Patriots for Empire: Unionism, Imperialism, and Scottish Colonial Administrators in the British Atlantic, 1698-1776
Date
2023-04-25
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Abstract
This study expands on understandings of the first British Empire by integrating several Scottish colonial administrators who served in Britain’s North American colonies into its intellectual and political history. It argues that these officials manifested, modified, and maintained a Scoto-British view of the British Empire that developed as a result of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 – which established Britain as a polity ruled by Parliamentary sovereignty – and the Act of Union in 1707 – which forged England and Scotland into a united kingdom. Their intent was to extend their understanding of the revolution and union settlement throughout the British Atlantic empire, and they took great interest in extending Britain’s North American colonial possessions westward and conquering islands in the Caribbean. However, they encountered a colonial understanding of these same events that empowered assemblies and colonial institutions to challenge royal authority, and they expressed concern that the colonies were becoming more republican and would potentially become independent. By the 1720s, many of these officials began to contribute tracts and advice to the Board of Trade, often recommending stricter oversight of the colonies and reforms in their governance, such as direct taxation or Parliamentary intervention; and by the 1730s, they also began to construct a British history that celebrated a progressive vision of Britain’s past that focused on the expansion of liberty, the mixing of different races (Britons, Saxons, Danes, Romans, and others), Britain’s overseas possessions, and continued westward expansion. The Scoto-British view of the empire became increasingly untenable in the 1750s and 1760s due to colonial opposition, and it eventually dissolved with the dismemberment of much of Britain’s North American colonies. Yet, the Scoto-British vision of the empire – based on unionism and imperialism – lingered in the vision of Alexander Hamilton and in the imaginations of several nineteenth-century adherents of Manifest Destiny and in the idea of America as a melting pot. This study fills a gap in the study of the British Empire by reintegrating this view, and it suggests that many of the concepts normally attributed to American exceptionalism had their origins in a larger, British history.
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Keywords
British Empire, Colonial America, Scotland, Political Thought, Intellectual History
Citation
Bates, Z. A. (2023). Patriots for empire: unionism, imperialism, and Scottish colonial administrators in the British Atlantic, 1698-1776 (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.