Episode 4: The Empire

Great Britain's conquest of New France in North America and its victory in the Seven Years' War inspired British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic to look forward to a future they could see but through a glass darkly, as they struggled to make sense of the world that lay ahead, and the cost of the war they had won.

Featuring: Fred Anderson, Christian Ayne Crouch, Max Edelson, Kathleen DuVal, Patrick Griffin, and Jon Kukla.

Voice Actors: Norman Roger, Anne Fertig, Nicholas Cole, Spencer McBride, and John Turner.

Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske.

Find the official transcript here.

Music by Artlist.io

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Worlds Turned Upside Down is a production of R2 Studios at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Episode Transcript

Jim Ambuske (00:06):
Isabella Christie was newly wed when she boarded a
ship in Scotland bound forBritish America. In August 1769,
she married James Bruce, a navalofficer who was a veteran of the
Seven Years War. Bruce had landin North America, in a

(00:27):
settlements called Pensacola inthe new British colony of West
Florida. He had 4,000 acresthere. They were his reward from
the king for his service in thewar. Bruce also had a prominent
station in life. He was a memberof the Provincial Council, the

(00:48):
body of men who advise thegovernor, and he served as
collector of His Majesty'scustoms in the province as well.
Bruce had lived in the colonyfor five years before his
wedding. Occasionally, he wouldreturn to Scotland, where he
must have met Christie andimpressed her family with his
standing in the empire. We don'tknow much about Christie's life.

(01:15):
Like so many women in the 18thcentury, if you have any of her
letters survive. We must readcarefully through her husband's
records and other evidence tofind her to find the woman who
would become Mrs. Bruce of WestFlorida. West Florida was a new
British place. It used to be aSpanish one. When European

(01:41):
powers agreed to peace in 1763,the Spanish who had belatedly
entered the Seven Years War onthe sight of the French ceded La
Florida to the victoriousBritish. But it was first and
indigenous place with people'slike the creeks, Chickasaw and
Choctaw was calling the regionhome. West Florida was a far

(02:05):
different world than the oneChristie had known for most of
her young life. She might havebeen 27 when she married Bruce
and Autcherless Aberdeen, sure.On August 8, 1769. The rolling
green hills and windswept browncrags of the Scottish northeast
had always been her home.Summers were mild there and

(02:28):
winter storms brought coldbrains. The nearby port city of
Aberdeen connected Scotland tothe North Sea trade and to
Northern Europe. If she had thelatest maps, she would have seen
a vast early American world thatwas more expansive and more
complicated than when herhusband had fought in the war.

(02:51):
Christy's intended destinationencompass parts of what is now
Florida, Mississippi, Alabama,and Louisiana, all remnants of
the Spanish and French empireson the American mainland. In
many ways, these places had morein common with Jamaica,
Barbados, and Charleston thanthey did with Philadelphia, New

(03:13):
York or Boston. A glance to theright would have revealed the
colony of East Florida, a placemore recognizable to us in our
own time yet just as strange.For European cartographers in
the late 18th century, wereunsure if the peninsula was a
single landmass or a series ofincomprehensible islands. If

(03:38):
Christie looked north, she wouldhave aspired Canada, once known
as the colony of New France,which had surrendered to the
British nine years before. OtherBritish immigrants like her were
headed for Quebec, Nova Scotiaand St. John's Island, what we
now call Prince Edward Island.Perhaps Christie and Bruce

(04:00):
caught a ship in Aberdeen ontheir way to West Florida. More
likely, they traveled south,first to Edinburgh, and then
west to Glasgow City enriched bythe profits of American Tobacco
and Caribbean sugar, allproduced by enslaved people.
Late in the summer of 1769, thenewlyweds boarded their ship.

(04:25):
They were among the 10s of 1000sof English, Scottish and Irish
immigrants who ventured to NorthAmerica in the years after the
Seven Years' War, to takeadvantage of the world the war
had made. Their ship carriedthem first south past Europe and
West Africa. They then headedwest across the Atlantic, to the

(04:47):
port of Kingston, Jamaica. Bythis point in his life, Bruce
wouldn't have thought twiceabout the fact that the
overwhelming majority of theislands inhabitants were
enslaved West half Africans, norhave the tropical fruits or
chocolate luxuries the enslavedloaded onto ships headed for
Britain or the Americanmainland. enslaved people were

(05:12):
not unknown in Great Britain,nor were free people of color.
But if Christie was taken abackby the sights and sounds of the
enslaved in Jamaica, they wouldsoon become part of our everyday
life anyway. from Kingston,Christie and Bruce would have
sailed Northwest, perhaps pastHavana, a city once again in

(05:34):
Spanish hands, but conquered bythe British in 1762. Together,
Christie and Bruce would build anew life on the Gulf Coast, in
the new colony of West Florida,on plantations and dock yards
worked by their enslaved WestAfricans, some of whom they

(05:55):
called "Glasgow," "Aberdeen,"and "Cathniss." After the
Scottish places the couple hadleft behind. Their new home was
but one of 26 British Americancolonies. It was but one place
on a new map of empire, of whichmany people are apart, but few

(06:15):
could comprehend in whole. Andin the early 1760s, in the years
just after the end of the SevenYears' War, as British subjects
on both sides of the Atlanticlook forward to a future they
could see but through a glassdarkly. They struggled to make
sense of the world that layahead. And the cost of the war

(06:39):
they had one.
I'm Jim Ambuske and this isWorld's Turned Upside Down a
podcast about the history of theAmerican Revolution. Episode 4:

(07:05):
"The Empire." The surrender ofMontreal in September 1760 all
but ended the Seven Years War inNorth America. Britain's triumph
over the French and the defeatof New France, a victory made
possible by the Haudenosaunee,Delaware's and other Indigenous
peoples left British subjects inAmerica and at home in a

(07:30):
euphoric state. On October 9,1760, just over a month to the
day since general JefferyAmherst, compelled governor of
all three of New France tosurrender his colony. Thomas
Foxcroft, the Congregationalist,Minister of the First Church of
Boston, delivered a sermon tohis godly flock on the

(07:52):
significance of the victory forGreat Britain and its empire.
The First Church was as old asBoston itself. It was founded in
1630 in the time of JohnWinthrop and his "City Upon a
Hill." From the pulpit, Foxcroftreflected on the fiery trial to

(08:12):
which the British had justpassed on the road to victory in
North America.

Spencer McBride (08:18):
In vain had there been repeated Attempts
before, to effect what is now sohappily accomplished. Long had
it been the common Opinion[that] The American Carthage
must be reduced, Canada must beconquer’d: or we could hope for
no lasting Quiet in these Parts.Long has this been the Object of
our Attention, and the Matter ofour Prayers: but judg’d an Event

(08:42):
rather to be wished, than hopedfor. Yet now at length, through
the good Hand of our God uponus, we see the happy Day of its
Accomplishment. We hear thejoyful News, – not of this or
the other Fortress of the Enemyreduced, – not of this or the
other Town surrendered, but oftheir whole Country conquered,

(09:06):
conquered by British Arms, andsubjected to British Government.

