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Great Britain and her Relations with America after the Seven Years War, 1763-1783
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Great Britain and her Relations with America after the Seven Years War, 1763-1783
We must now resume the story of the great series of wars in which Great Britain was engaged during the eighteenth century. The twenty years that follow the Seven Years War are, if amongst the most interesting, certainly also amongst the most disappointing in the history of our empire. The Seven Years War had left Great Britain triumphant. She had then, however, to organize her empire. But, at this most critical period, the king and the aristocracy which governed Great Britain were unsympathetic, and, above all, ignorant. The ministries were constantly changing and had no settled convictions; and later, Lord North's ministry, though more stable-it lasted from 1769-82 - was also more incompetent. Above all, there was no great statesman capable of dealing with the situation, except perhaps William Pitt, who was too ill to make more than fitful appearances, and Edmund Burke, who never held high office. And so Great Britain went blundering forward, and lost the larger part of her empire in the West, whilst she with difficulty held her own in the East. Learning by experience is proverbially costly; but our statesmen made the cost in these twenty years unnecessarily high.
The difficulties, however, which were to arise with our American colonies were not solely due to British statesmen. Our very success in the Seven Years War made our position in North America one of peculiar difficulty. "With the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham", wrote a distinguished historian, "began the history of the United States." The conquest of Canada freed the American colonies from danger of absorption by the French; and by so doing enabled them to become independent of the mother country. Above all, the great expenses that fell, as a consequence of the war, upon the mother country led to an attempt to tax the colonies, which caused both the Puritan democrats of the North and the Anglican, aristocratic, and slave-owning planters of the South to unite for the first time in a common opposition.
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Chronology
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