by Tom Anderson
All fine and good in theory; but, for the first time, the Third War of Supremacy meant that at least part of the dream could be realised, and now it ran into the problems of reality. The French had been driven both from Québec, and more importantly from the point of view of the colonies, the Ohio Country, which was claimed under the old charters by Pennsylvania and Virginia. Similar claims were made by colonies further north and south, extending their theoretical borders westward into the wilderness that was now nominal British territory, though inhabited by many Indian nations. The problem was firstly that many of the colonial claims clashed with each other, particularly those of the New England colonies, and secondly that some of the colonies were now surrounded on all sides by others, and simply had no westward frontier on the wilderness into which they could expand. Maryland was one of these, but the New England colonies were the worst. Rhode Island was unambiguously cut off, and some claims by New York might also cut off Masachusetts (except in their separated northern Maine territory) and Connecticut. The latter continued to insist on claims to a disconnected strip of land beyond New York, but few took this seriously—particularly after the widely condemned ‘Hartford Tea Revolt’ over tea taxes in 1767. Regardless of how much the New Englanders might dislike the idea of confederation, they began to realise that the alternative might be being reduced to small, plaintive, ignored voices in an Empire of North America that included vastly expanded colonies of Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.
These were two of the problems. There were othersWhat to do with the Catholic French in Québec, currently under the effective military dictatorship of James Wolfe, and certainly not an appropriate land for many of the principles of British government. What the rights of the Indians, both as individuals and as nations, should be (the Americans and some British armchair imperialists disagreed strongly on this). And, of course, the fact that ‘representation’ had become a clear, if vague, call in the colonies. If Americans were to pay taxes like Britons, then they ought to be able to vote like them, too.
The American cause might well have been doomed, had it not had the man at the top on their side. King George III had grown up in Virginia, indeed spoke with a rather strange hybrid German/Planter accent that was much ridiculed in continental Europe, and continued to defend the colonies’ interests at court. Having said that, his quote “Born and raised in this country, I glory in the name of American” is most probably apocryphal.[81]
The situation was not helped by the fact that, after the retirement of Fairfax in 1764, King George had appointed the young but politically vigorous Lord William North as Lord Deputy of North America.[82] North had encouraged political debate on the subject and, in 1768, accepted a joint call from several significant American figures to call a new Albany Congress. The first, thirteen years before, had been called in the spirit of unity against the French and Indian enemies during the Third War of Supremacy. Even back then, Franklin had drafted an early plan of unifying the colonies under a strong executive, which had been largely ignored at the time, but had provoked further discussion.
Despite the long sea journey between Britain and America, some common interests began to emerge. George was helped in that, after Pitt died in 1766, he was replaced by the Marquess of Rockingham, a singularly capable manager of interests in the House and a steady hand at Government. Rockingham was, in particular, responsible for bringing Charles James Fox, third son of Henry Fox and technically too young to be an MP according to law, into the core of the Whigs. Fox was something of an enigma, being a political radical in almost every conceivable way, although he drew the line in some areas and criticised the more extreme John Wilkes. Fox was a defender of colonial rights from the start, although he did not get on with the King due to his staunch abolitionist views and the King’s relaxed attitude towards slavery. This would cause problems later on.
By 1771, the North Commission, having exchanged members and had one or two die and be replaced, had settled on a rough arrangement that would eventually become the American Constitution of 1788 when ratified by all the colonies’ assemblies. Ironically enough, any objections from the British people over ‘special treatment’ of the Americans may have been masked by a common cause in 1772 when the British government decided to switch over to the Gregorian calendar after centuries continuing to use the Julian, henceforth known as ‘Old Style’ or O.S. The people’s chant—on both sides of the Atlantic—of ‘give us back our eleven days’ is often today portrayed as a pure act of ignorance by peasantry who believed they had literally had their lifetimes shortened. However, the riots were often provoked by the more prosaic reason that the eleven days in question which the crafty government had ‘abolished’ in order to synchronise the calendars just happened to be ones which included a pre-existing public holiday. Though the demanded compensation was never obtained, mutual annoyance by ordinary people in Britain and America may have smoothed over any transatlantic disagreements over the North Commission.[83]
The North Plan, as it was known, modified Franklin’s original scheme to take into account recent developments. Franklin had already acknowledged at the time that Delaware would have to be subsumed into Pennsylvania, as it was already for most intents and purposes, and he had not counted Georgia as a colony. This proved prophetic, as the young colonial administration faltered in the late 1760s after its capital was sacked by a Chickasaw Indian attack, its territory reabsorbed back into South Carolina. However, the North Commission considerably expanded these tentative consolidation ideas, and eventually developed the concept that became known as Five Confederations and One Empire.