Jim Ambuske (09:11):
But how exactly? That was the main question that
British and British Americanshave been struggling to answer
since the war began in 1754. Ifthe Seven Years War had ended in

(09:46):
1760, with New France's defeat,the king's subjects might have
arrived at entirely differentconclusions. But:

Fred Anderson (09:55):
The war doesn't end in 1760. If it did, things
might have come out welldifferently. I'm Fred Anderson,
professor emeritus University ofColorado at Boulder. But
instead, the war wears onthrough 1761 and the conquest of
much of islands in theCaribbean. Ultimately, with the
conquest in 1762 of Havana,after the Spanish of unwisely,

(10:20):
intervened to try to bring thewar to a diplomatic conclusion
short of total disaster andfiasco. So you've got this,
remarkable set of developmentsafter the end of 1760, which
completely changes everything,including the loss of Manila for
God's sake, to this raggedyexpedition that gets mounted out
of out of India, by the British,and they wind up in control

(10:42):
Manila. Talk about uprooting thewhole of global Palin's balance
of power. I mean, that's theChina trade. You see, there's so
much that happens between 1760and 1763, the end of the war in
Europe that, that leads to awhole different set of
expectations among the French,the British, and the Spanish
about what the future is goingto look like.

Jim Ambuske (11:03):
The conquest of Canada in 1760, and the formal
end of the war in Europe threeyears later, led to a different
set of consequences, someintended, many others not, that
shaped events in the years tocome, because:

Fred Anderson (11:18):
The American Revolution, in the sort of the
stressful period between 1763and 1775, is all about dealing
with the aftermath of the SevenYears’ War, which was the
greatest Imperial victory inEnglish history. Because the
British didn't understand whatthey had done.

Jim Ambuske (11:38):
So, what had the British done? What expectations
did British and BritishAmericans have for the future?
And what did it mean for themany people who suddenly became
subjects of a new king, GeorgeIII? To begin answering these
questions, we'll head back toLondon with a cost of the war

(12:00):
and the price of victorycompelled British politicians to
make difficult choices to winour fragile peace will then
consider British ambitions fortransforming British America and
the newly acquired territoriesinto the kind of empire that
many have longed for it to be.Well then pinch yourself to the

(12:22):
Gulf Coast and the Caribbean,with a British envisioned a
profitable new plantationenterprise, one that came with a
price

Max Edelson (12:35):
So at the end of the Seven Years War, which was
the Great War for Empire betweenBritain and France and also
Spain, North America was reallyat stake. I'm Max Edelson. I'm
Professor of History at theUniversity of Virginia. And
Great Britain, because of itsmilitary victories at the end of
the war, came to thenegotiations at Paris in 1762.

(12:56):
In a very strong negotiatingposition, their goal at the end
of the war was to resolve theproblem of North America.

Jim Ambuske (13:09):
Much had changed since the fall of New France in
September 1760 and the beginningof formal peace negotiations in
Paris in September 1762. Daysafter Thomas Foxcroft preached
his sermon in the first churchof Boston, King George the

(13:29):
Second died on October 25, 1760.In an instant, his death brought
to the throne his grandson, a 22year old who became George the
Third. Unlike his German borngreat grandfather and
grandfather, George the Thirdwas born in England. As he said

(13:52):
in a speech to Parliament onNovember 18, 1760, "I glory in
the name of Britain." It was asign that unlike his
predecessors, he was lessenamored with the affairs of
Europe, and more infatuated withthe affairs of the empire, of
which North America was a keypiece. In his diary, a young

(14:15):
Boston lawyer named John Adamsapproved of George the Third's
speech. He wrote, "These aresentiments worthy of a king, a
Patriot King." In the 18thcentury, British monarchs had
considerably more power thanthey do today. Though the
monarch ruled in tandem withparliament, a feature of the

(14:38):
British Constitution that Georgethe Third considered sacrosanct.
When the king invited a ministerto form a government in his
name, it was no mere formality.The Sovereign could choose his
government's new leader fromamong the political faction
elected to power and with Georgethe third's ascension in 1760

(15:01):
the political landscape inBritain began to shift, as the
financial costs of the warcontinued to mount seemingly
without end. Here's John kukula,a historian of early America.

Jon Kukla (15:15):
One of the things that strikes me about the
situation nearing the end of theSeven Years War is the variation
in how people perceived thesituation of Great Britain visa
vie the world. It's acomplicated picture, frankly,
the colonial Americans areabsolutely exuberant and
enthusiastic about how wonderfulthis is that they have defeated

(15:38):
the Papist threat in NorthAmerica and in Europe.
Historians have observed that atprobably at no other time in the
history of North America had thesettler colonials been so
enthusiastic to be Britons. Theythink this is wonderful. And
then the future is incrediblybright. But one thing that's

(15:58):
part of the picture is the factthat George second died in 1760.
And George the Third, hisgrandson is new on the throne,
and a very young and relativelyinexperienced man. There's a
group of people around WilliamPitt, who had been the principal

(16:18):
leader who brought about reallytheir success in the Seven Years
War, who really wanted tocontinue fighting. Their idea is
that they should basically crushFrance and end all future
prospects of the Frenchcontinuation in that century of
conflict with Great Britain.There's another group around the

(16:39):
Duke of Newcastle, who was alsoa previous leader of the
government, who believes thatthey need to negotiate a peace
because the war is tooexpensive. And then there's the
king and his minister and Lordbooth, who are basically trying
to figure out how to plan forthe expectation of the next war.

Jim Ambuske (17:00):
With George the Third's rise came William Pitt's
fall. Pitt, the de facto primeminister, had reversed Britain’s
fortunes beginning in the late1750s by borrowing staggering
sums of money to fund the wareffort in both Europe and North
America. He also placatedBritish Americans by agreeing to

(17:21):
reimburse their provinces forexpenses, harmonized the
relationship between provincialforces and the regular army, and
stripped Britishcommanders-in-chief of their
power to command colonialassemblies. But Pitt’s ambitions
for the war seemed to have nolimit. He resisted calls to end
subsidies to Britain’s Europeanallies. He also urged the

(17:45):
cabinet to authorize apre-emptive strike on Spain.
George III and Pitt had oncebeen political allies, but the
new king and his mentor JohnStuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, saw
Pitt as an impediment to peace.They maneuvered to force Pitt’s
resignation in October 1761. Bythen, the war was costing

(18:13):
Britain £20 million annually.Taxes on the British public and
from other sources of revenuelike customs duties could only
cover one-third of that cost,with half of all revenues going
to cover interest on the debt.British subjects on both sides
of the Atlantic felt thefinancial burden of the war

(18:38):
Eliza Lucas Pinckney was one ofthem. Pinkney was born on
Antigua, where her father servedas the sugar island's lieutenant
governor. As a child, shedemonstrated a remarkable talent
for botany. And unlike IsabellaChristie, many of Pinckney

(19:01):
letters have survived theravages of time. In the late
1730s, when Pinckney was 16years old, she moved to Wappoo
one of her family's riceplantations near Charleston,
South Carolina, where sheoversaw the enslaved people who
labored in the fields. There,Pinkney began experimenting with

(19:26):
Indigo, a plant whose flowerscan be rendered into a deep,
vivid blue die. Thanks in partto her efforts, by the late
1740s, Indigo joined rice as oneof South Carolina's chief
experts. By the early 1760s,Pinckney was a widower and a

(19:48):
leading planter in the colony.She managed her plantations
while her sons were educated inLondon, in the capital of
British America, a city whereshe had for five years once
lived. On February 27 1762,Pinckney wrote to
Wilhelmina-Catharine Troye, herfriend in England, reflecting on

(20:12):
the ongoing war in Europe, andthe taxes required to fund it.

