Anthony Mcfarlane - The British in the Americas 1480-1815

STUDIES IN MODERN HISTORY

This series, intended primarily for students, will tackle significant historical issues in concise volumes which are both stimulating and scholarly. The authors combine a broad approach, explaining the current state of our knowledge in the area, with their own research and judgements: and the topics chosen range widely in subject, period and place.

FRANCE IN THE AGE OF HENRY IV (2nd Edn) Mark Greengrass

VICTORIAN RADICALISM Paul Adelman

WHITE SOCIETY IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH Bruce Collins

BLACK LEADERSHIP IN AMERICA: FROM BOOKER T. WASHINGTON TO JESSE JACKSON (2nd Edn) John White

THE TUDOR PARLIAMENTS Michael A.R. Graves

LIBERTY AND ORDER IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE J.H. Shennan

POPULAR RADICALISM D.G. Wright

PAX BRITANNICA? BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY 17891914 Muriel E. Chamberlain

IRELAND SINCE 1800 K. Theodore Hoppen

IMPERIAL MERIDIAN: THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE WORLD 17801830 C.A. Bayly

A SYSTEM OF AMBITION? BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY 16601793 Jeremy Black

BRITANNIA OVERRULED: BRITISH POLICY AND WORLD POWER IN THE 20TH CENTURY David Reynolds

POOR CITIZENS: THE STATE AND THE POOR IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN David Vincent

THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN BRITISH POLITICS AND SOCIETY 18151911 E.A. Smith

POLITICS UNDER THE LATER STUARTS: PARTY CONFLICT IN A DIVIDED SOCIETY 16601715 Tim Harris

BRITAIN AND LATIN AMERICA IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES Rory Miller

THE BRITISH IN THE AMERICAS 14801815 Anthony McFarlane

First published 1994 by Longman Group Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge
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Copyright 1994, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-20949-7 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

McFarlane, Anthony, 1946

The British in the Americas, 14801815 / Anthony McFarlane.

p. cm. -- (Studies in modern history).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0582209501. (CSD). -- ISBN 0582209498 (PPR)

1. United States--History--Colonial period, ca. 16001775.
2. Great Britain--Colonies--America--History. 3. Caribbean Area--History--To 1810. 4. West Indies, British--History. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in modern history (Longman (Firm))
E188.M15 1994

The purpose of this book is to provide a brief, integrated account of British involvement in the Americas over the three centuries in which Europeans built land and maritime empires in the New World. Based on secondary sources, it owes a great debt to the many historians who have contributed to constructing the histories of colonial empires in the Americas, especially to those who have written on the British possessions in North America and the Caribbean. The notes and bibliography reflect my reliance on their work, albeit in an abbreviated and imperfect form: references to sources are generally restricted to books rather than articles in scholarly journals, and have been chosen to show both major sources and works which provide pathways into the larger historiography of colonial British America.

My intention in this book is, however, different from that of most of the works from which information and analysis are drawn. I seek neither to provide new information based on archival research nor to revise interpretations in specialist fields, but aim instead at a synthesis which embraces the development of colonies in the whole of Anglo-America, over the arc of British territories that eventually stretched from the Caribbean to Canada. This synthesis is structured chronologically, in order to provide a narrative framework for understanding the origins and evolution of British colonialism in the Americas from the antecedents of empire in the Tudor period to the realignments of empire following the American Revolution. Taking advantage of the rich and growing historiography on the social and economic history of the Anglo-American world, I have tried to blend a narration of significant moments and movements in its evolution with an analysis of the salient structures of colonial economy and society in both North America and the Caribbean. In so doing, I concur with the recent tendency (notably exemplified in the works of Jack P. Greene) against treating the American mainland colonies, particularly New England, as though they constituted the core of the Anglo-American empire and the epicentre of its culture.

I have in addition sought to set the Anglo-American world against the broader background of Euro-American colonialism, by pointing to similarities and differences between the colonies of Britain and its major European rivals, particularly Spain, and by drawing attention to the part that rivalries between European powers played in the expansion of Britain's empire. In a short book which focuses on the British in the Americas, these comparisons can be only episodic and illustrative rather than continuous and systematic; nevertheless, they do at least indicate how British colonization enmeshed with and related to the larger process of European expansion, and provide a perspective on the peculiarities of British America. In such a broadly conceived study, I am unable to do justice to issues which scholars have investigated in depth and detail, particularly the histories of subordinate or marginalized groups in society; I have however used the notes and bibliography to indicate works which the reader might use to pursue these themes.