When the conflict known as the French and Indian War ended in 1763 (part of the larger global conflict known as the Seven Years War) with a British victory over the French and their Native American allies, Britain assumed control of most of North America’s French colonies. This included Canada as well as all of its land east of the Mississippi River, and the Ohio Valley. After the war ended, King George issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade colonial settlement beyond the Appalachians in order to avoid further conflict with sovereign Native American tribes and First Nations, including the Ottawa, Huron, and Potowatomi, over settler and trapper land grabs. The King pledged to interact with the Tribes as sovereign nations, and to prohibit colonial governments and individual settlers from westward expansion. This Proclamation, the first law enacted by the British that applied to all 13 colonies, was widely maligned in the colonies, who felt the British were making arbitrary restrictions, and withholding lands they had “earned” via their participation in the war. Largely disregarded by the colonists, who continued to move west and claim lands they had no right to, the Proclamation was the source of much growing tension between the colonies and the Crown. It was also considered wholly ineffective by the tribes in the region, many of whom, like Chief Pontiac (Ottawa), took matters into their own hands, and coordinated active resistance to the continued encroachment of settler colonists.
In addition to the Proclamation restricting western expansion, Parliament also began to enact economic measures in the American colonies in an attempt to recoup their financial losses during the long war with France (the war doubled the British national debt) and to pay for the 10,000+ British troops still stationed in the colonies. Parliament issued the Stamp Act in 1765, a British tax on the American colonies that required a tax stamp on legal documents, land deeds, newspapers, playing cards, and other paper goods. This was the Crown’s first direct tax on the American colonies, and it sparked widespread outrage, including protests and boycotts. The colonists were unified in their opposition to these new taxes and adopted the slogan “no taxation without representation,” arguing that since they had no direct representation in Parliament that they should not be arbitrarily taxed in this way. Although the Act was repealed by Parliament in 1766, the measure, like the King’s 1763 proclamation, directly contributed to the eventual outbreak of the American Revolution
Political cartoons were an increasingly common way to lodge protests and grievances in the era leading up to the Revolution. This pair of political cartoons is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and were published in 1768 while he was acting as Pennsylvania’s colonial agent in London. The top panel shows Britannia (Great Britain) depicted as Roman General Belisarius dismembered and contemplating her lost limbs (representing American colonies). An olive branch wilts on the ground, having been dropped by one of Brittania’s severed limbs. Idle ships in the background and the withered tree hint at the poverty of the American colonies as a result of British policies. In the lower cartoon, Lord Bute, stabs Britannia. Britannia’s spear is aimed at America, represented as a young Native woman, with her feathered skirt being held. “America,” her back toward Britannia, turns to the outstretched arms of a Frenchman wielding a sword and pistol in her defence. Franklin, and many others, directly blamed the British government’s policies following the end of the French and Indian War, especially the Stamp Act, for alienating the American colonies, and these cartoons were but one way of expressing American discontent to the British public and to Parliament.