The Proclamation of 1763
By Reporter Willa Michel
Proclamation Link (Wikipedia)
The Wikipedia site for the proclamation. Credit to Wikipedia. (This will open in new tab)
The Impact? (New Introduction)
You know about tobacco today right? Go into a store and buy it. Well in the 1700s it was a bit different. In colonial Virginia the economic system was impacted by a Proclamation called, "The Proclamation of 1763." It was a document that affected the economics, such as tobacco production, plantation expansion, and the ability to trade goods, In the 1700s if you didn't grow tobacco, you would have to trade for it, but when this proclamation occurred, the plantation owners could not expand, and tobacco production would be stopped. But the Proclamation did do one good thing, stopped westward expansion.
The Impact? (old introduction)
The impact the Proclamation had on the early colony of Virginia is huge, it involves limiting the production of tobacco, limiting the amount of plantations, and limiting the goods able to be traded. Around this time it was close to the time of the French and Indian war, a huge war between the French and British for territory. Furthermore, the Proclamation had a big negative impact, that people believed it was one of the reasons of the start of the Revolutionary war.
So... Tell me more about this proclamation....
Well, the proclamation is a document that states that particular people in the French and Indian War get land, the proclamation states, " To every person having the rank of a Field Officer, 5,000 acres, Every Captain, 3,000 acres, Every Staff Officer, 2,000 acres, Every non-commission officer, 2,000 acres, Every Private Man, 50 acres." By the same token, it states that any person on Native lands, must be removed or will be charged with treason. " And require all persons who have willfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands within the countries above described. or upon any other lands are still reserved for the Indians aforesaid." As aforesaid, the Proclamation caused a negative reaction to this short-term solution of keeping Indians peaceful, and stopping westward expansion.
Early Virginia colony Economics
There are many economic systems of the Virginia Colony, but today I am going to talk about three, tobacco production, Plantation expansion, and traded goods. I will explain each, first of all let me explain the tobacco production. The Virginia colony was a big tobacco farming area. They collected the tobacco and shipped it to England for profit and goods. Which connects to plantations AND good trading. But I am going to talk about plantations before the trading aspect. Plantations are where the goods are grown BUT they use the most slaves to gather the goods and meats, they would put them to hard labor in the fields. Finally I will talk about good trading, it is just what it sounds like. The colonists would trade goods with England, they would send tobacco and England would send back essentials. These all interconnect because the tobacco production relies on the plantation owners to supply the tobacco which the good trader waits to get the tobacco so they can trade the tobacco for the essentials needed to live. In other words, these all are interconnected in a unique way. Along with the others.
Impact on the economic systems
The proclamation of 1763 had a big impact on the economic systems in colonial Virginia, plantation owners couldn't expand, because of the law that you couldn't expand into Native American land, that means it limits the amount of tobacco, so it limits the amount of profit made, which means that they might not have enough essentials to live. The settlers wanted to rebel and go and kill the Indians and take their lands so they would make more profit and gather more slaves from the Indians. To put this another way, basically the whole colony could possibly collapse because of this.
The end is here
The Proclamation of 1763 had a tremendous affect on the economics of the early Virginia Colony. The proclamation limited land expansion, which caused a negative uproar, it might have started the revolutionary war, but if this proclamation did not happen, the world we live in today, would not be the same.