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THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION
Lecture 5: The Changing Empire

In 1763, Great Britain straddled the world with the greatest and richest empire since the fall of Rome. The Paris Peace Treaty (1763) that ended the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) gave the British New World territories from Spain and France--all of Canada, East and West Florida, and all of the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

Yet at the moment of Britain's supremacy, there were powerful forces at work that would soon change everything. In the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, British officials found themselves having to make long-postponed decisions concerning the colonies that set in motion a chain of events that would ultimately shatter the empire.

The Changing Empire

The Cumberland Gap

     British imperial rule over the colonies prior to this point had been loose and haphazard (salutary neglect). After 1760, though, the American colonies were too important to be treaty so casually by the mother country. Dynamic developments throughout the greater British world demanded that England pay more attention to its North American colonies.

    The most basic developments were the growth and movement of people. In the mid-18th century, there was unprecedented growth in the British empire, redistributing population in massive movements of people. The North American colonists continued to multiply more rapidly than any other people in the western world. Between 1750 and 1770, they doubled in number from one to two million, and thereby became an even more important part of the British world. In 1770, the American population represented one-fifth of the British-Irish population in the world. This trend pointed out one critical fact: the center of the British empire was shifting to America.

     For nearly a century and a half, the colonists had been confined to a several-hundred-mile strip along the Atlantic coast. But in the middle of the 18th century, Americans felt the pressures of increasing population density. More and more colonists left crowded towns to seek new prospects in the colonial cities or the backcountry. Consequently, the number of poor in the cities increased, helping fuel unrest. (For a closer look at this phenomenon, click here.)

     The defeat of the French had opened up vast new territories across the Appalachian Mountains. Thousands of colonies, many of them Scotch-Irish, pushed into western Pennsylvania and down Virginia's Blue Ridge and into the Carolinas. The addition of these new populations caused tension among the established settlers, who often looked on the newcomers as uncivilized. (Recall the effect of this in the backcountry of Pennsylvania.)

     British colonial officials could scarcely comprehend the meaning of this enormous explosion of peoples in search of land. All of this movement had far-reaching effects on American society and its place in the British Empire. The fragmentation of households, churches, and communities increased, and the colonial governments lost control of the mushrooming new settlements. In the backcountry, lawlessness and vagrancy became more common, and disputes over land claims and colonial boundaries increased sharply. But the most immediate effect that was most obvious to imperial officials in the 1760s was the pressure that migration had placed on native Americans.

     At the beginning of the Seven Years' War, the problem of native Americans in the West compelled the British government to take over the direct control of Indian affairs for the first time. There was a large population of native Americans forming a formidable barrier to British western expansion.

     After French authority had eliminated from Canada and Spanish authority from Florida, the native Americans were no longer able to play one European power off the other. Britain now had sole responsibility for regulating the profitable fur trade and maintaining the peace between whites and Indians. The problems were awesome. White settlers and land speculators would use any means at hand to push the natives back. Confused and often lied to, the Indians retaliated with atrocities and raids. Some tribes attempted to form coalitions to fight full-fledged wars.

     Thus the end of the Seven Years' War did not end violence on the frontier. Repeatedly, British officials had to resort to armed force to put down Indians' revolts over white encroachments on their lands, and to curb the dishonest practice of the traders. In the end, the continuing violence convinced British officials that only the presence of regular British troops on the frontier could maintain the peace in the American borderlands.

The Reorganization of the Empire

The most immediate problem facing Great Britain after its victory in the Seven Years' War was the reorganization of the territories it had gained from France and Spain. It had to organize new governments, regulate Indian trade as well as other colonial trade, and sort out various land claims (many of the colonies had competing claims on the Ohio country, for example). Then there was the huge debt left over from fighting the war. Pitt had been forced to borrow heavily to pay for the campaign involving regular British forces. The war debt had reached £137 million (the annual budget at that time was only £8 million), and faced with the prospects of increasing military costs in the future, the British had to act. Local militia were not capable of handling the unrest caused by settlers and squatters flowing into the backcountry, stirring up trouble with the Indians. Thus, the British made a critical decision, and stuck to it: they must keep a standing army in America. This peacetime army was actually double the size of the army that Britain had mustered during the actual fighting, and the costs of maintaining this army quickly rose to well over £400,000 a year.

Where was this money to come from? The English middle class was already taxed to the limit. Meanwhile, British troops were reporting back home how prosperous even ordinary Americans seemed. Under these circumstances, the British government thought it reasonable to seek additional revenues from the colonies. One way to do so was to step up enforcement of existing navigation acts. Such acts had been on the books for decades, but, except for a brief period during the Dominion of New England, Britain had never taken steps to enforce them. (This was the policy of salutary neglect referred to earlier: salus being the Latin word for law, the term thus refers to the practice of neglecting the laws.)

George III and British Politics

George III

The ascension of a young and impatient monarch in 1760 boded ill for Anglo-America relations. George III was shy and inexperienced in politics, but he nevertheless determined to rule personally. His good intentions shook up the British political system just when it was facing some of its greatest challenges from abroad. George turned to a number of ministers, none of whom succeeded to George's expectations. By 1767, it seemed no one was in charge. Amid this confusion of shuffling ministers, only Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer [the equivalent of Secretary of the Treasury], gave any direction to foreign policy, and he died in 1767. Not until George III appointed Lord North as prime minister in 1770 did the king find a politician whom he trusted and one who also enjoyed Parliament's support.

Thinking Ahead

An important question for us to keep in mind is: what role did King George play, and how much blame did he deserve, in the subsequent unrest between Britain and the American colonies? It is important to realize that we here it the twenty-first century, have access to far more information than did the colonists. Here's what we need to keep in mind: Parliament passed all the laws to which the colonists will object so strenuously, and it is Parliament they will initially blame; however, since George appointed the prime ministers who presided over Parliament, he did play an indirect but important role in shaping government policy. Only much later will the colonists learn just how much a role George did play in government, and it will change everything.

The Proclamation of 1763 and the West

Click here to read more about the significance of the Proclamation for the future Revolution

      While George was shuffling his ministers, government still faced the problems left behind in the wake of the French and Indian War. Colonists, whose eagerness to settle the trans-Appalachian West had helped spark that war, were now streaming into the backcountry. This had led the British government to change its policy by keeping regular British troops in the colonies to keep order. But these troops and their commanders complained to London that they faced a hopeless task so long as the colonists kept stirring up trouble with the Indians. So Parliament and King George too action by issuing the Proclamation of 1763. The act did forbade any further colonial settlement beyond the Appalachian mountains. It also forbade trade with the Indians.

   In effect, the Proclamation settled the very divisive issue of competing colonial land claims (the same land claims that had constrained the colonies from forming a united front at the Albany Congress in 1755), but it outraged the colonists. They had fought the French and Indian War not for the greater glory of empire, but for their land, and now the British government had stepped in and taken it away, just when the long struggle against the French and their Indian allies had been won. Furthermore, the Proclamation established three new royal governments for the territories gained from the French--East Florida, West Florida, and Quebec--and enlarged the province of Nova Scotia. The combined aim of these actions was to maintain peace in the west and to channel migration northward and southward (as opposed to westward) into the new colonies. This would keep the settlers within the reach of British law (and taxation).

     But circumstances destroyed these royal blueprints. The demarcation line in the trans-Appalcahian west caused considerable problems, and the colonists widely ignored the new trade regulations, causing even more problems than before. Land speculators and lobbyists wanted the British government to move the line so as to push the Indians further west, but no modification was ever enough to satisfy their appetites.

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