THE EMPIRE IN TRANSITION

Chapter 4

LOOSENING TIES

Americans at the mid‐18th century were proud to be British and enjoyed many advantages of membership in the British Empire including trade, protection, political stability, and the fact that the government left the colonies alone.

During the 1760s and 1770s, changes in both international and domestic political circumstances led to a new imperial relationship that sharpened differences between England and its American colonies.

A TRADITION OF NEGLECT

Although the Crown converted many colonies to royal status during the first half of the 18th century and more strict Navigation Laws were passed, no serious enforcement efforts and the colonies exercised substantial autonomy.

After the Glorious Revolution Parliament exercised increasing authority over the king and tighter imperial organization was not a priority.

POWERFUL COLONIAL LEGISLATURES

Royal officials in America were often corrupt and dependent upon the colonial assemblies for their expenses.

Colonial assemblies had significant authority— claiming the right to tax, spend, appoint officials, and legislate — and came to see themselves as sovereign in their respective colonies.

Colonists considered themselves loyal British subjects and felt closer ties to England than to the other colonies.

ALBANY PLAN OF UNION

Despite inter‐colonial trade and communication that bound the colonies together, they still refused to approve the Albany Plan of Union in 1754 when confronted with a common foe (the French in the Ohio River Valley)

AN UNEASY BALANCE OF POWER

The century‐old struggle between England and France for Atlantic supremacy in trade and naval power spared four colonial wars: King William’s War Queen Anne’s War King George’s War Ended with England’s 1763 victory in the Seven Years’ War

Known in the American colonies as the French and Indian War, this struggle affected three powers, the English, the French, and the Iroquois.

English dominance in North America brought into focus tensions in the imperial relationship.

NEW SOURCES OF CONFLICT

Throughout the 18th century the French attempted to establish their dominance in the Ohio Valley.

The French were better at forming relations with Indians than were the English

One exception was the Iroquois Confederacy, which traded with the English and Dutch as well as the French and was adept at playing the Europeans against each other.

THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY

After King George’s War the Iroquois granted trading concessions to the English, which prompted the French to construct a series of forts in the Ohio Valley.

The English countered, and the Virginia militia led by George Washington attacked Fort Duquesne.

Washington was defeated, and the French and Indian War commenced.

THE GREAT WAR FOR THE EMPIRE

From 1754 to 1756 the colonists fought without much assistance from Britain.

Receiving little help from Iroquois allies, British General Edward Braddock was defeated at a second attack of Fort Duquesne.

When the war expanded to Europe, Prime Minister William Pitt, realizing the consequences of a French victory in North America, took control of the war and supported the colonial effort with British troops.

Pitt used forced enlistments, impressments, and confiscation of goods without payment to secure a British victory. These actions engendered colonial resistance.

PITT TAKES CHARGE

In 1758, Pitt sent many more soldiers to America resulting in a series of major British victories followed most significantly the fall Of Quebec and Montreal.

TREATY OF PARIS

The war ended in 1763 with the Peace of Paris All French territory in North America was

ceded to England. However, as a result of the war, Britain’s national debt grew dramatically , and the British were embittered by the Americans’ resistance to its policies, military ineptitude, meager financial support of the war effort, and war time profiteering.

This led to a move for colonial reorganization with increased imperial authority

CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR

The French and Indian War had a profound effect on the colonies.

They had united against a common foe and resisted British interference in local affairs.

The American militia, fighting alongside British regular, noted stark contrasts with their English countrymen.

Indians earned British enmity, and Iroquois Confederacy began to unravel.

THE NEW IMPERIALISM

With peace in 1763 Britain faced an enormous debt and new responsibilities with its expanded empire.

A new British government adopted the strategy of more governmental involvement in colonial affairs.

This response is characterized by historians as the end of salutary neglect, that the British inattention to colonial matters before 1763 had benefited both England and her colonies.

This new policy reflected a shift in philosophy from commercial to territorial imperialism.

COMMERCIAL VS. TERRITORIAL

Officials began to value the land itself, apart from the commerce it produced, and the new lands made governing more complex.

The staggering debt combined with already high British taxes pointed to a policy of taxing the colonies.

The new king George III wanted to be an involved monarch but had intellectual and psychological limitations.

He replaced stable Whig governments, beginning with a ministry headed by George Grenville.

Grenville believed the colonies should obey the law and pay their share of the cost of governing and maintaining the empire.

PROCLAMATION OF 1763

An Indian attempt to stem the tide of colonial migration westward, Pontiac’s Rebellion, pointed to the urgency of western issues.

Grenville issued The Proclamation of 1763 to limit conflicts with Indians and control trade, migration, and land speculation.

The Proclamation failed to meet these goals and the line was continually moved west at the Indian’s expense.

SUGAR, CURRENCY, & STAMPS

Grenville soon followed with other acts to assert imperial authority by: stationing troops and ships in the colonies called

the Quartering Act collecting duties reorganizing the duties on sugar and molasses

called the Sugar Act establishing vice‐admiralty courts in America stopping the use of paper currency called the

Currency Act taxing documents called the Stamp Act

THE COLONIAL RESPONSE

This program collected much more revenue but created common grievances, antagonized nearly all interest groups in the colonies, and promoted increasing economic anxiety already fueled by a postwar depression, particularly in the cities.

Grenville’s program violated the colonial belief in self‐government and the authority of the provincial assemblies to control public finance.

Tension between coastal and eastern settlers, the Paxton Boys, and the North Carolina Regulator Movement diverted colonial attention away from the new British policies until the Stamp Act Crisis.

