
Y
Fort R
Michilimacinac
O N.H.
T Fort
I Frontenac Falmouth
R
La Baye R Portsmouth
E Fort Bennington Gloucester
T Stanwix
Albany Boston
MASS.
H Fort
Plymouth
I S
Niagara
Hartford Providence
Kingston
I T Poughkeepsie CONN. R.I.
Newport
B R Fort Detroit PENNSYLVANIA
New Haven
Southampton
St. Joseph
S
New York
IN
Perth Amboy
Reading Trenton
TA Philadelphia NEW JERSEY
Fort Burlington
N
Duquesne New Castle
U
Baltimore
O
Dover
Annapolis
M
DELAWARE
Ohio R
.
VIRGINIA
St. Louis Vincennes
Richmond
N
Williamsburg
Petersburg
IA
Norfolk
H
C
LOUISIANA
Edenton
SPANISH
A
NORTH
L
CAROLINA
A
.
P
Greenville NON-INDIAN
R
P
ippi
New SETTLEMENT
A
Fayetteville Bern Portsmouth
siss
Mis
Wilmington Before 1700
SOUTH Camden
CAROLINA 1700–1763
Columbia Kingston
DISPUTED TERRITORY Frontier line
Augusta
(Claimed by Spain and Britain)
Proclamation line
GEORGIA Charleston of 1763
Fort
0 250 mi
Savannah
Provincial capital
0 250 500 km
THE THIRTEEN COLONIES IN 1763 This map is a close-up of the thirteen colonies at the end of the Seven Years’ War. It shows the line of
settlement established by the Proclamation of 1763 (the red line), as well as the extent of actual settlement in that year (the blue line). Note that
in the middle colonies (North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania), settlement had already reached the red line—and in one
small area of western Pennsylvania moved beyond it—by the time of the Proclamation of 1763. Note also the string of forts established beyond
the Proclamation line. ◆ How do the forts help to explain the efforts of the British to restrict settlement? And how does the extent of actual
settlement help explain why it was so difficult for the British to enforce their restrictions?
For an interactive version of this map, go to www.mhhe.com/brinkley13ech4maps
produce, and the imperial splendor it would confer. The however, prevailed. The acquisition of the French territo-
debate between the old commercial imperialists and the ries in North America was a victory for, among others,
new territorial ones came to a head at the conclusion of Benjamin Franklin, who had long argued that the Ameri-
the French and Indian War. The mercantilists wanted En- can people would need these vast spaces to accommo-
gland to return Canada to France in exchange for Guade- date their rapid and, he believed, limitless growth.
loupe, the most commercially valuable of the French With the territorial annexations of 1763, the area of the
“sugar islands” in the West Indies. The territorialists, British Empire was suddenly twice as great as it had been,114 CHAPTER FOUR
and the problems of governing it were thus considerably perform any official functions.) Yet even when George III
more complex. Some British officials argued that the was lucid and rational, which in the 1760s and 1770s was
empire should restrain rapid settlement in the western most of the time, he was painfully immature (he was only
territories.To allow Europeans to move into the new lands twenty-two when he ascended the throne) and inse-
too quickly, they warned, would run the risk of stirring up cure—striving constantly to prove his fitness for his posi-
costly conflicts with the Indians. Restricting settlement tion but time and again finding himself ill equipped to
would also keep the land available for hunting and handle the challenges he seized for himself. The king’s
trapping. personality, therefore, contributed to both the instability
But many colonists wanted to see the new territories and the intransigence of the British government during
opened for immediate development, but they disagreed these critical years.
among themselves about who should control the western More immediately responsible for the problems that
lands. Colonial governments made fervent, and often con- soon emerged with the colonies, however, was George
flicting, claims of jurisdiction. Others argued that control Grenville, whom the king made prime minister in 1763.
