Great Britain emerged from the Seven Years’ War as the dominant imperial power in North America, but its ascendancy was soon challenged. In 1776 an alliance of British colonies along the Atlantic seaboard declared independence and fought a successful war, supported by France and Spain, to establish their claim to nationhood as the United States of America. By 1793 Great Britain was again at war with France, which was experiencing a bloody revolution of its own. The French and Napoleonic wars dragged on for more than two decades, engulfing most European countries, and, in 1812, the United States was sucked into the fray against its former mother county. The American and French revolutions signaled the difficult birth of the “modern” age characterized by liberal political regimes, industrial capitalism, and bourgeois values. When the fighting finally stopped in 1815, Great Britain reigned supreme over the emerging new world order. The territory remaining under British control in North America was redefined in the crucible of this revolutionary age.

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

Great Britain had incorporated conquered peoples into its empire before, but swallowing New France offered unprecedented challenges. In the spring of 1763 the fur trade frontier erupted in bloody chaos, and when military occupation gave way to civilian rule, major difficulties arose in efforts to integrate the Canadiens into British political and legal institutions. The feisty mood in the older British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard further complicated decisions on how to manage this most recent addition to the empire.