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This is the book I read by Linda Buckley-Archer.

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This map shows land owned by different empires like France, Britain, and Spain. it helps understand different land take overs after the treaty of Paris.

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British-era-1763-75 | French and Indian War | Pinterest | Map, History and American History

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This gave me info on the different land across the world owned by different empires.

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Seven Years War 1759-63 | Ancestery | Pinterest | Seven years' war, World war and American History

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This is a Primary source of King George III. This helped me visualize King George III. It also gave me a visualize picture of him.

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George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 - 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover, who, unlike his two predecessors, was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

George was born during the reign of his paternal grandfather, King George II, as the first son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Following his father's death in 1751, Prince George became heir apparent and Prince of Wales. He succeeded to the throne on George II's death in 1760. The following year, he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, with whom he had 15 children. George III's life and reign were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain's American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In 1807, the transatlantic slave trade was banned from the British Empire.

In the later part of his life, George had recurrent and eventually permanent mental illness. The exact nature of the mental illness is not known definitively, but historians and medical experts have suggested that his symptoms and behaviour traits were consistent with bipolar disorder or porphyria. In 1810, George suffered a final relapse, and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was named Prince Regent the following year. The King died in 1820, aged 81, at which time the Regent succeeded him as George IV. George III reigned during much of the Georgian and Regency eras. At the time of his death, he was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch, having reigned for 59 years and 96 days; he remains the longest-lived and longest-reigning male monarch in British history.

Prince George (right), his brother Prince Edward, and their tutor, Francis Ayscough (later Dean of Bristol), c. 1749

George was born in Norfolk House in St James's Square, London, on 4 June 1738. He was a grandson of King George II and the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As he was born two months prematurely, and thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James's Church, Piccadilly, and Bishop of Oxford. One month later, he was publicly baptised at Norfolk House, again by Secker. His godparents were King Frederick I of Sweden (for whom Lord Baltimore stood proxy), his uncle Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha (for whom Lord Carnarvon stood proxy), and his great-aunt Sophia Dorothea, Queen in Prussia (for whom Lady Charlotte Edwin stood proxy).

George grew into a healthy, reserved and shy child. The family moved to Leicester Square, where George and his younger brother Edward (later Duke of York and Albany) were educated together by private tutors. Family letters show that he could read and write in both English and German, as well as comment on political events of the time, by the age of eight. He was the first British monarch to study science systematically.

Apart from chemistry and physics, his lessons included astronomy, mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce, agriculture and constitutional law, along with sporting and social accomplishments such as dancing, fencing and riding. His religious education was wholly Anglican. At the age of 10, George took part in a family production of Joseph Addison's play and said in the new prologue: "What, tho' a boy! It may with truth be said, A boy in England born, in England bred." Historian Romney Sedgwick argued that these lines appear "to be the source of the only historical phrase with which he is associated".

King George II disliked Prince Frederick and took little interest in his grandchildren. However, in 1751, Frederick died unexpectedly from a lung injury at the age of 44, and his son George became heir apparent to the throne and inherited his father's title of Duke of Edinburgh. The King now took more interest in his grandson and created him Prince of Wales three weeks later.

Pastel portrait of George as Prince of Wales by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1754

In the spring of 1756, as George approached his eighteenth birthday, the King offered him a grand establishment at St James's Palace, but George refused the offer, guided by his mother and her confidant, Lord Bute, who later served as prime minister. George's mother, now the Dowager Princess of Wales, preferred to keep George at home where she could imbue him with her strict moral values.

Accession and marriage

In 1759, George was smitten with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, but Lord Bute advised against the match and George abandoned his thoughts of marriage. "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation," he wrote, "and consequently must often act contrary to my passions." Nevertheless, George and his mother resisted attempts by the King to marry George to Princess Sophie Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Sophie Caroline instead married Frederick, Margrave of Bayreuth.

The following year, at the age of 22, George succeeded to the throne when his grandfather George II died suddenly on 25 October 1760, at age 76. The search for a suitable wife intensified: after giving consideration to a number of Protestant German princesses, George's mother sent Colonel David Graeme with, on her son's behalf, an offer of marriage to Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Charlotte accepted. While a royal household and staff were assembled for Charlotte in London, Lord Harcourt, the royal Master of the Horse, escorted her from Strelitz to London. Charlotte arrived in the afternoon of 8 September 1761 and the marriage ceremony was conducted that same evening in the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace. George and Charlotte's coronation was held at Westminster Abbey a fortnight later on 22 September. George never took a mistress (in contrast with his grandfather and his sons), and the couple enjoyed a happy marriage until his mental illness struck.

The King and Queen had 15 children-nine sons and six daughters. In 1762, George purchased Buckingham House (on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace) for use as a family retreat. His other residences were Kew Palace and Windsor Castle. St James's Palace was retained for official use. He did not travel extensively and spent his entire life in southern England. In the 1790s, the King and his family took holidays at Weymouth, Dorset, which he thus popularised as one of the first seaside resorts in England.

Early reign

Early regnal years

George, in his accession speech to Parliament, proclaimed: "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain." He inserted this phrase into the speech, written by Lord Hardwicke, to demonstrate his desire to distance himself from his German forebears, who were perceived as caring more for Hanover than for Britain. During George III's lengthy reign, Britain was a constitutional monarchy, ruled by his ministerial government and prominent men in Parliament. Although his accession was at first welcomed by politicians of all parties, the first years of his reign were marked by political instability, largely as a result of disagreements over the Seven Years' War. George came to be perceived as favouring Tory ministers, which led to his denunciation by the Whigs as an autocrat.

