Abstract
In all its essential features, the British overseas empire that developed and expanded during the first half of the eighteenth century was an extension of the English empire that had been established during the course of the seventeenth century. Although, in a formal sense, colonists were now members of a British empire governed by a British Parliament in the name of a British sovereign, many of them still perceived themselves to be Englishmen, carrying English birthrights and belonging to an English empire. Some commentators and observers acknowledged the constitutional changes that had taken place since the Act of Union of 1707, and they chose their words with care and precision when they wrote and spoke about themselves and their contemporaries as British and Britons rather than English and Englishmen. Others used the words English and British interchangeably, but a large number of colonists continued to conduct constitutional and political discourse in terms dictated by membership of an unreconstructed English empire and polity.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For foreign investment in the National Debt see Dickson, Financial revolution, pp. 304–337; for Irish officers in the Royal Navy see Gwyn, Enterprising admiral, p. 198; and for Scottish officers in the army see James Hayes, ‘Scottish officers in the British army, 1714–63’, Scottish History Review, XXXVI (1957), 24–33.
Quoted in David Kynaston, The City of London. Volume 1: A world of its own 1815–1890 (1994), p. 5.
For examples see ibid., p. 76. See also Chapman, Merchant enterprise, p. 46; Price, JoshuaJohnson’s Letterbook, xi–xii; and W.E. Minchinton. See also Chapman, Merchant enterprise, p. 46; Price, JoshuaJohnson’s Letterbook, xi–xii; and W.E. Minchinton, ‘The merchants of England in the eighteenth century’, Explorations in entrepreneurial history, X (1957), 68.
G. Yogev, Diamonds and corals. Anglo Dutch Jews and eighteenth-century trade (Leicester, 1978 ), pp. 20–1.
David Ormrod, ‘The “Protestant Capitalist International”, 1651–1775’, Historical Research, LXVI (1993), 197–208. See the detailed case studies of fourteen Quaker families of London in Jacob M. Price, ‘The great Quaker business families of eighteenth-century London. The rise and fall of a sectarian patriciate’, in Dunn and Dunn (eds), The world of William Penn, pp. 363–99.
These developments are summarized in Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and its first American colony, 1683–1765 (Princeton, 1985), pp. 72–7.
As Richard B. Sher has pointed out, Clive and Bailyn’s article did much to point to similarities in the way in which both Scotland and America stood in relation to England, but it said very little about ‘interprovincial connexions’ and the ’direct interaction’ between Scotland and America (Richard B. Sher, ’Introduction. Scottish-American cultural studies, past and present’, in Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey B. Smitten (eds), Scotland and America in the age of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1990 ), p. 4 ).
Greene, Pursuits of happiness, pp. 47–52. The pattern of emigration during the seventeenth century is examined in detail in H.A. Gemery, ‘Emigration from the British Isles to the New World, 1630–1700’, Research in Economic History, V (1980), 179–231.
The figures in this paragraph are derived from A. Fogelman, ‘Migrations to the thirteen North American colonies. New estimates’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXII (1992), 691–710.
The general context for Irish migration is provided in L.M. Cullen, ‘The Irish diaspora of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Nicholas Canny (ed.), Europeans on the move. Studies on European migration, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 113–49. For a detailed study of migration from northern Ireland see R.J. Dickson, Ulster emigration to colonial America, 1718–1775 (1966).
For discussions of the wide range of economic factors which prompted emigration from Scotland see the contributions in R.A. Cage (ed.), The Scots abroad, labour, capital, enterprise, 1750–1914 (1985), passim. See also E. Richards, ‘Scotland and the uses of the Atlantic empire’, in Bailyn and Morgan (eds), Strangers within the realm, pp. 67–114. For emigration as only one element within a broader pattern of social mobility see T.C. Smout, N.C. Landsman, and T.M. Devine, ‘Scottish emigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Canny (ed.), Europeans on the move, pp. 76–112.
Daniel Defoe, A tour through the whole island of Great Britain (1724–6), ed. Pat Rogers (1971), p. 609.
Ronald Hoffman, ‘“Marylando-Hibernus”. Charles Carroll the settler, 1660–1720’, WMQ, third series, XLV (1988), 207–36.
Richard B. Sheridan, ‘The rise of a colonial gentry. A case study of Antigua, 1730–75’, Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XIII (1960–1), 345, 349.
The following two paragraphs are based upon G.J. Bryant, ‘Scots in India in the eighteenth century’, Scottish History Review, LXIV (1985), 22–41, and J. Riddy, ‘Warren Hastings: Scotland’s benefactor?’, in Carnal! and Nicholson (eds), The impeachment of Warren Hastings, pp. 30–57.
For brief comments on Welsh emigration to North America in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries see H.M. Davies, ’“Very different springs of uneasiness”. Emigration from Wales to the United States of America during the 1790s’, Welsh History Review, XV (1991), 370–1.
Quotations from A.H. Dodd, The character of the early Welsh emigration to the United States (2nd edn, Cardiff, 1957 ), p. 15.
Bridenbaugh, Cities in the wilderness, pp. 431, 440. Philip Jenkins, A history of modern Wales, 1536–1990 (1992), p. 71.
Gwyn A. Williams, When was Wales? A history of the Welsh (1985), p. 157.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 H. V. Bowen
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bowen, H.V. (1996). The End of the English Empire. In: Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390195_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390195_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39311-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39019-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)