"A Mighty Empire! I Do Not Mean An Independent One"

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Americans celebrated Britain's victory over France in the Seven Years' War. But relations between the mother country and her colonies soured when Britain, concerned about war debt and the ongoing cost of protecting frontier settlements from Native American raids, demanded that Americans help pay for their own protection and limit westward migration.

In 1754 the British Empire renewed its chronic warfare against the French for power around the globe as well as in Europe. In previous wars, Britain had concentrated its forces in Europe, which had seemed more important than the distant colonies in North America. Sending very few troops across the Atlantic, Britain entrusted most of the fighting in America to its colonists. Divided into many fractious colonies, the colonists had failed to cooperate effectively. The New England colonies usually bore the brunt of the fighting, suffering raids by the French and their Indian allies on the vulnerable settlements of the northern frontier. The other British colonies provided little help, save for South Carolina and Georgia, which tangled with the Spanish, who allied with the French and had Florida to defend.

In the Seven Years' War, which began in 1754, Britain made North America a priority for the first time, investing dozens of warships, thousands of troops, and immense funds to pay and supply them. With the conquest of French Canada as the primary goal, Britain also sought improved coordination within the colonies and a greater enlistment of colonial men. After suffering initial defeats in 1755-57, Britain's strategy paid off in 1758-60 when British and colonial forces captured the great fortress cities of Louisbourg, Quebec and, ultimately, Montreal. In the peace treaty of 1763, the French surrendered Canada (including the territory around the Great Lakes) and the Ohio Valley to the British, who also secured Florida from the Spanish, who again had supported the French and suffered for it.

The great run of British victories around the globe in India, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and Canada thrilled colonists as well as people in Britain. Not yet Americans, the colonists proudly considered themselves Britons in America, cherishing the liberties, military security, and profitable trade provided by the triumphant empire. The colonies' glorious future within the empire seemed certain. In 1763 Reverend Jonathan Mayhew of Boston exulted, "With the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire." He promptly added, "I do not mean an independent one." During the 1760s few colonists expected or wanted independence from an empire that had been so beneficial for them and which seemed so powerful and prosperous.

But the great victory soon began to strain the relationship between the colonies and the empire ruled from London. During the war, imperial authorities began to pay attention to the colonies and to note their economic potential. After making such a major investment in men and money in North America, Britain did not want to revert to its pre-war policy of neglecting the colonies. British officers and officials had discovered just how prosperous the free people in the colonies had become, thanks to their productive farms and plantations and their trade around the globe under the British flag. Blessed with a relative abundance of land (taken from the Indians), most free men owned a farm or a shop, which meant they had the right to vote. By contrast, in the older and more crowded England and Scotland, most men had to rent land or work for wages, which meant they lacked full political rights.

Given the greater poverty in Britain and greater prosperity in the colonies, it did not seem fair to British leaders that the colonies paid virtually no taxes to the empire. Per capita, the colonists paid only one shilling in tax directly to the empire, compared to 26 shillings per capita in England. As the chief beneficiaries of the war, surely the colonists should pay more, so the British reasoned. The imperial government needed more revenue to finance the national debt, which had soared from £73 million before the war to £137 after the war. Furthermore, the British had to pay for at least 10,000 troops to garrison the conquered territories in North America. Victory had not come cheaply.

Speech in Parliament by Charles Townshend in support of the Stamp Act, 1765.
Charles Townshend asked in his speech that the colonists contribute to the support, protection, and upkeep of the colonies.

British officers and officials also felt disappointed that so many colonists had performed poorly during the recent war. Sticklers for discipline, British commanders regarded the colonial regiments as poorly trained, insubordinate, and ineffective in combat. Often the commanders relied on the colonial troops solely to build roads and repair forts.

British criticism extended to American civilians. Colonial legislators had often failed to cooperate with requests to house the troops and contribute financially to the war effort. The British were especially scandalized by colonial merchants who profiteered by engaging in a smuggling trade with the enemy islands in the Caribbean. British Prime Minister William Pitt declared that American smuggling had principally, if not alone, enabled France to sustain and protract this long and expensive war.

The conflict had revealed just how selectively the colonies obeyed the Navigation Acts passed by the British Parliament to regulate the Empire's trade, in theory to the special benefit of the mother country. On the one hand, the colonists tended to obey the regulations that benefited them, such as the right to trade anywhere within the empire as the equals of merchants in England or Scotland. On the other hand, the colonists ignored or defied regulations that restricted their trade with other empires. Frustrated with colonial troops, legislators, and merchants, many imperial officials insisted that the empire needed to impose and enforce stricter restrictions on the colonies.

British cartoons critiqued the Americans' lack of cooperation and criminal acts against British officials.

As a consequence of their great victories, the British had grown too proud of the power of their army and navy. They took too lightly the potential for anyone to resist that power outside of Europe. British officials underestimated the ability of the Spanish and the French to rebuild and reform their militaries for the next war. And the British had become too contemptuous of the colonial troops as hardly to be feared if the colonies ever did rebel. This overconfidence would discourage British leaders from making compromises either with restive colonists or foreign powers ready to exploit frictions within the empire.

The British conquest had also frustrated and angered the Indians who dominated the country around the Great Lakes and in the Ohio Valley west of the Appalachian Mountains. The French had treated the Indians as respected allies and supplied them with trade goods, often as gifts. Relatively few in number, French colonists had also demanded less land from the Indians than did the larger and rapidly growing British colonial population. The French needed and valued Indian allies more than the British did.

With the French ousted from their forts and trading posts, British officers sought to cut costs by curtailing presents to the chiefs of the native nations. With the French competition eliminated, British traders could raise their prices for the guns and ammunition that the Indians needed for hunting. And the colonial settlers moved west to take Indian lands more rapidly and in larger quantities, especially in the upper Ohio Valley.

Fed up, most of the Indian nations set aside their differences, uniting in a confederation to attack the British soldiers, traders, and settlers. This became known as Pontiac's Rebellion, after a chief of the Ottawa nation who played a leading but not a commanding role in decentralized uprisings in many Native villages. In 1763-64, Indians wiped out most of the British garrisons in their country and devastated the settlements on the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

After a show of force that accomplished little, the British restored peace by making concessions to the Indians. In the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Empire promised to keep the colonial settlers east of the Appalachians, reserving the continental interior for the Natives. Wary of the high costs of frontier war, the British wanted to avoid future conflicts by keeping the settlers away from the Indians.

For want of troops, the British could never enforce the restriction on expansion, but by attempting to do so, they irritated the colonists, who hated the Indians and coveted their lands. The settlers also resented that the British became more generous and respectful in their diplomacy with the Natives, who came to regard the imperial officers as superior to the colonists. In the event of a rupture between the colonies and the Empire, the Indians would favor the latter.

After the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War, the British constructed a string of forts in the vast new territory west of the Appalachian Mountains. They also established a Proclamation Line that they hoped would stop American colonists from moving westward into land occupied by Native Americans.

Victory over the French had deprived the colonists and the British of a common enemy that had previously united them. Emboldened by victory, the British sought to rearrange the Empire to compel greater compliance and more tax revenue from the colonists. But the colonists felt safer with the French removed from Canada and therefore freer to ignore imperial orders from London. Although a colonist from Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson remained loyal to the Empire. In 1773 he remarked that had Canada remained part of the French empire, none of the spirit of opposition to the mother country would have arisen.