STIRRINGS OF REVOLT

The Stamp Act of 1765 focused colonial antagonism towards, and unification against, new British policies.

Americans had accepted English taxes for the purpose of regulating trade, not to raise revenue.

The Virginia House of Burgesses adopted the Virginia Resolves introduced by Patrick Henry, proclaiming Americans had the same rights as Englishmen and only their representative assemblies could tax them.

That fall, the delegates from nine colonies met in New York at the Stamp Act Congress and petitioned the King and Parliament.

They argued that they were loyal British citizens, but they could not be taxed by Parliament.

PARLIAMENT BACKS OFF

In Massachusetts, organized resistance to the Stamp Act came from the Sons of Liberty, which encouraged mob action and sacked Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s house.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, more because of pressure from London merchants losing profits from the colonial boycotts rather than from colonial pressure or violence.

However, Parliament simultaneously passed the Declaratory Act, upholding Parliament’s authority to pass laws affecting the colonies “in all cases whatsoever”.

THE TOWNSHEND PROGRAM

Charles Townshend assumed leadership of the English government and dealt with colonial noncompliance of the Quartering Act by suspending the New York Assembly.

To raise revenue he accepted the colonial distinction between internal and external taxes.

Parliament then levied a new set of taxes, The Townshend Duties, which taxed lead, paint,

paper, glass and tea. These actions stirred the colonies to action.

COLONIAL BOYCOTTS

The Massachusetts Circular Letter was sent by its assembly to the other colonies urging them to resist all taxes.

When Townshend established a Board of Customs Commissioners in America, the colonies established a non‐importation agreement and promoted American production. Homespun became fashionable.

All the duties except the tax on tea were repealed in 1770.

THE BOSTON MASSACRE

To protect the Board of Customs Commissioners from harassment, troops were sent to Boston. This action created significant tension, in part because the British troops were vying with Bostonians for menial jobs.

In March 1770, a mob harassed troops with snowballs and rocks and the troops fired on the crowd an event known as the Boston Massacre.

Five colonists were killed including a black sailor, Crispus Attucks. Bostonian Samuel Adams led a Committee of Correspondence to propagandize Bostonian grievances.

SONS OF LIBERTY

This sparked a resistance network (committee of correspondence) throughout the colonies led by Samuel Adams & John Hancock.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLT

While Puritan theology was a source of revolutionary ideology, Whig ideology from England, which argued that men were inherently evil and government existed to protect individuals, was also a source of Americans’ revolutionary thinking.

Americans believed that government too was prone to abuses of power.

A balanced government with power distributed as it was in England was the ideal and would avoid corruption and tyranny.

Whigs feared the king and his ministry was becoming a single center of power and corruption.

VIRTUAL VS. ACTUAL REPRESENTATION

Americans also believed that people could be taxed only by their consent as expressed through their direct representatives

They did not accept the idea of virtual representation—that Parliament legislated for the nation as a whole—but believed in actual representation, legislation by a body of their peers directly accountable to them.

In theory, Americans accepted Parliament’s sovereignty in some areas, but they also believed that their colonial assemblies had authority.

THE TEA EXCITEMENT

After the Boston Massacre an uneasy calm settled on the colonies.

Corrupt customs officials continued to antagonize merchants and in 1772 Rhode Islanders burned the British revenue cutter Gaspee.

In 1773, with the British East India Company on the verge of bankruptcy, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which allowed the company to sell tea directly to the colonies without paying the tea duty; this would bypass American merchants and establish a tea monopoly.

The colonial response was another boycott that united the colonies.

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

Women played a major role by avoiding English goods and producing domestic substitutes

They participated in riots and formed the Daughters of Liberty, which often chided its male counterpart, the Sons of Liberty, as not being radical enough.

Many ports prohibited the unloading of tea, but in Boston in 1773, townsmen dressed as Indians dumped the tea in the harbor

This radical event known as the Boston Tea Party set off a series of retaliatory events both in England and in America.

TEA PARTY

COERCIVE ACTS

Boston refused to pay, and Parliament passed a series of laws known as the Coercive Acts in England and as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies: Closed the port of Boston Limited Massachusetts’ power of self

government Required the quartering of troops in private

houses Permitted royal officials to be tried in England

CONSEQUENCES

Soon after, the Quebec Act gave the province of Quebec a self‐governing structure and freedom to practice Catholicism.

Combined, these acts spelled tyranny to the Americans. The colonies unified in their resistance to these actions by passing resolves and extended the colonial boycott.

COOPERATION & WAR

Traditions of local autonomy were strong, and new extralegal bodies emerged as royal authority in the colonies crumbled in the face of these new laws. The Sons of Liberty directed vigilante action The Committee of Correspondence formed inter-colonial groups

and most importantly, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774.

The congress endorsed grievances, approved the Suffolk Resolves that recommended military preparation to defend against the British, approved a Continental Association to enforce a total boycott of British goods, and agreed to meet the following spring

These actions ratified the autonomous status of the colonies within the empire.

LEXINGTON & CONCORD

England’s response, the Conciliatory Propositions, was too late.

Having imposed martial law in Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, Britain’s commander in Boston, sent troops to Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.

They were to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seize a cache of gunpowder

Alerted by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen resisted and eight were killed.

“THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD”

The British troops burned what little powder they found

They were attacked by minutemen as they returned to Boston Nearly two dozen British soldiers were killed in the

ambush The colonial version of the events at Lexington and

Concord rallied Americans to the patriot cause and brought into clearer focus the view that had been emerging since the end of the French and Indian War that there were significant ideological and political differences between Americans and their English countrymen.