British Politics in the Era of the American Revolution

 

“We must either master them totally or leave them to themselves and treat them as allies.” (George III to Lord North)

 

Theme: The American Revolution is often “blamed” on the misguided decisions of George III and two of his chief ministers, George Grenville, in 1765, and Lord North, in the early 1770s.  This view ignores the virtually unanimous support in Parliament and among the British people for the taxation policy that brought on the American Revolution.  Such criticism also overlooks both the practical and ideological justifications that the British had for their taxation policy. 

 

I.  The Legacy of the Seven Years’ War

 

A.  the cost of war (nation debt from 75 million pounds to 133 million)

B.  new awareness of smuggling and inefficiency of customs collection

C.  new Native American Policy (Proclamation Line of 1763)

D.  stationing of 10,000 British Regulars in colonies (mostly in Caribbean, Canada, and on frontier) with additional costs to empire)

E.  fundamental uncertainty about this “new” British empire coupled with severe domestic problems (post-war unemployment)

 

Prologue: the Strange Career of “Wilkes and Liberty”

 

 

Cartoon of John Wilkes, English Radical, 1760s 

 

 

II. The Nature of British Politics

 

            A.  personal and local

            B.  purpose of government: maintain order, wage war, conduct foreign affairs

            C.  patronage and positions

 

III. Fashioning Policy for the Empire

 

            A.  Governance of the Empire – diffuse, flexible, limited

 

                        1. role of the monarch

                                    a. appoint and instruct colonial governors

                                    b. approve or reject acts of colonial assemblies

                                    c.  hear colonial legal appeals

                                    d. colonial patronage

                                    e. approve Parliamentary Acts applying to colonies

2. Privy Council and Board of Trade (Secretary of State for the Southern Department)

                        3. Treasury Department

                        4. Admiralty

 

            B. Legislating a Commercial System: the Navigation Acts, 1651-1733

 

                        1.  mercantilism

                        2. excluding foreign trade from colonies

                        3. English/colonial ships and English/colonial crews

                        4. enumerated goods

                        5. duties and drawbacks

6. how the colonies benefited: protected English market, colonial shipbuilding, subsidies for production, free trade in goods demanded in foreign West Indies, low-cost consumer goods, protection of British navy

                        7. Molasses Act of 1733 – taxing the colonies?

                       

C. George I, George II, George III and the Growing Role of Parliament in Governing the Empire

                        1. George I – German (Hanover) monarch

                        2. George II

                        3. George III – reassertion of monarch’s role

          

 

IV. Crisis of the 1760s

 

            A.  George Grenville’s Program

            B.  British Rationale: Parliamentary Supremacy

            C.  Limits of Parliamentary Opposition: William Pitt and Edmund Burke

D.  Aftermath:  even the “Friends of America” supported Parliamentary Supremacy and the right to regulate trade and legislate for the empire as a whole.