The British Empire in the Atlantic: Nova Scotia, the Board of Trade, and the Evolution of Imperial Rule in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
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The British Empire in the Atlantic: Nova Scotia, the Board of Trade, and the Evolution of Imperial Rule in the Mid-Eighteenth Century by Thomas Hully Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree in History University of Ottawa © Thomas Hully, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 ii Abstract The British Empire in the Atlantic: Nova Scotia, the Board of Trade, and the Evolution of Imperial Rule in the Mid-Eighteenth Century Thomas Hully Dr. Richard Connors Submitted: May 2012 Despite considerable research on the British North American colonies and their political relationship with Britain before 1776, little is known about the administration of Nova Scotia from the perspective of Lord Halifax’s Board of Trade in London. The image that emerges from the literature is that Nova Scotia was of marginal importance to British officials, who neglected its administration. This study reintegrates Nova Scotia into the British Imperial historiography through the study of the “official mind,” to challenge this theory of neglect on three fronts: 1) civil government in Nova Scotia became an important issue during the War of the Austrian Succession; 2) The form of civil government created there after 1749 was an experiment in centralized colonial administration; 3) This experimental model of government was highly effective. This study adds nuance to our understanding of British attempts to centralize control over their overseas colonies before the American Revolution. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program for providing the funding which made this dissertation possible, as well as the University of Ottawa’s Department of History for providing me with the experience of three Teaching Assistantships. A special thank you to Dr. Richard Connors for his invaluable support in preparing my research and in the writing of my dissertation, as well as going above and beyond the call of duty on more than one occasion. Special thanks also go to the great friends I made in the graduate program, as well as my family who supported me through a difficult time. To the memory of my father, who always believed I was capable of accomplishing more than I thought I could. iv Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One – Nova Scotia: From the Margins of Empire to the Spotlight .........................30 Background: British colonial administration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries .......30 Nova Scotia: imperial asset or imperial problem? ................................................................38 ‘Salutary neglect’ and its implications for Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, 1746-1748 ..........43 Chapter Two – The New Era: The Foundation of British Civil Government in Nova Scotia, 1749-1752 .....................................................................................................................................68 Post war colonial policy in British North America ..................................................................68 A ‘model government,’ the Nova Scotia experiment ............................................................80 Chapter Three – The Successes of Imperial Centralization, 1750-1761 ..............................104 Provincial finances and imperial control in Nova Scotia ........................................................105 The freeholders of Halifax and the fight for the ‘birth-right of Englishmen’ .....................123 Legislative review and the centralized control of colonial representative institutions .......137 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................146 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................................153 1 INTRODUCTION In the last two decades there has been an outburst of innovative scholarship on the British Atlantic Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 1740s to the 1760s in particular have been identified as a period marked by rapid commercial and territorial expansion overseas, war with Britain’s enemies on sea and land, as well as domestic political turmoil. All of these factors had a direct impact on British policy in terms of how British officials thought about Empire. How should the colonies be governed? Should the needs of Britain’s colonial subjects be considered and accommodated when formulating Imperial policy, or should colonies be governed with Britain’s material and strategic benefit in mind? These were but a few questions Hanoverian British politicians had to face in the later eighteenth century. While Britain was only beginning to gain an Imperial foothold in India and Southeast Asia during this period, these questions were pressing in the North American colonies in the decades preceding the American Revolution. Historians of the 18th Century British Empire in North America have focused most of their energies on Britain’s administration of the thirteen colonies which became the United States. Even within this scholarly focus, undue attention has been placed on the interactions between the thirteen colonies and Britain during the post-Seven Years War period from 1763 to the beginning of the American Revolution in 1776. Arguably, the period from the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 to the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 was just as crucial to the development of British colonial policy in the Americas.1 In particular, the era of King Georges War in North America which began in 1744 (an extension of the War of the Austrian Succession in Europe) to 1763 can be identified as a crucial transition period for British colonial policy in the Americas. Therefore, this work will consider how British officials viewed the problem of the administration of the North American colonies during the period from 1744 to 1763.2 The British North American colonies, despite the fact that they were on the margins of the British Empire, were not conclusively conquered from the French until 1763, and were at an 1 For an in depth study on the subject of this period in British Imperial history, see B. Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783. For a call for the historiographical reinterpretation of British Imperial history in this period see P. Lawson. “The Missing Link: The Imperial Dimension in Understanding Hanoverian Britain,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3, Sept, 1986; and “Sources, Schools, and Separation: The Many Faces of Parliament’s Role in Anglo-American History to 1783,” Parliamentary History, Feb1995, Vol. 14 Issue 1. 2 For a recent assessment of the Seven Years War, see D. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754-1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest. 2 embryonic stage in their development economically and politically; were still of significant strategic importance to colonial officials. The interactions between the “Canadian colonies” and the British Empire have most often been treated as an afterthought by scholars, if not ignored altogether. There are few recent detailed studies which examine how Britain sought to administer its Canadian possessions which it wrested from the French Empire. Nova Scotia, in particular, has not been treated adequately by the imperial historiography, and has not been satisfactorily examined from the perspective of the British authorities responsible for the colonies. Indeed, the maritime historian John G. Reid has stated that Nova Scotia, considered a marginal area of the British Atlantic Empire, has generally received little attention from British colonial historians from the founding of Halifax in 1749 until the Loyalist migrations of 1783.3 Little scholarship exists on how British officials thought Nova Scotia should be governed during this period in order to make it a stable British colony. Reintegrating Nova Scotia into the mid-eighteenth century British Empire and British imperial historiography is the goal of this thesis. Conquered from the French in 1713 after the War of the Spanish Succession, Nova Scotia held special strategic importance for British officials and the Admiralty. The threat of war with France, Britain’s continental and imperial rival in the mid-eighteenth century, was constant. Between 1691 and 1756, British and French forces went to war with one another four times in different areas of the world including India, Continental Europe, and North America.4 As a colony Nova Scotia would prove to be crucial for containing and disarming the French in Quebec both during and after the Seven Years War. However, the new colony presented special problems for the British in terms of governance. One of the most important issues was the presence of the Acadians. Their ambiguous loyalty to the British was seen as an Imperial threat, a threat that led to their eventual expulsion in 1755.5 Before the colony could be politically