2G - The dream of westward expansion: the expectations of the colonists
Learn why different colonists wanted western land, what opportunities they saw in Britain's new territories, and why those ambitions conflicted with Native rights and imperial priorities after 1763.
Why colonists wanted land
Western land promised several different kinds of opportunity. Growing settler communities needed farms for new households. A tenant or a smallholder might hope that moving west would provide a more independent livelihood. Wealthy investors could seek much larger tracts, planning to sell land at a profit when settlement increased its value. Veterans expected rewards for their service in the war against France.
Land speculation
Acquiring land or claims to land in the expectation of selling them later at a higher price. Speculators could seek a profit without intending to farm the land themselves.
These ambitions predated the peace of 1763. The Ohio Company, formed in 1749, linked members of the Virginia elite to western land speculation. Britain's victory encouraged investors to expect that French opposition would no longer prevent development. George Washington's interest in western land shows that expansion was an elite concern as well as a frontier farmer's ambition. Mount Vernon records the formation of the Ohio Company.
Different settlers' interests could reinforce one another without being identical. Investors needed purchasers; aspiring farmers needed available land. They could therefore join in demanding access to the West. Yet a land company seeking large grants could also compete with settlers who occupied land independently, while colonies competed over whose jurisdiction and claims would prevail.
For veterans, land could seem an earned reward. For investors, it could represent repayment for risk and capital already committed. Restricting expansion consequently threatened an expectation about the fruits of victory, not merely a distant possibility. The emotional claim that colonists had helped win the land strengthened the economic grievance.
Using the acquired territories
French defeat appeared to open new routes for trade and settlement. Canada contained towns and farms along the St Lawrence, while the Great Lakes and interior connected to fur-trading networks. Anglo-American merchants hoped to enter markets previously dominated by French interests. British control also raised expectations of access to western land claimed by France before the war.
The geography needs care. Canada, the Ohio country and the Mississippi valley were related parts of France's former mainland empire, but were not one empty stretch of farmland. Canada lay north of the thirteen colonies; the Ohio country lay west of the Appalachians and south of the Great Lakes. The peace transferred French claims east of the Mississippi to Britain, except New Orleans. Spain acquired French Louisiana west of the river and New Orleans. The US Office of the Historian explains the settlement.
Commercial exploitation meant using resources and trading opportunities for profit. Fur commerce relied on rivers, forts, traders and relationships with Native suppliers. Its success required maintaining those relationships; simply replacing a French flag with a British one did not make existing trading knowledge unnecessary. Rapid agricultural settlement could also damage the hunting territories on which fur trade depended.
Britain now had to govern a substantial French-speaking Catholic population in Canada. The peace settlement promised freedom of Catholic worship as far as British laws permitted. Article IV of the treaty records this qualified protection. British officials therefore had to consider existing inhabitants and institutions, rather than governing solely to satisfy settlers from the thirteen colonies. Those settlers' hope of extending their familiar political and economic world was only one of several claims on the acquired territory.
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