should remain in England, and that the territories should Grenville did not share his brother-in-law William Pitt’s
be considered entirely new colonies, unlinked to the sympathy with the American point of view. He agreed
existing settlements. There were, in short, a host of prob- instead with the prevailing opinion within Britain that the
lems and pressures that the British could not ignore. colonists had been too long indulged and that they should
At the same time, the government in London was run- be compelled to obey the laws and to pay a part of the
ning out of options in its effort to find a way to deal with cost of defending and administering the empire. He
its staggering war debt. Landlords promptly began trying to impose a new system of control
Britain’s Staggering and merchants in England itself
War Debt
were objecting strenuously to
increases in what they already considered excessively
high taxes.The necessity of stationing significant numbers
of British troops on the Indian border after 1763 was add-
ing even more to the cost of defending the American set-
tlements. And the halfhearted response of the colonial
assemblies to the war effort had suggested that in its
search for revenue, England could not rely on any cooper-
ation from the colonial governments. Only a system of
taxation administered by London, the leaders of the
empire believed, could effectively meet England’s needs.
At this crucial moment in Anglo-American relations,
with the imperial system in desperate need of redefinition,
the English government experienced a series of changes as
a result of the accession to the throne of a new king.
George III assumed power in 1760 on the death of his
grandfather. And he brought two particularly unfortunate
qualities to the office. First, he was determined, unlike his
two predecessors, to be an active and responsible mon-
arch. In part because of pressure from his ambitious
mother, he removed from power the long-standing and rel-
atively stable coalition of Whigs, who had (under Pitt and
others) governed the empire for much of the century and
whom the new king mistrusted. In their place, he created a
new coalition of his own through patronage and bribes
and gained an uneasy control of Parliament. The new min-
istries that emerged as a result of these changes were inher-
ently unstable, each lasting in office only about two years. GEORGE III George III was twenty-two years old when he ascended
The king had serious intellectual and psychological to the throne in 1760, and for many years almost all portraits of him
limitations that compounded his political difficulties. He were highly formal, with the king dressed in elaborate ceremonial
suffered, apparently, from a rare disease that produced robes. This more informal painting dates from much later in his reign,
intermittent bouts of insanity. (Indeed, in the last years of after he had begun to suffer from the mental disorders that eventually
consumed him. After 1810, he was blind and permanently deranged,
his long reign he was, according barred from all official business by the Regency Act of 1811. His son
George III’s to most accounts, deranged, con- (later King George IV) served as regent in those years. (The Granger
Shortcomings
fined to the palace and unable to Collection, New York)THE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 115
upon what had been a loose collection of colonial posses- failed to prevent the white colonists from pushing the
sions in America. line of settlement still farther west.
The British and the Tribes The Colonial Response
The western problem was the most urgent. With the The Grenville ministry soon moved to increase its
departure of the French, settlers and traders from the En- authority in the colonies in more-direct ways. Regular
glish colonies had begun immediately to move over the British troops, London announced, would now be sta-
mountains and into the upper Ohio Valley. The Indians of tioned permanently in America; and under the Mutiny
the region objected to this intrusion into their land and Act of 1765 the colonists were required to assist in pro-
commerce; and an alliance of tribes, under the Ottawa visioning and maintaining the army. Ships of the British
chieftain Pontiac, struck back. To prevent an escalation of navy were assigned to patrol American waters and search
the fighting that might threaten western trade, the British for smugglers. The customs service was reorganized and
government issued a ruling—the Proclamation of 1763— enlarged. Royal officials were ordered to take up their
forbidding settlers to advance beyond a line drawn along colonial posts in person instead of sending substitutes.
the Appalachian Mountains. Colonial manufacturing was to be restricted so that it
The Proclamation of 1763 was appealing to the British would not compete with the rapidly expanding industry
for several reasons. It would allow London, rather than of Great Britain.