Anne Fertig (20:18):
“When my Dr. Madam shall we have peace? till then I
have little prospect of seeingmy Children and friends in
England and a spanish warr weare told is unavoidable we are
pretty quiet here just now but’tis much feard it will continue
no longer than the winter wenever was so taxd in our lives

(20:40):
but what is our taxes to yourshowever we are a young Colony
and our Seas does not throw upsands of gold as surely the
British does to enable you tobear such prodigious Expences.”

Jim Ambuske (20:54):
But those sands no longer glittered as they once
had, and they threatened to burythe British public in a sea of
debt. Like William Pitt, theDuke of Newcastle, the actual
Prime Minister, and the man whokept the money flowing from
British lenders into thetreasury, wanting to keep
subsidizing Britain's Europeanallies, even as he grew

(21:18):
increasingly concerned aboutmounting deaths. His persistence
costs him his own place in thecabinet. George the Third
accepted Newcastle's resignationin May 1762.

(21:39):
Pitt'ss and Newcastle'sresignations from the cabinet
pave the way for Lord Bute tobecome the first Scottish-born
Prime Minister of Great Britain.By 1762, the British had
conquered a stunning number ofterritories. These included the
French colonies of New France inNorth America, and the Caribbean

(22:02):
islands of Martinique, Dominica,Guadeloupe, San Lucia, Grenada,
Tobago, and St. Vincent and theGrenadines. In India, the
British East India Companycaptured several French trading
posts in 1762. After the Spanishenter the war, the British
launched an invasion force fromIndia that captured Manila in

(22:26):
the Philippines. It had beenruled by Spain since the 1570s.
Spain's entry into the war costin Havana, Cuba in the same
year. In West Africa, Britishforces took the French colony of
Senegal and the lucrative slavetrading forts of Saint Louis and
Gorée. The Royal Navy had madeit possible for Britannia to

(22:50):
rule the waves and strengthenthe Empire's position in the
transatlantic slave trade. IfPitt and his supporters had had
their way, Britain would havekept them all. But if the last
60 years had taught the Britishanything, it's that peace was
fleeting, and that the next warwas always on the horizon. Bute,

(23:14):
the king, and their allieswanted to avoid giving the
French and the Spanish excusesto rearm quickly, and challenge
British power. And if NorthAmerica had never really
mattered much in the Europeanwars of the past, events since
1754 had made it clear, that wasno longer the case. For Bute and

(23:38):
George III, staving off the nextwar as long as possible, and
securing the future of NorthAmerica, required the victors in
war, to be generous in peace.Among the many preliminary
articles of peace, Bute agreedto return Guadeloupe, San Lucia
and Martinique to the French. Inexchange, the British gained

(24:02):
control over forts andterritories in India, occupied
by the French since 1749. TheFrench were also given the right
to fish the Grand Banks offNewfoundland, and dry their
catch on to small islandsnearby. These fish would feed
Catholics in Europe and enslavedpeople in the Caribbean. The

(24:24):
British returned Manila andHavana to the Spanish. In
exchange, British loggers retainthe right to cut wood on the
Honduras coast. In December1762, during debates in
Parliament over the proposedtreaty, William Pitt and others
complained loudly that Buteconceded far too much to

(24:46):
Britain's French and Spanishrivals. But the government's
supporters reminded itsdetractors what the war had
really been about.

Nicholas Cole (24:56):
“The original object of the war was the
security of our colonies uponthe continent. Experience has
shewn us that while Francepossess any single place in
America, from whence she maymolest our settlements, they can
never enjoy any repose, and ofcourse, that we are never secure
from being plunged again intothose calamities, from which we

(25:18):
have at length, and with soemuch difficulty, happily
emerged. To remove France fromour neighborhood in America, or
to contract her power within thenarrowest limits possible, is
therefore the most capitaladvantage we can obtain, and is
worth purchasing by almost anyconcession.”

Jim Ambuske (25:37):
Max Edelson explains how the British resolve
the North America question inthe Treaty of Paris, signed on
February 10, 1763.

Max Edelson (25:47):
They did so by claiming all of the territory
north America between theAtlantic Ocean and the
Mississippi. The colony of NewFrance, which had been a French
stronghold for decades, wasrelinquished and it became the
British province of Quebec.Spanish Florida, which had been
the longest settled Europeanplace in North America became

(26:10):
the new British colonies of Eastand West Florida. So Britain now
stood as the only colonial powerin eastern North America at the
Treaty of Paris in 1763.

Jim Ambuske (26:23):
The lines being drawn on a new map of North
America by diplomats in Parishad real world consequences for
the European settlers in thecolony formerly known as New
France. Christian Ayne Crouch,Dean of Graduate Studies and
associate professor of historyand American and Indigenous

(26:44):
Studies at Bard College, tellsus more about what the end of
the war in North America and thetreaty of peace meant for the
habitants, the colonists of NewFrance.

Christian Crouch (26:56):
it I think, runs counter to our
understanding of what this couldbe like. For the people who are
not in the Laurentian Valley, itis not the disaster that we
would imagine it to be, becausemuch of the fighting takes place
much closer to the coast, itdoesn't change their day to day

(27:18):
farming it for those who arevoyagers, or merchants who
circulate in the continentalinterior, it doesn't change
their relationships with nativepeoples that doesn't change
French presents at these fortsand other places. So it's not
the dramatic event that weimagined it to be. And the terms

(27:39):
by which the colony is ceded, orthat it capitulates with are
actually quite generous to thehabitants, and ultimately are
codified after the Treaty ofParis in 1763. French Canadians
still get to serve in localgovernment. The right to
Catholic worship is protected.They continue to use French as

(28:03):
the primary language. I wouldargue that in fact, the terms
for the habitants themselves,not the elites but for just the
average residents are favorableenough that when the American
Revolution rolls around, they'renot so interested in joining the
colonists, because why wouldthey give up give up these
privileges that they have withinthe British Empire?

Jim Ambuske (28:22):
For French Canadian elites, however, the end of the
war was far more costly.