Under this new and quite radical proposition, the original colonial charters would be modified and combined to produce five new units with elected ‘Confederate’ assemblies, all of which would have suitable outlets to the west for expansion into the new territories. The first of these was the Confederation of New England, formally formed in 1776 and incorporating Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nova Scotia (ostensibly including Newfoundland) and New Hampshire. A unitary national or ‘Imperial’ government over the Confederations was also created. The North System was based on North America receiving a parliamentary voting system like Britain’s, but due to the wildly varying sizes and populations of the colonies—far more so even than Britain’s counties—standardised voting ‘provinces’ were created. Typically, small colonies like Rhode Island consisted of one province, while larger and more populous ones were divided into several. Members of the hypothetical American parliament would be elected based on these provinces for country representation and on certain cities given borough status for urban representation. The old colonial borders were sometimes retained for other administrative and traditional purposes, though. (It is notable that many of these ideas were built on proposals by Pro-Reform groups at home in Britain who saw America as a suitable testbed; Britain’s own unreformed electoral system after all had the equivalent of Rhode Island having over ten times as many representatives as Virginia).
Other Confederations were more typically dominated by one state: the Confederation of Pennsylvania (including Delaware and half of New Jersey), the Confederation of New York (including the other half of New Jersey), the Confederation of Virginia (including Maryland), and the Confederation of Carolina (including both Carolinas and the former Georgia). A sixth Confederation, Canada (Québec), was also posited, although never implemented: the magic number of five would not be altered until the mid-nineteenth century.
The new reorganisation was not exactly universally popular throughout the colonies, many of whom had populations proud of their histories and distinctive identities, but it did provide for equitable opportunities for westward settlement. Furthermore, King George had taken a relatively hard line towards the Indians. Over the next few years, Indian nations were either asked to formally become British protectorates or else remove to the west. Some of the larger Indian nations, including the Cherokee and the Iroquois (Howden), agreed to the protectorate status,
while some of the others fought, including the Creek and the Lapute. After some vicious fighting, the American colonial troops won, somewhat reassessing British home opinions of how seriously they needed to treat the Indian nations. The Cherokee agreed to sell some of their current lands for Carolinian settlement in return for taking over the lands currently held by the defeated Creek and assimilating them into their nation.
Taxes in America remained generally lower than those at home, though no longer by an enormous margin.[84] The first elected ‘Yankee Parliament’ (officially known as the Continental Parliament) met at 1788 in Fredericksburg, perhaps an inevitable choice for the national capital given both its central location and its history. It was opened by George III himself, on a state visit, and it was also in this year that the Constitution was finally ratified by the last of the Confederations, Carolina. The date had been chosen purposefully, one hundred years to the day after the Glorious Revolution had created Britain’s own constitution, which had provided much of the groundwork for the American version.
*
Taken from George III’s Opening of the First American Parliament, 1788:
“Let this new dominion, this great Empire, show itself to the world and stand proud beside the home nations! Let it fulfil its clear purpose and destiny in spreading the Protestant religion and the liberty of England from sea to shining sea! And let it be the home to my people, and my heirs, from now until the ending of the world.”
*
From: “The Making of a Nation”, by Peter Arnold (1987)—
But while the American crisis had been neatly averted, the politics of Sir Benjamin Franklin, Lord North and King George III were scarcely the only reason. Something came about in the intervening years, something which both reminded the Americans why they still needed defending, and reminded the British why it was imperative that they should hold fast to their colonial cousins.
In the year 1779, a Peruvian shot a Spanish governor and set the world down a track that would lead to wrack and ruin for centuries to come...
Chapter #12: Southern Sunrise
“Ideology, the most insidious of evils to afflict our world. Those masses who yearn for freedom and liberty will soon find themselves enslaved by Freedom and Liberty.”
—George Spencer-Churchill the Younger
*
From: “Rise of a Nation” by William Rogers (1928)—
The causes of the Andean Revolts are too complex to be completely considered in such a brief summary, even if they were entirely known. Primary sources remain scanty in many areas, particularly those dealing with the rural rebel groups that played the key role in the initial stages of the crisis. However, certain broad strokes can be discerned…
Spain’s approach to colonialism had always been quite different to that of Britain and France. Partly, of course, this was because Spain had been a colonial power for far longer, indeed it may not be an exaggeration to say that she was the first true colonial power in history. Thus, the government of the Spanish colonies in the Americas could be said to still be firmly rooted in the feudal institutions of the Middle Ages. A carefully designed racial hierarchy was in place by which the peninsulares, or white Europeans born in the Iberian homeland, were ranked above those pure-blood Europeans born in the colonies, criollos, who were in turn ranked above the half-white/half-native mestizos, and so on for the native amerindians and with the African negros at the bottom. People with parents from different castes were slotted into one of several intricately constructed half-way stages, each with its own unique name and place in society.