the provincial governments and their land-hungry con- The Sugar Act of 1764, designed in part to eliminate
stituents, to control the west- the illegal sugar trade between the continental colonies
Proclamation of 1763
ward movement of the white and the French and Spanish West Indies, strengthened
population. Hence, westward expansion would proceed enforcement of the duty on sugar (while lowering the
in an orderly manner, and conflicts with the tribes, which duty on molasses, further damaging the market for sugar
were both militarily costly and dangerous to trade, might grown in the colonies). It also
be limited. Slower western settlement would also slow established new vice-admiralty Sugar, Currency, and
Stamp Acts
the population exodus from the coastal colonies, where courts in America to try accused
England’s most important markets and investments were. smugglers—thus depriving them of the benefit of sympa-
And it would reserve opportunities for land speculation thetic local juries. The Currency Act of 1764 required the
and fur trading for English rather than colonial colonial assemblies to stop issuing paper money (a wide-
entrepreneurs. spread practice during the war) and to retire on schedule
Although the tribes were not enthusiastic about the all the paper money already in circulation. Most momen-
Proclamation, which required them to cede still more tous of all, the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a tax on most
land to the white settlers, many tribal groups supported printed documents in the colonies: newspapers, almanacs,
the agreement as the best bargain available to them. The pamphlets, deeds, wills, licenses.
Cherokee, in particular, worked actively to hasten the The new imperial program was an effort to reapply to
drawing of the boundary, hoping to put an end to white the colonies the old principles of mercantilism. And in
encroachments. Relations between the western tribes some ways, it proved highly effective. British officials
and the British improved in at least some areas after the were soon collecting more than ten times as much
Proclamation, partly as a result of the work of the Indian annual revenue from America as before 1763. But the
superintendents the British appointed. John Stuart was new policies created many more problems than they
in charge of Indian affairs in the southern colonies, and solved.
Sir William Johnson in the northern ones. Both were The colonists may have resented the new imperial reg-
sympathetic to Native American needs and lived among ulations, but at first they found it difficult to resist them
the tribes; Johnson married a Mohawk woman, Mary effectively. For one thing, Americans continued to harbor
Brant, who was later to play an important role in the as many grievances against one another as against the
American Revolution. authorities in London. Often, the conflicts centered
In the end, however, the Proclamation of 1763 failed to around tensions between the established societies of the
meet even the modest expectations of the Native Ameri- Atlantic coast and the “backcountry” farther west, whose
cans. It had some effect in limit- residents often felt isolated from,
White Encroachment Paxton Boys
ing colonial land speculation in and underrepresented in, the
the West and in controlling the fur trade, but on the cru- colonial governments. They sometimes felt beleaguered
cial point of the line of settlement it was almost com- because they lived closer to the worlds of the Indian
pletely ineffective. White settlers continued to swarm tribes than the societies of the East. In 1763, for example,
across the boundary and to claim lands farther and farther a band of people from western Pennsylvania known as
into the Ohio Valley. The British authorities tried repeat- the Paxton Boys descended on Philadelphia with demands
edly to establish limits to the expansion but continually for relief from colonial (not British) taxes and for money116 CHAPTER FOUR
ARCTIC OCEAN
Greenland
Bering
Sea
E D
R
O
L
P
X
E
Hudson French Fishing
N
Bay Rights
U
Newfoundland
St. Pierre and
Miquelon
HUDSON’S BAY
EC
COMPANY
EB
NOVA
QU
ME SCOTIA
(Mass.)
Missouri R.