Christian Crouch (28:27):
I have to give Voltaire credit for coming up
with the best line that wroteoff a continent of all time,
which is Voltaire, at the end ofthe Seven Years War basically
said, "Whoa, Canada was a fewmeters of snow, why did we need
it?" For the elites, though it'sdevastating, because with the
terms of capitulation, and thedenail of honor of war means is

(28:47):
that they can't serve anylonger. They have to give up
arms. And many of them initiallygo back to France to try and put
their lives back together. Andwhat they discover when they go
is that they are maybe anational embarrassment is too
strong a word, but it is. It isan uncomfortable situation where

(29:10):
they feel grossly misunderstoodand deeply under appreciated for
what they perceive as 150 yearsof sacrifice on the part of
their families to defend thecontours of the king's honor

Jim Ambuske (29:23):
The French government subjected several of
New France's civilian elite toan inquiry for failing to defend
the King's honor in the colony,

Christian Crouch (29:32):
L'affaire du Canada which is a two year
trial, ostensibly aninvestigation into corruption on
the part of the government ofNew France, and malfeasance in
regards to the use of the king'sfunds largely for the purchase
of the kinds of materials thatfueled diplomacy and exchange
and reciprocity with indigenouspartners. The Royal prosecutors

(29:55):
are not wrong that severalindividuals made fortunes out of
this. But isn't that the wholepoint of the colonial experiment
is that you gotta go there toget some money somehow. It is
cast, though, as a way ofatoning for the loss of the
colony, that this is very much agroup of self-interested

(30:18):
individuals who put commerceabove honor.

Jim Ambuske (30:22):
For a time, Governor Vaudreuil, the last
governor of New France, wasimprisoned in the Bastille.

Christian Crouch (30:30):
Now incarcerated in air quotes,
because he is also allowed tobring an enslaved manservant to
tend to his needs and receiveslavender soaked handkerchiefs
from his ailing spouse, theywrite each other these devoted
love letters to the point thatthey the person overseeing the
Bastille prison, who's a reallytough character, finally writes

(30:51):
to them and says “Your loveletters are just unseemly, you
should not be speaking to eachother this way. This is just too
much emotion.” But it is areally traumatic event for the
people who are caught up in thistrial because it calls into
question what they understood asloyal service. They had never
been criticized for this before.

Jim Ambuske (31:10):
For other elites and officers who emigrated to
France, and who were not put ontrial, a royal decree by King
Louis the 15th constrained theirchoices, and presented them with
an uncertain future.

Christian Crouch (31:24):
The Ordonnance of 1762, says that all of these
elites, elite officers and theirfamilies who have come back have
to relocate to this onelandlocked province. or they
will lose their pensions fromthe King. That can be read in
many different ways. The leadingMinister of Louis XV’s

(31:47):
government at that point has amajor estate there. It's in
proximity to Versailles. Sothere are a lot of ways in which
you could see this as a mark offavor. But it is landlocked for
a colony that made its lifethrough Atlantic trade, among
other things. Being in proximitycan also be code for being
surveilled all the time. Andthese individuals are being

(32:08):
forced to move there underduress, under threat of
increased financial disaster.More than 60% of them leave
within 10 years of coming backto France. And yes, they go back
to Canada. Some go to otherplaces. But most of them go back
to North America because they,it's clear, they just don't feel

(32:30):
a sense of respect for theservice that they had given as
patriots as citizens as loyalsubjects to the king.

Jim Ambuske (32:44):
In 1755, the Virginian John Mitchell had
published A Map of the Britishand French Dominions in North
America. That map depictedBritish territorial claims
extending from the Atlantic tothe Pacific coasts. It
envisioned a world in which theBritish controlled the Ohio
Country, where the war hadbegun, and invited viewers to

(33:07):
imagine a bright future withendless possibilities.

Patrick Griffin (33:26):
Fundamentally, the shape of the Empire was
changed dramatically, because ofthe victory in the Seven Years
War. And then with the Treaty ofParis in 1763. My name is
Patrick Griffin I’m the MaddenHenebry professor at the
University of Notre Dame. Whatit did is it amplified the size
of empire beyond what anybodycould have possibly have

(33:48):
imagined. And that's the otherthing, what people could have
possibly imagined. So all of asudden, it becomes a
dramatically bigger empire. Andnow the British are the
overlords of one of the greatestterritorial empires that the
world had ever seen. And sothat's only when we think about
in terms of the Atlantic side ofthings, but also they have

(34:09):
greater hold on parts of India.So it's a global concern at the
same time. The other thing isdemographic change. All of a
sudden, now they have to dealwith an extraordinarily diverse
cast of characters. When itcomes to the human beings that
they're dealing with just thevery simplest terms they inherit
now, all of these Catholics whohad been subjects of the French

(34:34):
in Quebec, how do you deal withthem? Do you make them second
class citizens because ofcourse, Catholics back in
Britain itself, were secondclass citizens at the time.
They're not subjects with fullrights. How do you manage that
in a place like Quebec, andgoing down to the Caribbean,
you've just inherited a newisland, Grenada, and that is

(34:54):
filled to with Catholics aswell. How do you manage that and
the Caribbean now matters ismore than almost any other place
in the world because it is thismoney generating machine because
of what sugar means and what theslave trade means that the
Caribbean is so vitallyimportant to the fortunes of
empire.

Jim Ambuske (35:15):
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 offered some guidance on
the treatment of Catholics inCanada, and Grenada. The British
agreed to protect the rights ofCatholic worship in these
conquered colonies. If theydisliked their new rulers,
French settlers were given 18months to sell their property to
British subjects, and emigrateout of the colonies. As the

(35:39):
French adjusted to the newpostwar reality, the British
moved ahead with planning forthe future, something that
proved both exhilarating andunnerving

Patrick Griffin (35:49):
When the British win this war, and when
they win this empire with thisnew shape, and with these new
pupils, this is for them aparticular moment that they
hadn't anticipated. And as I putit, it is a moment of
extraordinary euphoria,defeating the French defeating
what they regarded as theAntiChrist, but defeating also

(36:10):
your greatest rival. And winningthis much was really quite
amazing as far as they wereconcerned. But here's the issue
with the anxiety to do you haveno blueprints for this? So how
do you think about, oh, what arewe going to do with all of these
people and these different kindsof people? How are we going to
manage this space? And on top ofit, we're sort of broke. The

(36:30):
war's cost us all kinds ofmoney. And you have, huh, boy,
well, this is kind of great. Wehave all of this territory of
all these people, we have tomanage this, we have to figure
all of this out, but we don'thave much money in order to do
it. And we have a hell of a lotof debt, that we're now we're
going to have to manage in a waythat we haven't had before.

(36:50):
They're trying to figure outwell, okay, all the space all
these people, how do we makesense of this? How do we manage
it? It is this very much a Janusfaced moment, because it's so
exciting because you have noblueprints. But at the same
time, it's so terrifying becauseyou have no blueprints.

Jim Ambuske (37:09):
For the British, the post war era offered the
chance to forge British Americaand the newly acquired colonies
into the kind of empire we thinkof when we hear the word empire.

