The Royal Proclamation was more successful in its ability to restrict the aims of private, Virginia-based land companies and their investors who sought to capitalize on the sale of lands in the Ohio Valley. As a member of the Virginia gentry, a patron of numerous land companies, and an established surveyor, the boundary line profoundly affected George Washington. Washington deemed the Royal Proclamation’s controls on trade and migration discriminatory against colonials seeking to alleviate personal debts through profitable landholdings, particularly veterans of the French and Indian War. As many of Washington’s counterparts shared these views, the Proclamation Line of 1763 was significant in that it marked the beginning of a clear ideological break with the mother country. The divergent social, political, and economic perspectives that emerged among Virginia’s wealthy elite ultimately aided in pushing the colony to rebellion in the following decade.
The end of the French and Indian War brought great geographic and political changes to North America. The Treaty of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763, effectively removed France from the continent, forcing her to cede all territory east of the Mississippi River to the victor, Great Britain. In gaining these land holdings, the British declared their American colonies
to
Britain’s desire to maintain their mercantile economic system also encouraged the creation of the Proclamation Line. Within the British mercantile world, colonies were to produce raw materials for export to the mother country, where they would be produced into manufactured goods and sold to consumers within the empire. To keep her wealth internalized, Great Britain enacted a number of regulations throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the Navigation Acts, prohibiting her colonies from trading with foreign markets. Following the French and Indian War, Britain feared that westward expansion would lead to a growth in commercial agriculture, allowing farmers to profit by smuggling excess crops to external Atlantic markets. Instead, the government sought to protect mercantilism by encouraging colonial growth to the north and south in an effort to populate the newly acquired provinces of Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida. This would not only limit the establishment of commercially profitable farms on newly acquired western lands, but would also keep settlers within close range of Britain’s economic and political influence. Consequently, many colonials of varying socioeconomic backgrounds viewed the Proclamation Line and its restrictions as repressive measures put in place by the Crown to secure increased control over affairs in their North American colonies.
While the Proclamation Line generally failed to restrict the migration of individual settlers, it adversely impacted Virginia’s landed gentry through the mid-1760s. These men had been investing and speculating in land since the 1740s, preliminarily granting millions of acres of western territory to firms, such as the Ohio Company, for future sale. However, the French and Indian War and subsequent Indian treaties interrupted these land companies’ designs, during which time their preliminary grants lapsed. The restrictions accompanying the Royal Proclamation of 1763 prevented investors from gaining the necessary titles to secure their land claims. These constraints particularly affected George Washington, who had dedicated much of his life to land speculation in an effort to achieve economic independence and distinction among Virginia’s privileged class. Washington opposed Britain’s desire to restrict the growth of commercial agriculture, and viewed westward expansion as inevitable; in his view, the Proclamation Line was a temporary measure, put in place to calm Native Americans in the wake of French removal from the continent. This opinion prompted Washington to petition the Virginia government to release tracts of land that had been promised to French and Indian War veterans, while joining with other Virginia speculators in lobbying the Crown to push the border further west. Washington’s ventures proved successful with the 1768 Treaties of Fort Stanwix and Hard Labour, and again in 1770 with the Treaty of Lochaber.
Legacies of the proclamation were social, political and ideological. Though scholars debate the level to which the declaration actually recognized Native American autonomy, many Indigenous peoples, particularly in Canada, cite the document as Britain’s first formal acknowledgement of Indian land rights and self-determination. Historians also disagree over the extent to which the proclamation contributed to the outbreak of the American Revolution, with most asserting that the boundary dispute did not directly instigate the conflict. Many, however, allege that the ideological consequences of the proclamation were more significant than the existence of the boundary itself. Resentment for the British Empire and her interference in colonial affairs bonded Americans of varying socioeconomic backgrounds on a philosophical level. The ideological break with the mother country promulgated by the Proclamation Line of 1763, particularly for governmental leaders and Virginia’s landed gentry, served to push the colonies into rebellion in the following decade.
Jennifer Monroe McCutchen
Texas Christian University
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