Written as a British Administrator, Quebec 1763-1774

Why do all the people here, except for my fellow British, never go along with what we, the British, want?? I see that the French have lost the war, but why do they not welcome us? If the war is over can we not live in peace? It would be so easy if only the French would do exactly what we say.  But as of right now, the French are not the worst problem, the real issue lies in these ‘First Nations’ as they call themselves.

They don’t understand why it is important for them to give up their land for us. I mean, we are the British; we came here, so give us a place to live!

Then these First Nations went as far as to form an alliance and take over a few of my British forts! The leader of this group, Pontiac, was a real bugger. His big goal was to protect the land of the Nations people!

Anyway, eventually we made peace with Pontiac, and the problem ended, but we wanted to avoid this situation happening again. Thus we concluded that we needed to slow down the settler’s west movements. Well, I guess it was that other British guy that concluded it, but I seconded the notion, and we  made the decision as a group of British.

Alright, so soon following the big decision,  Britain decided to make a Proclamation. I managed to scan a copy when there was this big meeting going on, so enjoy!

So basically, the purpose of this huge document is to organize the places, I believe that they are called territories, in North America that we, the British got in the Treaty Of Paris- another long story. And then, if you had the gift of reading between the lines, you would then see that what it really means is to keep peace with the First Nations – control their relationships with settlers to avoid fights- as well as get the French to give up some of their laws and make the French adopt into British culture, by taking away a bunch of their ‘rights’ but giving them a couple new ones.

And after that, there was this big huge negotiation with the First Nations for Treaties on their land.

Now it is time for my least favorite part! The Quebec Act!  So if you remember, we, the British, wanted to get the French to adopt our culture. A way we figured to do this was to close up this place called the Ohio Valley so there would be no westward expansion. We hoped that people in search of land would then come to Quebec instead, but those Catholic French guys stole the BEST LAND! And then, this is the worst part, the governor; a fellow named James Murray, LIKED THE FRENCH BETTER THAN US, THE BRITISH!!!!!!!! So then we got a new governor, Carleton, and he also favored the French to the British merchants! Is that not sad????