Patrick Griffin (37:22):
If you think about the Empire before Britain
did have an empire, but itdidn't really function like what
we would consider to be anempire. When we think about an
empire, you think of a place itsterritorial, its centralized,
all this sort of stuff. It wasreally I think, the way that I
put it is it was a series ofarrangements and different kinds
of arrangements. And ifanything, it was really, I
think, a ramshackle kind ofaffair. As Max

Jim Ambuske (37:43):
As Max Edelson explains:

Max Edelson (37:45):
British America was founded by autonomous groups
that possess charters from thecrown to settle and develop
colonies. And they did so formuch of the 17th century on
their own at their own risk withthe support of the crown, but
not many of the resources of thestate. Once these independent
bodies like the VirginiaCompany, the Lord's Proprietors
of Carolina had establishedtheir colonies and they became

(38:08):
valuable to the state. The statelooks for ways across the late
17th and early 18th century tohave a greater impact on
governing these places, becausethey were so valuable to the
British economy and Britain'sstrategic position in the world.

Jim Ambuske (38:22):
Think of charter colonies like Massachusetts Bay
and Connecticut, which werefounded with corporate charters,
Royal colonies like Virginia andBermuda, which were governed by
the crown, and proprietarycolonies like Pennsylvania and
Maryland, which were owned byprivate individuals or families,
like the pen and Baltimorefamilies. All were British

(38:46):
colonies, all of the inhabitantswere subjects of the British
king. But each of the provinceshad different interests that
made it difficult for them orthe Empire to find common
ground.

Patrick Griffin (38:57):
And this speaks to the ramshackle way that they
had developed over the course ofthe 17th century, nothing
unusual about it. But now asrivalry is kicking up on the
European continent, as theBritish find themselves more
often than not at war with otherpowers, particularly France at
the time, they are trying tolook for a comparative
advantage. And it's clear to saywe have these colonies. This is

(39:20):
our comparative advantage. Howdo we harness them, and I think
that's what successiveministries are trying to figure
out.

Jim Ambuske (39:30):
By the mid 18th century, British politicians
like the Earl of Halifax beganadvocating more forcefully for
greater coherence in the empire.From 1748 to 1761, Halifax was
president of the Lordscommissioners of trade and
plantations, more commonly knownas the Board of Trade, and he

(39:52):
longed to make the colonies workmore effectively for the common
Imperial interest.

Max Edelson (39:56):
The Board of Trade was the committee within the
British government controlled bythe crown that was sort of the
oversight body for colonies inAmerica. The Board of Trade was

Jim Ambuske (40:07):
For Halifax and like minded thinkers on the
formally established in 1696.Its establishment is really the
beginning of what historianssometimes called the rise of the
Imperial state that is apermanent apparatus to gather
information, make policy, andcommunicate with overseas

(40:27):
officials about colonialmatters. Before the
establishment of the Board ofTrade, colonization had been a
pretty ad hoc affair without anycentral administration. But in
the 18th century, the Board ofTrade was at the center of this
rising oversight from theBritish Crown over its Dominions
overseas.

(40:48):
Board of Trade and elsewhere.Britain's empire in North
America and the Caribbean, hadthe potential to lessen Great
Britain's dependence on tradewith Europe and keep Britain out
of costly wars. But thatidealized vision depended on an
efficient and United Empire.

Max Edelson (41:06):
The Board of Trade always adopted the perspective
that the colonies had been runpoorly, that people who ran the
colonies were essentially selfinterested. They didn't see the
Imperial common good or theinterests of the crown or the
state as a whole as theirinterests. And the result of
this was a pattern of settlementand development in British
America, that seemed to beantithetical to long term peace.

(41:29):
There were lots of volatileconflicts between Native
Americans and colonists, theyseemed out of control. The
customs regulations that weresupposed to bring revenue from
the Empire to the BritishTreasury were evaded on the
ground by people who wanted tokeep all the resources for
themselves. So a certain opiniondeveloped at the heart of the

(41:50):
British imperial state, andcertainly was adopted by the
Board of Trade, that BritishAmerica was in bad need of
reform, that it was anunsustainable system, the way it
worked now, and oversight fromthe center needed to be imposed
for this part of the empire tobe sustained into the future.
And by the time we reach the eraof the Seven Years War in the

(42:10):
middle of the 18th century, it'sclear to Britain that as they've
calculated the trade statistics,and the revenue they get from
America and the value ofAmerican colonies and trades to
the British economy, they cannotdo without America in order to
be prosperous and powerfulnation in the world. By one
estimate, colonial tradesaccounted for about a third of

(42:33):
the British economy by thesecond half of the 18th century.
And so there was a bit ofdesperation on the part of
Britain after the Seven YearsWar to get the colonial house in
order and to finally imposethose reforms that could make
the colonies truly dependent onGreat Britain and able to serve
its interests.

Jim Ambuske (42:50):
One of the officials crunching the numbers
and calculating trade statisticsin the years before the war was
Charles Townshend. The Englishborn-Townshend was a member of
parliament who had served withHalifax on the board of trade in
the early 1750s.

Patrick Griffin (43:06):
Charles spends a lot of time and understanding
and appreciating how complexthis empire really is. And so
his apprenticeship is when he'sworking on the Board of Trade,
and all kinds of papers arecoming across his desk from all
different parts of the worldwith all different kinds of
problems. And he spends his timetrying to appreciate, "Wait a
minute, wait a minute, wait aminute, what makes all of this
tick? How can we make this workbetter?" And so he has the

(43:31):
privileged position because ofwhere he is on a board of trade
of seeing the big picture.That's what he's able to
appreciate. He also realizes howdysfunctional this big picture
is.

Jim Ambuske (43:42):
What kinds of reports were crossing his desk?

Patrick Griffin (43:46):
It's everything about the slave trade. It's
everything about the output ofthe Caribbean, what kind of
profits they're going to expectfrom petitions from different
kinds of merchants that are inNorth America about problems
that they're having at the time,petitions from merchants back in
Britain about how trade could bebetter at the time, things that
are coming in from India arealso making their way across his

(44:07):
desk. So he's seen The Good, theBad and the Ugly when it comes
to Empire.

Jim Ambuske (44:12):
One of the petitions that town said likely
saw was a November 1752 Memorialfrom a group of Philadelphia
merchants. They were protestingan attempt by London merchants
to gain an exclusive patent totrade in Labrador. As the
petitioners Benjamin Franklinamong them wrote:

John Turner (44:33):
"Your petitioners therefore, humbly hope that the
patent applied for will not begranted, but that they and all
other Your Majesty's subjectsshall be left free to pursue the
sub trade to their great andcommon benefit and advantage."

Jim Ambuske (44:50):
While the Philadelphia merchants were
successful, their petition wasunremarkable. It was typical of
the kind of business thatHalifax, Townshend and the Board
of Trade handled before theSeven Years War.

Max Edelson (45:02):
But at the end of the war, Britain handed the task
of planning this new empire tothe Board of Trade, to gather
its statistics to gatherinformation and reports from
experts in the field and come upwith some kind of plan to put
the empire on a sounder footing.

