A Proclamation, 1763 (litho)

The proclamation establishes colonial rule over former French and Spanish possessions in Canada, Florida, Grenada and other areas; it offers tolerance to Roman Catholics; it calls for governments and assemblies like those in existing colonies and recognizes the rights and land ownership of Indian tribes. One of nine known surviving copies. References: Clarence Brigham, British royal proclamations relating to America, 1603-1783; Clements Sale 1996 lot 223. Nine copies are known to survive. In 1773, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) published a brief history of the British government's actions during the preceding decade. Its title: Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One. Beginning in 1763, successive British ministries made a series of political missteps that gradually stirred the colonists to assert American liberties against British oppression. Before 1763, the colonists largely accepted Parliament's right to take actions on their behalf--and even the primacy of England's economic interests over their own. Prior to the Seven Years' War, however, almost all parliamentary actions had been designed to regulate trade, and while the colonies sometimes regarded these acts as unfair or inexpedient, they did not regard them as especially oppressive or burdensome. After 1763, however, Parliament's actions appeared to clash with the colonists' interests. At the end of the Seven Years' War, France surrendered Canada and much of the Ohio and Mississippi valley--two-thirds of eastern North America--to British rule. Many colonists regarded these new lands as a godsend. But the Proclamation of 1763 reserved lands west of the Appalachian mountains for Indians and forbade white settlement there. Equally disturbing, new British politics restricted Indian trade to traders licensed by the British government. For the first time, power over westward expansion was placed in the hands of British officials, outside the colonists' control. By preventing the colonial population from moving inland, the British ministry hoped to avoid costly Indian wars, protect the western fur trade, and keep western land speculation under the control of the crown. To enforce the proclamation, the British cabinet decided to station up to 10,000 troops along the frontier, at a cost of 250,000 pounds sterling annually. The colonists, who wanted to expand westward without the interference of British troops, deeply resented the proclamation. They feared that if they were walled in along the eastern coast, the results would be overpopulation, the growth of crowded cities, and social stratification along rigid class lines. George III (1738-1820), King of Great Britain.