Proclamation of 1763

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PROCLAMATION OF 1763

The British government intended the Proclamation of 1763 partly as a war measure and partly as a means of administering the new territory taken from France under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. It had two main provisions that affected the colonists. First, the British government drew a line along the watershed of the Appalachian Mountains—the point at which waters run downhill either to the Atlantic Ocean in the east or to the Mississippi River drainage system in the west—separating colonial territory from that of the Native Americans. All lands west of the line were reserved exclusively for Indians, and any settlers living in Indian territory were required to leave. Secondly, in order to make certain that peace was maintained on the American frontier, the British government arranged for the garrisoning of up to 10,000 soldiers in the colonies. The cost of their upkeep, British Prime Minister George Grenville decided, would be borne by the colonists— an estimated 250,000 pounds sterling per year.

Although some members of the British government may have had a sincere desire to protect the land rights of Native Americans, their main intention was to evade more expensive Indian wars. By limiting white settlement to areas east of the Appalachian watershed, the government hoped to minimize conflict between Indians and colonists. However, Grenville's government also wanted to tie the American colonies closer to England. The British worried that settlers who moved to lands across the Appalachians and lost direct contact with the British Empire would form economic ties with the Mississippi Valley, then under Spanish control. They also realized that these settlers would need to manufacture some goods for themselves, rather than importing them from England. The British feared that in time such local industries would undercut imperial trade. The simplest way to prevent these things from happening was to forbid settlement west of the Appalachians. This would also keep colonial settlers from drifting away from a market economy. A settler who went far into the interior and began to live in a subsistent economy without using money, would soon lose contact with other colonists and, eventually, also his allegiance to the British crown.

The second part of the Proclamation also threatened American economic prosperity. Grenville's government had inherited a national debt of 137 million pounds sterling, almost twice what it had been before the beginning of the war with France. The costs of administering the North American empire, Grenville concluded, could well be borne by the colonists, whose debt amounted to only 2.6 million pounds sterling. But the colonies were suffering from a severe post-war depression, and hard cash, or specie (minted gold and silver), was in short supply because of the colonial trade deficit with Great Britain. Most colonial specie was used to pay English or Scottish merchants for goods the colonists had imported.

In order to raise the 250,000 pounds sterling needed to fund the frontier troops, Grenville's government put together a series of direct and indirect taxes on colonial goods and services, including the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, and the Stamp Act. These taxes led to conflict between the American colonies and England, eventually culminating in the American Revolution (1775–1783).

See also: Stamp Act, Sugar Act