NH
NY MA
L RI
O PA CT
U NJ
I DE
S
E
RV
I R. VA MD
A io
Oh ATLANTIC
PACIFIC N SE NC
RE
OCEAN OCEAN
.
ppi R
A
AN
SC
Mississi
DI
GA
IN
Ri SPANISH FLORIDA
B
oG
ah
am
ran
as
Gulf of
de
Mexico Santo Domingo
Cuba
N
Puerto
E
Rico
W
St. Domingue
British S Jamaica
N P
French A C aribbean Sea
I BELIZE
N
Spanish
MOSQUITO
Russian 0 500 mi
COAST
Proclamation line 0 500 1000 km
of 1763
NORTH AMERICA IN 1763 The victory of the English over the French in the Seven Years’ War (or, as it was known in America, the French and
Indian War) reshaped the map of colonial North America. Britain gained a vast new territory, formerly controlled by France—Canada, and a large
area west of the Mississippi River—thus more than doubling the size of the British Empire in America. French possessions in the New World
dwindled to a few islands in the Caribbean. Spain continued to control a substantial empire in the North American interior. The red line along
the western borders of the English colonies represents the line of settlement established by Britain in 1763. White settlers were not permitted to
move beyond that line. ◆ Why did the British wish to restrict settlement of the western lands?
For an interactive version of this map, go to www.mhhe.com/brinkley13ech4maps
to help them defend themselves against Indians; the colo- were farmers of the Carolina upcountry who organized in
nial government averted bloodshed only by making con- opposition to the high taxes that local sheriffs (appointed
cessions to them. by the colonial governor) collected.The western counties
In 1771, a small-scale civil war broke out as a result of were badly underrepresented in the colonial assembly, and
the so-called Regulator movement the Regulators failed to win redress of their grievances
Regulator Movement
in North Carolina. The Regulators there. Finally they armed themselves and began resistingTHE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION 117
PREPARING TO MEET THE PAXTON BOYS The “Paxton Boys” were residents of western Pennsylvania who were declared outlaws by the assembly
in Philadelphia after they launched an unauthorized attack on neighboring Conestoga Indians. Instead of surrendering, they armed themselves
and marched on Philadelphia. This engraving satirizes the haphazard military preparations in the city for the expected invasion. An accompanying
poem, expressing the contempt some colonists felt toward the urbanized, pacifist Quakers of Philadelphia, commented: “To kill the Paxtonians,
they then did Advance, With Guns on their Shoulders, but how did they Prance.” Benjamin Franklin finally persuaded the Paxton rebels not to
attack in return for greater representation in the legislature. (Library Company of Philadelphia)
tax collections by force. To suppress the revolt, Governor from increased taxes and from the abolition of paper
William Tryon raised an army of militiamen, mostly from money, which had enabled them to pay their loans. Work-
the eastern counties, who defeated a band of 2,000 Regu- ers in towns opposed the restraints on manufacturing.
lators in the Battle of Alamance. Nine on each side were The new restrictions came, moreover, at the beginning
killed, and many others were wounded.Afterward, six Reg- of an economic depression. The British government, by
ulators were hanged for treason. pouring money into the colonies to finance the fighting,
The bloodshed was exceptional, but bitter conflicts had stimulated a wartime boom; that flow of funds stopped
within the colonies were not. After 1763, however, the after the peace in 1763, precipitating an economic bust.
new policies of the British government began to create Now the authorities in London
Postwar Depression
common grievances among virtually all colonists that to proposed to aggravate the prob-
some degree counterbalanced these internal divisions. lem by taking money out of the colonies.The imperial poli-
Indeed, there was something in the Grenville program cies would, many colonists feared, doom them to permanent
to antagonize everyone. Northern merchants believed economic stagnation and a declining standard of living.