Jim Ambuske (45:18):
Lord Bute the prime minister, who had spearheaded
the peace negotiations in 1762,led this new endeavor, but the
bulk of the work fell to one ofhis political allies.

Max Edelson (45:30):
One of his handpick favorites was the Earl of
Shelburne, a young aristocrat,only 25 years old when he took
charge of the Board of Tradeduring this moment. And the Earl
of Shelburne was very enamoredwith the new writings of people
like Adam Smith, and thethinkers of the Scottish
Enlightenment. These werepolitical economists who really
believed that they could createschemes of social improvement

(45:54):
that would make life better foreveryone. One of the key
attitudes of these politicaleconomists was that if you let a
well regulated system ofcommerce link places together,
that would create conditions ofpeace and mutual satisfaction
for people on both sides of theAtlantic, and that included
Native Americans as well. Sothis is we're idealists, and

(46:15):
they believe that they couldstructure a economy and society
in a way that would solve theproblems of empire. So when it
was time to make a plan for thenew peace after 1763, the Earl
of Shelburne led the Board ofTrade to draft a master plan to
create these new policies andschemes for British America.

Jim Ambuske (46:35):
Shelburne shared this new vision of empire with
idealists on both sides of theAtlantic.

Max Edelson (46:41):
There are also some others who I think were
important in this initiative.One of them was a man named John
Pownall, he was the long servingsecretary of the board of trade.
Now, he wasn't an earl or anobleman like the commissioners
on the Board of Trade, but hewas kind of the senior
administrator and anyone who'sworked in an academic department
knows that all the power reallyresides with the lead
administrative assistant whoruns the show. And that was very

(47:03):
true of John Pownall, who alsowas very idealistic about what
the Board of Trade could do toregulate America. His brother
was also very involved in thisThomas Pownall had been the
governor of Massachusetts wroteextensively on how to best
administer the colonies. So thisgroup formed a sort of cohort of
like minded idealists, whobelieved that the new ideas of

(47:25):
political economy could solvesome of the problems of empire
that had been so endemic beforethe Seven Years' War.

Jim Ambuske (47:31):
To create a commercial system that led to
peace and prosperity for allBritish subjects, as well as
Indigenous peoples Shelburne,the Pownall brothers and other
like minded men, called for anew approach to colonizing North
America.

Max Edelson (47:45):
The essence of this plan was to take control of
colonization in new territories,so that these new colonies
wouldn't have all theliabilities of the old ones. So
instead of allowing independentcompanies or proprietors to
settle colonies as they saw fit,Britain thought of plans of
social engineering by whichlands would only be given to

(48:07):
those who could develop them,rents would be charged and fees
would be charged to those whohad the most immediately
valuable land in places like thenew Caribbean colonies of the
ceded islands, and estate wouldinvest directly in the
development of places like Eastand West Florida, so that those
places could be strategicallysound and could defend the rest
of the Empire.

Jim Ambuske (48:36):
In the early years of the Seven Years’ War, the
British government had despairedat the colonies’ lack of unity
and their seeming indifferenceto the imperial common good in
the face of the French andIndigenous threat. To counteract
apparent colonial apathy, thegovernment gave
commanders-in-chief viceroy-likepowers, and it began handling

(48:57):
Indigenous relationships throughthe creation of the Indian
Department. It did so in thebelief that the disunited
colonies were in need of greaterimperial management. Of course,
some of those ideasworked…better than others. From
the British perspective, thepost war world was a chance to

(49:17):
reimagine British America andremediate its flaws.In 1763,
British subjects could look atRobert Sayer’s, A New Map of
North America, published inLondon, for a glimpse of what
this new world would look like.Based on the work of French
cartographers, Sayer’s maplooked remarkably different from

(49:41):
the map that John Mitchell hadpublished eight years earlier.
The boundaries of colonies likeVirginia no longer raced across
the continent to the Pacific;they now stopped at the
Mississippi River, according tothe terms of the Treaty of
Paris. The name “New France”remained on the map, for now,

(50:01):
just above the word “Canada,”the name that would soon take
its place. The pink shadingaround its borders, and those of
the other colonies on themainland and the Caribbean, made
plain what was British, and whatwas not. The words “Six Nations
Iroquois,” were prominentlyfeatured on Mitchell’s map. They

(50:22):
visualized the Haudenonsaunee’sclaim to an expansive dominion
that stretched from eastern NewYork to the Ohio Country. But
they were hardly visible onSayer’s print, perhaps leaving
European viewers to wonder whathad become of the Six Nations’
power. What British officialscould see in Sayer's map was a

(50:43):
blueprint for the future. TheBritish would seek to directly
manage the process of settlingthe newly-acquired colonies in
North America and the Caribbean.The government would also
attempt to limit settlement inthe older colonies in hopes of
keeping the peace withIndigenous nations. They wanted
to create a commercial systemthat united the empire, one that

(51:05):
encouraged settlers to face easttoward the mother country, and a
prosperous future. Theseprinciples would later be
embodied in George III’s RoyalProclamation of October 7, 1763.

Max Edelson (51:18):
The most important point I think, for American
colonists was that not only werethey cut out of the process of
settling the new colonies, thiswas now going to be done from
London. The Imperial officialswere deeply concerned about the
anterior expansion of themainland colonies in North
America and the kind of violenceThis provoked with Native
Americans as land speculatorsand settlers encroached on

(51:39):
native lands. So they wanted toregulate the relationships
between Native nations and theBritish Empire so that colonists
weren't controlling that orgovernor's sort of in the
pockets of the colonists weren'tcontrolling this, but rather
British officials werecontrolling this process. They
very much wanted to limitsettlement in the seaboard
colonies to the Atlantic coast,in part to avoid Indian Wars,

(52:01):
but in part to keep a good eyeon these colonists who had a
habit of evading customs duties,and doing things their own way.

Jim Ambuske (52:11):
The British government's plan for managing
this new empire was verycomplicated and yet on the
surface, very simple. TheBritish would oversee the
settlement of the new coloniesin Canada, the Gulf of Mexico
and the Caribbean, anddiscourage settlers in the older
colonies from moving west intoplaces like the Ohio Country,

(52:33):
where they're likely to comeinto conflict with indigenous
peoples. We can begin to makesense of what the British hope
to accomplish by exploring theWest Florida world that Scottish
immigrant Isabella Christie andher husband, naval veteran James
Bruce, would soon come to know.

