Levy

LEVY

LEVY, a British project in the early years of the nineteenth century to recruit recent British arrivals in the United States and Canada for an enterprise against Napoleon's French possessions in the West Indies. In 1803 Charles Williamson, a British officer captured during the American Revolution and former agent of the Pulteney Associates, received orders to organize the Levy. He proposed cooperating with Francisco de Miranda in an attack against Spanish possessions in Florida, Mexico, and South America. The British may have offered the Levy to Aaron Burr, but no organization ever emerged. Miranda failed, and Williamson returned to Great Britain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kennedy, Roger G. Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Thomas Robson Hay / a. e.

See also British Empire, Concept of ; Conscription and Recruitment ; Great Britain, Relations with .