Chapter 3.0. Debates About Colonial Government, ca. 1720-60, Introduction

Throughout the colonial period colonists and British officials often held different views about colonial governance. Already in the seventeenth century, almost as soon as the early colonies were founded, English officials and American settlers tended to have different views about the colonies’ ability to govern themselves.

In the eighteenth century, although foreign wars continued, both Britain and its North American colonies enjoyed extended periods of domestic peace and robust economic growth. But prosperity did nothing to settle the arguments that continued to divide political leaders in America and Britain about the precise nature of the colonies’ subordination to the mother country. Over the 1700s Britain’s own government developed towards a greater degree of Parliamentary sovereignty, which created additional friction with Britain’s overseas colonies.

A key issue within the colonies was the balance of power between the locally-elected colonial assemblies, on the one hand, and the royal governors and their councils, on the other. Assemblies and governors sparred over which of the two would control legislation, raising taxes, and spending public funds. One particularly contentious issue was whether or not the colonial assemblies would guarantee the governors a fixed salary. Another issue that provoked the largest uprising against British authority of the pre-revolutionary era (before 1765) was naval impressment, the forced conscription of men to man royal navy ships (see below, on the Knowles riot of 1747). For a long time, however, this practice primarily affected only such maritime port towns as Boston.

This chapter begins with two surveys of British-colonial relations in the eighteenth century, abridged and adapted from the book by Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675-1775 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 7, pp. 183-208.

The remaining sub-chapters consist of primary sources. Of these six texts, four were written by British officials, whether based in the colonies (ch. 3.3, 3.5, and 3.8), or in London (ch. 3.7, by the Board of Trade), while two were written by authors in the colonies (ch. 3.4 and 3.6).