Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

“British in Thought and Deed:” Henry Bouquet and the Making of Britain’s American Empire

Towne, Erik L.

Abstract Details

2008, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, History.

This work examines how Colonel Henry Bouquet used the British fiscal-military state as a blueprint for military operations in colonial North America during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). Bouquet’s military operations marked the peripheral projection of the British fiscal-military state onto American colonists and Native Americans on the imperial periphery. Inside the colonies, military mobilization involved marshalling provincial troops, quartering soldiers, requisitioning provisions, livestock, and farm equipment, and making military infrastructure, all of which led to varying degrees of friction between the army and colonial society. Bouquet sought to impose military power on Native society by controlling diplomacy, regulating trade and gift giving, and reclaiming White captives, with mixed results. Problematically, both colonists and Indians balked at these policies, marking the failure in the colonial world of what had proven to be efficient bureaucratic institutions inside Britain. This work broadens Military Revolution and state formation theories by examining how these process unwound in an imperial setting.

This work identifies variables in British America that did not obtain in the formation of European states. By bridging British imperial, colonial, and Indian historiographies, this work reports that militarization caused tensions between the British state and colonial and native peoples. Historians have not examined the Royal American Army as the catalyst for these tensions, overlooking important variables in empire making. Using path dependence and constitutional theories, this work reports that colonial society developed in ways that made it unable to cope with the fiscal, social, or tactical demands of modern warfare. Ethno-historians have pushed their field to "look east" from Indian Country, overlooking European and military historiographies. By merging Native and British historiographies, this work reports that Bouquet sought to militarize Indian Country in a way that undermined its culture and livelihood, generating a form of violent resistance that European state makers seldom encountered inside their own societies. In both colonial and Indian societies, cooperation with Bouquet led to subjugation. Colonials resisted subjugation through constitutional channels, and political and passive resistance; Native Americans resisted through the Cherokee War and Pontiac’s War. Path dependence and violent resistance emerge as the two most important variables that account for Bouquet’s inability to integrate North America into the British fiscal-military state during the Seven Years’ War.

Peter Way, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Amilcar Challu, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Andrew Schocket, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Frank McKenna, Ph.d. (Other)
395 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Towne, E. L. (2008). “British in Thought and Deed:” Henry Bouquet and the Making of Britain’s American Empire [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1213231212

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Towne, Erik. “British in Thought and Deed:” Henry Bouquet and the Making of Britain’s American Empire. 2008. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1213231212.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Towne, Erik. "“British in Thought and Deed:” Henry Bouquet and the Making of Britain’s American Empire." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1213231212

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)