Max Edelson (52:51):
When France controlled Canada, the colony of
New France was a sprawlingexpensive province that extended
far from the coast into theinterior. The same was true for
Spanish Florida, which accordingto the Spanish at least extended
to the entirety of thesoutheast. As part of Britain's
reform initiative, they wantedto make these colonies more

(53:11):
governable and compact. T

Jim Ambuske (53:13):
The new map of the North American South East and
the Gulf Coast, reflectedstrategic decisions made by
British French and Spanishnegotiators in Europe. Here's
Kathleen DuVal, a professor ofhistory at the University of
North Carolina Chapel Hill toexplain:

Kathleen DuVal (53:30):
By the era of the American Revolution, the
Gulf Coast is divided betweenthe Spanish and the British. So
after the Seven Years War, theFrench and Indian War, the
French evacuated, they lost thewar and then they gave up their
colony of Louisiana. And so thewestern half of what had been

(53:52):
French Louisiana, basicallywhat's now the state of
Louisiana, and other parts tothe west and north that went to
Spain. So that became Spanishterritory. East of the
Mississippi River what's nowAlabama and Mississippi that
became part of the BritishEmpire as a result of the Seven
Years' War.

Jim Ambuske (54:12):
Although the French had ceded the colony of
Louisiana to the British in1763, this only accounted for
the territory east of theMississippi River. The French
had quietly given the territorywest of the river to the Spanish
a year earlier. Spain gainedcontrol of the critical port
town of New Orleans, withBritish subjects given the right

(54:34):
to navigate down the MississippiRiver. What did these changes
mean for people on the ground?

Kathleen DuVal (54:41):
So these sweeping changes happen on maps
in treaties, most of which takeplace in Europe, by people
who've actually never been inthe Americas. What that changes
is, a few posts so say aPensacola, the British come to
take it over from the Spanishofficers who had held it and
British officers come in oneofficial and maybe 10 soldiers,

(55:05):
right? They come and they takeover for the same number of
Spanish soldiers who had beenstationed there and they take
As the British assumed controlover the Gulf South, they made a
down one flag and put up anotherone. But for the people who live
there, they know it's amomentous change. In that case,
it's Spanish speakers who aregoing to have to get used to an

(55:26):
English speaking government. InNew Orleans, French speakers who
will have to get used to aSpanish speaking government. So
there are some changes peopleworry about if they'll retain
their property, if they willlose or gain status. In most
cases, locals actually localcolonials actually have a great

(55:47):
advantage when these newcomerscome in because they know the
land they know that local nativepeoples and then they actually
have a lot they can offer thesenew officials who come in no
actual Spanish, French beforethem and British settlements are
very clustered on the Gulfitself. And right around the

(56:08):
Mississippi River and a fewposts and so most of the people
living in this vast region thatSpain and Britain call their
territories, their theircolonies along the Mississippi
River. Most people who livethere actually Native American
and so there are a number ofstrong Native American nations

(56:28):
in that region. The Choctaws,the Creeks or Muskogee's, the
Chickasaw. For Native nationswho are bordering all of these
posts. Similarly, they realizesomething has changed, they're
going to have to get a newinterpreter for a new language,
they will have to cultivate newsorts of trading relationships

(56:49):
diplomatic relationships withpeople, either that they hadn't
had them with before, or in somecases who weren't in different
posts just because they'removing around post so the
Spanish commander at Pensacolamight end up at now the Spanish
host, west of the Mississippi,and is sort of reestablish

(57:10):
relationships. In some cases,the local Native people actually
exaggerate how much tribute tohow what good prices the
previous Empire gave them andinsist on getting that from the
new officials who come in.
number of decisions to make theregion more manageable and make

(57:33):
it work for the common Imperialgood. Here's Max Edelson,

Max Edelson (57:37):
Florida was divided into two provinces. West Florida
was along the Gulf Coast fromNew Orleans, which became a
Spanish stronghold, and thepeninsula of Florida which
became the colony of EastFlorida. These were separately
governed colonies. Most of thesettlement and development that
happened in West Floridahappened close to the

(57:58):
Mississippi River and around theports of Pensacola and mobiel.
In East Florida, most of thedevelopment was happening around
St. Augustine, especially alongthe St. Johns River, where most
of the plantation settlement wasdeveloped. Britons thought that
these two colonies would makeideal new plantation colonies.

(58:20):
They envision a form ofplantation development that
would certainly depend onimporting enslaved Africans to
be laborers. They looked at thecommodities that plantation
colonies in the British Empirealready produced like rice,
sugar, indigo, and imagine newcommodities that these new
colonies can also grow. It wasan attempt to develop a

(58:41):
profitable new branch ofBritain's plantation society.

Jim Ambuske (58:45):
The two Florida's had much in common with
plantation colonies like SouthCarolina, where Eliza Lucas
Pinkney experimented with Indigoand manage her enslaved
laborers. They also sharedfeatures with the Caribbean
colonies, where the British hadgreat expectations of building
profitable plantation societies.

Max Edelson (59:06):
Nowhere was that more true than in the new
Caribbean islands that Britainreceived at the Treaty of Paris.
These are called the cededislands because they were ceded
by France to Britain during theTreaty of Paris, Dominica,
Grenada, St. Vincent and Tobagowere the four seated islands.
And these were places that wereseen as incredibly valuable for

(59:27):
plantation development becauseBritish planters could import
enslaved Africans grow the mostprofitable commodity in the
Atlantic world, their sugar.There were problems to this
vision that really didn't takethe native populations of some
of these islands into account.The island of St. Vincent had a
very sizable indigenouspopulation. One part of this

(59:49):
group was a group that theBritish called the Black Caribs,
and it's suspected that theancestors of these black Caribs
were runaway slaves from otherplantation colony He's and carob
Islanders who had lived therebefore colonization, the British
assumed that they could justtake over those carob lands and
turn them into sugarplantations. Grenada became in

(01:00:13):
the span of a dozen years, thesecond most productive and
profitable colony in the BritishEmpire by some measures just
behind Jamaica in terms of itssugar production. And that
involves the arrival of as manyas 10,000 or 15,000 enslaved
Africans to work new sugarplantations. So from a British
apparel perspective, this was agrand success, it showed their

(01:00:34):
ability to implant a new colony.Of course, from our perspective,
it was a black mark against theBritish Empire for doubling down
on plantation slavery at amoment when slavery was
beginning to receive criticismelsewhere.

Jim Ambuske (01:00:49):
But land was finite in the Caribbean. For all the
riches a white planter mightstand to make on the islands,
they required huge financialinvestments in land and enslaved
people. planters in theCaribbean were more likely to be
absentee landlords living inLondon or Glasgow, who left the
management of their sugarplantations and their enslaved

(01:01:12):
people, too ambitious whiteoverseers. For white settlers,
the Florida colonies offered theappearance of the best of both
colonial worlds, plenty of land,the possibility of building new
lives there, and the potentialfor acquiring some measure of
wealth and power.

Kathleen DuVal (01:01:31):
West and East Florida both promise land at a
time when it's really quitedifficult to get land in this
settled British colonies. If youlive in Massachusetts, say and
you have several sons, the landhas been carved up already
that's there, there's not landto pass on to all of them.

Jim Ambuske (01:01:55):
East and West Florida were attractive to
British immigrants like IsabellaChristie and James Bruce, partly
because Bruce received the landgrant and West Florida as a
reward for his service in theSeven Years War. It was also a
place where they might elevatetheir social and economic
standing in ways they could notback home.