This system, which now seems so alien to modern mainstream thinking, was aided and abetted by the growing popularity of the Linnaean Racist philosophy in the mid to late eighteenth century. Existing convention was thus backed up with scientific (or ‘natural-philosophical’) justification, and many Spanish and peninsulare writers of the period expounded on the natural virtues of the Casta system. Perhaps as a result of this, this same period coincided with a national awakening among the criollos of Spanish America, particularly in the south where the system was most rigid. Pamphlets arguing against the system were widely distributed, despite official attempts to crack down. It is quite probable that this movement was quietly masterminded by the exiled Marquis of Ensenada, from his estate in Buenos Aires where he periodically met with his old Portuguese foe Carvalho. The two former ministers were certainly involved with the development of their ideological philosophy at some point, at least. Ensenada and Carvalho may have seen the Criollistas as merely a King Frederick-inspired means to an end that would lead to their return to power in the Peninsula (ironically), but if so, events escaped their control.
The criollos were arguably primed for rebellion by the 1770s, as the excesses of the Casta system were combined with punishing new taxes from Spain’s government under Charles III and his new Italian-born chief minister, Bernardo Tanucci, who had formerly headed affairs in the dynastically tied Kingdom of Naples. Tanucci was also a fervent anti-clericalist and his government had masterminded the crackdown on the Jesuits in Spain. Despite Ensenada’s own anti-clericalist streak, the Criollista movement was generally quite pro-Jesuit, and in defiance of the official pronouncements of the Jesuit missions in New Spain being dissolved in the late 1760s, the ‘black-robes’ continued to operate fairly openly in the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Captaincy-General of Chile.[85] The Jesuits’ ‘Reductions’, settlements intended to Christianise and ‘civilise’ the natives and protect them from overt colonial encroachment, had played a large part in expanding Spanish control in South America. Now they were seen by many colonials in Spanish America as being an integral part of the colonies’ cultural identity. However, while the people remained broadly in favour of the Society of Jesus itself, they were quick to settle the now vacated Jesuit lands. For example, in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city of Las Estrellas in Upper California was founded at this time.[86]
However, the initial spark of rebellion came not from the Criollistas, but from the Indians. José Gabriel Condorcanqui was the great-grandson of Tupac Amaru, the last Sapa Inca (emperor) of the Tahuantinsuyo, the native civilisation known (inaccurately) to most Europeans as ‘the Incas’. He was also vice-governor of the province of Cusco. In this capacity he repeatedly petitioned the authorities in Lima to improve the lot of the native peoples—in particular conditions in the mines and textile mills. However, indifference on the part of the peninsulare authorities, combined with the fact that Criollistas from as far away as Buenos Aires were also continually making petititons at Lima at this time, served to ensure that Condorcanqui was repeatedly rebuffed.
In response, Condorcanqui returned to his native roots and took the name Tupac Amaru II, organising the first serious rebellion against the Spanish colonial authorities in two centuries. With the execution of the tyrannical Governor Antonio de Arriaga in 1779, the Great Andean Rebellion began.
The colonial authorities hastily organised a militia under Tiburcio Landa, which was sent out to fortify the town of Sangara. However, Tupac Amaru’s forces caught the few hundred volunteers on the road to the town[87] and decimated them, despite the rebels having a shortage of muskets and powder and relying largely on more archaic weapons such as slingshots. Furthermore, Tupac Amaru had access to a number of Indians and a few sympathetic criollos who had served with the Spanish Army in the First Platinean War in the 1760s, and thus arguably possessed more trained veterans than the authorities in Cusco.
On the advice of Tupac Amaru’s wife and fellow commander, Micaela Bastidas, the rebel army successfully captured Cusco on Christmas Day 1780. Another militia force, this time sent by the government in Lima, suffered losses due to poor logistical planning and failed to retake the town in February 1781. It was at this time that news of the rebellion truly began to reach Spanish and other European ears, as well as those within Britain’s Empire of North America.
The rebellion also inspired others. In Upper Peru,[88] the Aymara rebellion of Toma
s Katari had actually begun slightly before Tupac Amaru’s, but it was Tupac Amaru’s successes that whipped Katari’s into a real fervour. However, the native Indian forces failed to take La Paz in 1781 and Katari’s army retreated to Cusco, combining with Tupac Amaru’s. Parts of Upper Peru remained under Spanish control throughout the war, although often reduced to the fortifiable cities.
The loss of face to Spain was tremendous and so in 1781 a force sent from the homeland was united with colonial armies in New Granada. The war did not go entirely the rebels’ way, but the Spanish were nonetheless unable to achieve a decisive victory. However, it is likely that the rebellions would have eventually been crushed, had it not been for the interference of other states.
For more than a century, one of France’s chief foreign policy ambitions was that Spain’s rich empire in the Americas should be transferred to French control. This could take place via the kind of Bourbon union that the outcome of the First War of Supremacy had prevented, but might eventually become more feasible as Spain waned and France waxed. Now the young King Louis XVI,[89] having inherited a state that was shaky but recovering, buoyed by the riches brought in from the Indian trading empire of Dupleix (now under the rule of Governor-General Rochambeau),[90] saw that chance slipping through his fingers. Despite warnings from his Swiss-born Comptroller-General of Finances, Jacques Necker, that France’s treasury could not sustain another great war, Louis thought war the only option.