they would suffer from restraints on their commerce, In reality, most Americans soon found ways to live with
from the closing of opportunities for manufacturing, and (or circumvent) the new British policies. The American
from the increased burden of taxation. Settlers in the economy was not, in fact, being destroyed. But economic
northern backcountry resented the closing of the West to anxieties were rising in the colonies nevertheless, and
land speculation and fur trading. Southern planters, in they created a growing sense of unease, particularly in the
debt to English merchants, feared having to pay additional cities—the places most resistant to British policies. Urban
taxes and losing their ability to ease their debts by specu- Americans were worried about the periodic economic
lating in western land. Professionals—ministers, lawyers, slumps that were occurring with greater and greater fre-
professors, and others—depended on merchants and quency.They had been shocked by the frightening depres-
planters for their livelihood and thus shared their con- sion of the early 1760s and alarmed by the growth of a
cerns about the effects of English law. Small farmers, the large and destabilizing group within the population who
largest group in the colonies, believed they would suffer were unemployed or semi-employed. The result of all118 CHAPTER FOUR
these anxieties was a feeling in some colonial cities—and the most influential group in distributing information and
particularly in Boston, the city suffering the worst eco- ideas in colonial society—had to buy stamps for their
nomic problems—that something was deeply amiss. newspapers and other publications.
Whatever the economic consequences of the British The actual economic burdens of the Stamp Act were,
government’s programs, the political consequences in the end, relatively light; the stamps were not expensive.
were—in the eyes of the colonists, at least—far worse. What made the law obnoxious to the colonists was not so
Perhaps nowhere else in the late-eighteenth-century much its immediate cost as the precedent it seemed to
world did so large a proportion of the people take an set. In the past, Americans had rationalized the taxes and
active interest in public affairs. duties on colonial trade as measures to regulate com-
Political Consequences That was partly because Anglo- merce, not raise money. Some Americans had even man-
of the Grenville
Program
Americans were accustomed aged to persuade themselves that the Sugar Act, which
(and deeply attached) to very was in fact designed primarily to raise money, was not
broad powers of self-government; and the colonists were fundamentally different from the traditional imperial
determined to protect those powers. The keys to self- duties. The Stamp Act, however, they could interpret in
government, they believed, were the provincial assem- only one way: it was a direct attempt by England to raise
blies; and the key to the power of the provincial assemblies revenue in the colonies without the consent of the colo-
was their long-established right to give or withhold appro- nial assemblies. If this new tax passed without resistance,
priations for the colonial governments which the British the door would be open for more burdensome taxation
were now challenging. Home rule, therefore, was not in the future.
something new and different that the colonists were striv-
ing to attain, but something old and familiar that they
desired to keep.The movement to resist the new imperial
policies, a movement for which many would ultimately
fight and die, was thus at the same time democratic and
conservative. It was a movement to conserve liberties
Americans believed they already possessed.
STIRRINGS OF REVOLT
By the mid-1760s, therefore, a hardening of positions had
begun in both England and America that would bring the
colonies into increasing conflict with the mother country.
The victorious war for empire had given the colonists a
heightened sense of their own importance and a renewed
commitment to protecting their political autonomy. It had
given the British a strengthened belief in the need to
tighten administration of the empire and a strong desire
to use the colonies as a source of revenue. The result was
a series of events that, more rapidly than anyone could
imagine, shattered the British Empire in America.
The Stamp Act Crisis
Even if he had tried, Prime Minister Grenville could not
have devised a better method for antagonizing and unify-
ing the colonies than the Stamp
Effects of the Stamp Act
Act of 1765. The Sugar Act of a
year earlier had affected few people other than the New THE ALTERNATIVES OF WILLIAM BURG In the aftermath of the Boston
England merchants whose trade it hampered. But the new Tea Party, and in response to the Coercive Acts Great Britain enacted
tax fell on all Americans, and it evoked particular opposi- to punish the colonists, the First Continental Congress called on
tion from some of the most powerful members of the Americans to boycott British goods until the acts were repealed. In
population. Merchants and lawyers were obliged to buy this drawing, a prosperous Virginia merchant is seen signing a pledge
to honor the nonimportation agreement—unsurprisingly given the
stamps for ships’ papers and legal documents.Tavern own- alternative, visible in the background of the picture: tar and feathers
ers, often the political leaders of their neighborhoods, hanging from a post labeled “A Cure for the Refractory.” (Colonial
were required to buy stamps for their licenses. Printers— Williamsburg Foundation)You can also read