Kathleen DuVal (01:02:14):
West Florida is designed by the British to be a
plantation colony. So on thisland that the Bruces acquire,
they start growing indigo, andother crops they by enslaved
people to work on thoseplantations. You know, not that
much about them and their socialcircumstances or their economic

(01:02:35):
circumstances before the SevenYears' War, but it's a pretty
good guess that they greatlyimproved their social prominence
and their economic status andwith the cost of of course,
having to be in Pensacola, thistiny post in the middle of
nowhere.

Jim Ambuske (01:02:52):
For Bruce, who had become a member of the
Provincial Council and collectorof customs, two very influential
positions in the young colony,and a prominent owner of land
and people settling in Pensacolacertainly seemed to work in his
favor. It's more difficult tosay how Christy felt about her
new life. If her letterssurvive, they remain lost. And

(01:03:16):
in West Florida, she becameIsabella Bruce, or Mrs. Bruce.
Kathleen DuVal notes thechallenges of researching 18th
century women like IsabellaChristie.

Kathleen DuVal (01:03:29):
One of the frustrations about doing early
modern women's history is that'sbecause in the English speaking
world, women change their nameswhen they marry. They can be
hard to trace before theirmarriage and so Isabella
Christie Bruce, that is theperson whose name I can find who
seems the right age who buried aJames Bruce, but I'm not

(01:03:52):
entirely sure that that's heruntil the marriage after that, I
know it's the same person I'mtalking about.

Jim Ambuske (01:04:09):
West Florida was a new colony in an expensive new
empire. One that Britishpoliticians, political
economists and idealists hopedwould secure Great Britain's
independence from Europe, andthe dreadful wars of the past.
Ironically, if the couple hadchosen to live in Scotland, Mrs.

(01:04:29):
Bruce of West Florida might havebeen easier to trace. In the
18th century, it was notuncommon for married Scottish
women to keep their maidennames. And in Scotland, the now
Mrs. Bruce might have hadgreater control over her own
property, including land.Scotland and England might have

(01:04:49):
been united as one nation. Butthen as now, they were governed
by different legal traditions.Scotland's laws based on a
foundation of ancient RomanCivil Law afforded women more
property rights than the laws ofEngland. If West Florida had
still been in Spanish hands bythe time of Isabella Bruce's

(01:05:12):
arrival in 1769, it would havebeen governed by the same legal
tradition as in Scotland. Shemight have enjoyed greater
control over her property. ButWest Florida, like England, like
virtually all British Americanprovinces, was a colony governed
by common law. The widowed SouthCarolinian, Eliza Lukas Pinckney

(01:05:36):
enjoyed greater freedom to runher rice and indigo plantations
as she self fit, because herhusband was no more. But in West
Florida, a married woman likeMrs. Isabella Bruce enjoyed no
such rights. under the commonlaw, she was legally dead in a

(01:05:56):
state of dependence on herhusband, with no control over
her own property. And yet, asthe Bruce is set out to build
their new lives together, withforced migrants, like the
enslaved West Africans, theywould call "Glasgow," "Aberdeen"
and 'Cathniss", whose namesreminded them of home. Their

(01:06:17):
presence would have remindedMrs. Bruce that even the legally
dead have immense power.
In November 1764, GovernorGeorge JohnstonE boasted that

(01:06:41):
his new colony of West Florida"bids fair to be the Emporium as
well as the most pleasant partof the new world." Like so many
other officers and agents of theBritish Empire in the late 18th
century, Johnstone was a Scot,an origin he shared with Sir
James Grant of Ballindalloch,the governor of East Florida..

(01:07:04):
Together, the two men had adifficult task. under orders
from George the third and theBoard of Trade, Johnston and
Grant had to convince Britishand British Americans that the
new colonies under their carewere worth the investment and
worth the risk. In a letterpublished on the front page of
the Georgia Gazette in January1765, Johnstone enticed

(01:07:28):
potential settlers with richsoils and plentiful water,
capable of producing wine, oil,silk, tobacco, rice, and indigo,
along with any number of fruitsgrown in Southern climates. The
provinces location made it idealthe governor said, for trading

(01:07:50):
with colonies in the Caribbean,for tapping into the commerce
that floated down theMississippi River from the North
American interior and fortrading with indigenous peoples.
left unsaid but no doubtunderstood was that enslaved
men, women and children wouldwork these lands clearly

(01:08:12):
anticipating critics who wouldclaim that West Florida was too
hot, too prone to hurricanes andtoo much a den of disease.
Johnstone closed with:

Norman Rodger (01:08:21):
“But what above all recommends West-Florida, and
particularly that part of itwhich lies round Pensacola, is
the healthiness of the climate;no country perhaps on the face
of the earth possesses so pure,serene, and temperate a sky,
visited with the agreeablevicissitudes of seasons, but

none of them in extreme (01:08:41):
the heat of summer is moderated by
never failing breezes, whichblow in the morning from the
land, and from the sea after thesun is up; and the winter is
considerably more pure andenlivening than in any other
latitude. It is needless toenumerate the advantages that
must arise to the colony fromthis circumstance; our

(01:09:04):
unfortunate countrymen in theWest-Indies, worn down by the
sultry heat of that climate,will likewise learn in time how
much more easy it is for them tocome in a few days sail to
Pensacola, to relieve theirbroken constitutions, than
undertake a tedious andexpensive voyage to Europe,
through storms and variablewinds.”

Jim Ambuske (01:09:27):
Arguments such as these attracted British settlers
like Isabella Christie and JamesBruce to West Florida in the
years after the Seven Years'War. West Florida, the Gulf
Coast and the Caribbean weremajor parts of Great Britain's
new vision of empire beginningin 1763. Whether they could
bring about the kind ofprosperity it's architects hoped

(01:09:50):
they could remain to be seen.Whether this new empire would
benefit the common Imperialgood, only time would tell, and
whether it could all be madeprofitable in ways that would
allow Great Britain to pay down133 million pounds in national
debt, money it had borrowed towin this new empire remained in

(01:10:15):
many ways, the most pressing andthe most dangerous of questions.

(01:10:35):
Thanks for listening to World'sTurned Upside Down. Worlds is a
production of R2 Studios, partof the Roy Rosenzweig center for
History and New Media at GeorgeMason University. Head to R2
studios.org for a completetranscript of today's episode,
and suggestions for furtherreading. I'm your host, Jim

(01:10:56):
Ambuske. Worlds is researchedand written by me with
additional research writing andscript editing by Jeanette
Patrick. Our lead audio editoris Curt Duhl of CD squared.
Rachel Birch and Amber Pelhamare our graduate assistants. Our
thanks to Fred AndersonChristian Ayne Crouch, Max
Edelson, Kathleen DuVal PatrickGriffin, and John Kukla for

(01:11:19):
sharing their expertise with usin this episode. Special thanks
to our voice actors NormanRoger, Anne Fertig, Spencer
McBride, Nicholas Cole and JohnTurner. Special thanks also to
Deepthi Murali and Hayley Madl.Subscribe to Worlds on your
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