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Colonial Protest and Imperial Retrenchment: Indian Policy 1764–1768

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Peter Marshall
Peter Marshall
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

On 10 July 1764 the Board of Trade ordered the circulation of a plan for the future management of Indian affairs among the Governors and Indian Superintendents of the North American colonies and requested their comments and criticisms. Diplomatic, territorial and commercial relations with the Indians were to be conducted in future by imperial officials, who would assume powers previously wielded by the colonies. Less than four years later, on 7 March 1768, the Board recommended that responsibility for management of Indian relations be returned to the colonies. The Superintendents retained only the role of conducting diplomatic negotiations with die Indians in cases where more than one colony was concerned and were to be stripped of direct authority. The failure of this attempt to introduce imperial regulation of Indian affairs both reflected and confirmed the intractable problem posed by the west in the years before the Revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1971 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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