William Pitt, Earl of Chatham and British colonial policy: a neglected source.
Schweizer, Karl W.
British historians have traditionally agreed that William Pitt,
1st Earl of Chatham, was the driving force behind England's
victories in the Seven years War and that he was a visionary
imperialist: a statesman with a clear appreciation of Britain's
overseas interests and a corresponding strategy designed to assure
command of the sea and predominance in trade.(1) Recent scholarship has
now substantially diminished Pitt's tole as war leader(2) and there
are signs that even his image as architect of empire is being
increasingly called into question.(3) By directing attention from
parliament to the court, from leading politicians and ministers to
systemic or bureaucratic factors, these writings have fostered a
reassessment of the eighteenth century British state in which the
importance of notable, individual figures such as Pitt is necessarily
lessened.(4) Indeed, the reactions against the allegedly excessively
biographical tendency of older scholarship, extending back to Namier,
has led to a kind of reductionism in which the human dimension of
decision making has been subsumed under administrative or even economic
history.(5) However, given contemporary awareness of the undoubted
impact of individual leadership on decision making,(6) it is clearly
necessary to supplement the current fashion for schematic studies of
organizational and administrative structures with an awareness of the
less tangible influences of personality, ambition, and ability in policy
formulation.
A first step is a more thorough canvassing of the available
documents, especially in the case of Chatham and British imperial
policy, where relevant sources have been generally dispersed, poorly
indexed, or incomplete. The following article aims to draw attention to
one such source, the papers of Lord Amherst at the Kent County Record
Office,(7) a rich collection of private and official documents which
helps illuminate Pitt's views on empire but which seems to have
been overlooked in the numerous studies of Pitt that have appeared in
recent years.
Most of the collection covers the years 1758-63, the period when
Lord Amherst was Commander-in-Chief for North America(8), and comprises
dispatches to and correspondence with Pitt concerning political and
military affairs in the colonies. Of special interest in the political
category are the letters relating to the capture of Louisbourg,
Ticonderoga, Fort Duquesne (1758), and Montreal in September 1760 and
those from which emerge Pitt's views on the maritime war for
commercial and colonial expansion. Used in conjunction with such sources
as the Chatham Papers (P.R.O.), the War Office records (W.O. 34), the
Colonial Office files (esp. C.O.5), the Newcastle Papers and the Grafton
manuscripts (Suffolk Record Office), these papers highlight Pitt's
keen and active interest in every aspect of imperial affairs and
strongly suggest that he did have a distinctive new world policy for
England, the precise nature of which historians still have to explore.
Below is a sample of one of the more important and interesting
items featured in the collection.
Papers of Sir Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst
0 20: Letters from William Pirt to Amherst, 1758.
20/2. Notifies Amherst of the amphibious operations at St. Malo and
provides information on campaign in Germany (10 June 1758).
20/3. Comments on operational plan designed by Amherst and Boscawen
(9 Sept. 1758).
20/4. Notification of Boscawen's appointment as
Commander-in-Chief in North America; discussion of planned expedition
against Fort Duquesne (18 Sept. 1758).
20/5. Circular letter to North American Governors (18 Sept. 1758).
20/14. Letter relating to forts on Lake George and Oneida (9 Dec.
1758).
20/16-18. Letters to Governors of Massachusetts Bay, Pennsylvania and
New York requesting them to raise forces for the 1759 campaign; contains
advice on strategy to be deployed (9 Dec. 1758).
20/25. Letter concerning assault on Quebec and defence of Halifax (29
Dec. 1758).
20/26-27. Letters to Governors of Nova Scotia and Louisbourg
concerning the 1759 campaign (29 Dec. 1758).
20/29-30. Proposals for expedition to Quebec nominating Colonel Wolfe
as Commander (29 Dec. 1758).
0 21: Letters from William Pitt, 1759
21/1. Instructions concerning the defence of Louisbourg and Nova
Scotia (13 Jan. 1759).
21/3. Letter to General Forbes regarding the capture of Fort Duquesne
(23 Jan. 1759).
21/10. Instructions to General Wolfe for assault on Quebec (5 Feb.
1759).
21/12. Plan for joint operations with Admiral Saunders in the Mobile
and Mississippi area; discusses value of such a plan given the obstacles
to a campaign in the north created by weather conditions (10 Feb. 1759).
21/19. Letter commenting on action at Niagara, Crown Point, and
Ticonderoga (29 Sept. 1759).
21/20. Detailed reflections on Canadian campaign; an important letter
(11 Dec. 1759).
0 22: Letters from Pitt, 1760
22/1. General instructions for the campaign in 1760, enclosing
circular letters to governors and ordering the invasion of Canada from
the south (7 Jan. 1760).
22/29. Reflections on the campaign to conquer Canada (14 June 1760).
22/30. Letter analysing military situation in Quebec (20 June 1760).
22/33. Letter commenting on the capture of Quebec, enclosing plans
for attacking the French on the Mobile and Mississippi and remarks on
the governorship of Virginia (24 Oct. 1760).
22/37. Preparatory plans for the 1761 campaign (17 Dec. 1760).
22/38. Instructions for the further prosecution of the war in the
Americas (17 Dec. 1760).
22/39-40. Letters to northern and southern governors requiring their
assistance in raising troops (17 Dec. 1760).
0 23: Letters from William Pitt, 1761-62
23/2. Letter concerning preparations fbr attack on Martinique (7 Jan.
1761).
23/6. Letter describing successful attack onBelleisle (18 June 1761).
23/25. Private letter concrening recent success at Matinique (9 Apr.
1762).
The remaining collection comprises letters and despatches from
Amherst to Pitt for the period 1758-63, indicating the type of
information and intelligence about colonial operations the latter
considered important and that proved influential in his thinking about
imperial matters.
(1) The "heroic" view of Pitt is represented in but not
limited to B. Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham
(London, 1913), 2 vols.; F. Harrison, Chatham (London, 1905); K.
Hothlack, Cahtham's Colonial Policy (London, 1917); J.S. Corbett,
England in The Seven Years War (London, 1918), 2 vols. For further
titles see: K. Schweizer, William Pin, Earl of Chatham (Westport, CT,
1993), pp. 75-80, 100-8.
(2) Cf. R. Middleton, 7he Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle
Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years War (Cambridge, 1985).
(3) M. Peters, "The Myth of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Great
Imperialist," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,
vol. 21, nr. 1 (1993), pp. 31-74. P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial
People. England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989).
(4) Cf. K.W. Schweizer, "Chatham Revisited," History of
European Ideas, vol. 18, nr. 3 (1994), pp. 417-20.
(5) See Middleton, Bells of Victory; and among others, John Brewer,
The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783
(London, 1989); Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman
1689-1798 (Oxford, 1991); L., Stone, ed., An Imperal State at War
(London, 1994).
(6) J. Black, Pitt the Elder (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 301-9.
(7) Kent Archive Office, County Hall, Maidstone, Kent ME14 IXQ.
(8) Jeffery Amherst, 1717-1797. For biographical details see A.
Valentine, The British Establishment 1760-1784 (Norman, OK, 1970), p.
18.
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