A New Colonial Policy
Key People, Events, Terms and Ideas
Salutary Neglect – Proclamation of 1763 – Pontiac’s Rebellion
Main Idea: A successful conclusion to the war with France resulted in significant changes in Britain’s policy toward the American colonies.
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A New Colonial Policy
Britain’s decisive victory in the French and Indian War in 1763 removed the French threat to its American empire. The war was expensive, costing Britain £150 million (equal to tens of trillions of dollars today). Interest on the money borrowed from banks and investors cost half the government’s annual revenue. The tax burden in Britain had reached unprecedented heights. It seemed only reasonable that the colonists should help pay the bill for their protection. To pay these costs, Britain adopted a new set of policies for America, including new taxes, more aggressive ways of collecting them, and more severe methods of enforcing these measures. The colonists had grown accustomed to running their own affairs during England period of salutary neglect and viewed these policies as a first step in a plot to deprive them of their liberties.
PROBLEMS OF DEFENSE AND WESTERN LANDS
Britain’s victory in the French and Indian War forced the British government to chart a new direction for dealing with America. A cornerstone of the new policy was the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement in lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. This policy of delay was twofold. First, if colonies in the immediate proximity to the western lands, like Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and the Carolinas, were permitted to extend their boundaries westward, colonies without access, like Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Maryland would be placed at a disadvantage. Should new colonies, therefore, be formed in the territory beyond the Appalachians?
The colonials were impatient to take advantage of the new territory. They did not take too seriously the Royal Proclamation. Frontiersman Daniel Boone was one who was undeterred. He led parties of settlers into Kentucky’s “dark and bloody” ground. These were years of rapid population growth in the colonies and there were pressures to open western land to settlement. And hadn’t George Washington and other Virginians fought in the French and Indian War specifically to open this area to settlement? The Proclamation Line was an unexpected barrier to this opportunity.
Secondly, this issue was complicated by the revolt in 1763 of the western Indians under the leadership of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa tribe. Chief Pontiac[1] had been an ally of the French. The removal of the French, whose empire was based primarily on fur trading, alarmed the Indians. Farms and villages along the colonial frontier were laid to waste and hundreds of white settlers were killed. The uprising was put down largely by British troops. Putting down Pontiac’s Rebellion had been a bloody and expensive affair. As a result, the English government decided to quarter, or house, ten thousand British troops in the colonies.
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[1] Pontiac’s name lives on as an American car. The Pontiac logo is a stylized arrowhead.