On his accession, the Crown lands produced relatively little income; most revenue was generated through taxes and excise duties. George surrendered the Crown Estate to Parliamentary control in return for a civil list annuity for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government. Claims that he used the income to reward supporters with bribes and gifts are disputed by historians who say such claims "rest on nothing but falsehoods put out by disgruntled opposition". Debts amounting to over £3 million over the course of George's reign were paid by Parliament, and the civil list annuity was increased from time to time. He aided the Royal Academy of Arts with large grants from his private funds, and may have donated more than half of his personal income to charity. Of his art collection, the two most notable purchases are Johannes Vermeer's Lady at the Virginals and a set of Canalettos, but it is as a collector of books that he is best remembered. The King's Library was open and available to scholars and was the foundation of a new national library.

Legislation and politics

In May 1762, the incumbent Whig government of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was replaced with one led by Lord Bute, a Scottish Tory. Bute's opponents worked against him by spreading the calumny that he was having an affair with the King's mother, and by exploiting anti-Scottish sentiment amongst the English. John Wilkes, a member of parliament, published The North Briton, which was both inflammatory and defamatory in its condemnation of Bute and the government. Wilkes was eventually arrested for seditious libel but he fled to France to escape punishment; he was expelled from the House of Commons and found guilty in absentia of blasphemy and libel. In 1763, after concluding the Peace of Paris which ended the war, Lord Bute resigned, allowing the Whigs under George Grenville to return to power. Britain received enormous concessions, including West Florida. Britain restored to France lucrative slave-sugar islands in the West Indies, including Guadeloupe and Martinique. France ceded Canada to Britain, in addition to all land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River, except New Orleans, which was ceded to Spain.

Later that year, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 placed a limit upon the westward expansion of the American colonies and created an Indian reserve. The Proclamation aimed to divert colonial expansion to the north (to Nova Scotia) and to the south (Florida), and protect the British fur trade with the Indians. The Proclamation Line did not bother the majority of settled farmers, but it was unpopular with a vocal minority. This discontent ultimately contributed to conflict between the colonists and the British government. With the American colonists generally unburdened by British taxes, the government thought it appropriate for them to pay towards the defence of the colonies against native uprisings and the possibility of French incursions.

The central issue for the colonists was not the amount of taxes but whether Parliament could levy a tax without American approval, for there were no American seats in Parliament. The Americans protested that like all Englishmen they had rights to " no taxation without representation". In 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Act, which levied a stamp duty on every document in the British colonies in North America. Since newspapers were printed on stamped paper, those most affected by the introduction of the duty were the most effective at producing propaganda opposing the tax.

Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister. After a brief illness, which may have presaged his illnesses to come, George settled on Lord Rockingham to form a ministry, and dismissed Grenville.

Lord Rockingham, with the support of Pitt and the King, repealed Grenville's unpopular Stamp Act. Rockingham's government was weak, and he was replaced as prime minister in 1766 by Pitt, whom George created Earl of Chatham. The actions of Lord Chatham and George III in repealing the Act were so popular in America that statues of them both were erected in New York City. Lord Chatham fell ill in 1767, and Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, took over the government. Grafton did not formally become prime minister until 1768. That year, John Wilkes returned to England, stood as a candidate in the general election, and came top of the poll in the Middlesex constituency. Wilkes was again expelled from Parliament. He was re-elected and expelled twice more, before the House of Commons resolved that his candidature was invalid and declared the runner-up as the victor. Grafton's government disintegrated in 1770, allowing the Tories led by Lord North to return to power.

Family issues and discontent in America

George was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, but his piety was not shared by his brothers. George was appalled by what he saw as their loose morals. In 1770, his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, was exposed as an adulterer. The following year, Henry married a young widow, Anne Horton. The King considered her inappropriate as a royal bride: she was from a lower social class and German law barred any children of the couple from the Hanoverian succession.

George insisted on a new law that essentially forbade members of the royal family from legally marrying without the consent of the sovereign. The subsequent bill was unpopular in Parliament, including among George's own ministers, but passed as the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Shortly afterwards, another of George's brothers, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, revealed he had been secretly married to Maria, Countess Waldegrave, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole. The news confirmed George's opinion that he had been right to introduce the law: Maria was related to his political opponents. Neither lady was ever received at court.

Lord North's government was chiefly concerned with discontent in America. To assuage American opinion most of the custom duties were withdrawn, except for the tea duty, which in George's words was "one tax to keep up the right [to levy taxes]". In 1773, the tea ships moored in Boston Harbor were boarded by colonists and the tea was thrown overboard, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. In Britain, opinion hardened against the colonists, with Chatham now agreeing with North that the destruction of the tea was "certainly criminal".

With the clear support of Parliament, Lord North introduced measures, which were called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists: the Port of Boston was shut down and the charter of Massachusetts was altered so that the upper house of the legislature was appointed by the Crown instead of elected by the lower house. Up to this point, in the words of Professor Peter Thomas, George's "hopes were centred on a political solution, and he always bowed to his cabinet's opinions even when sceptical of their success. The detailed evidence of the years from 1763 to 1775 tends to exonerate George III from any real responsibility for the American Revolution." Though both the Americans and older British historians characterised George as a tyrant, in these years he acted as a constitutional monarch supporting the initiatives of his ministers.

American War of Independence

Pulling Down the Statue of George III at Bowling Green, 9 July 1776, William Walcutt (1854)

The American War of Independence was the culmination of the civil and political American Revolution. In the 1760s, a series of acts by Parliament was met with resistance in Britain's Thirteen Colonies in America. In particular they rejected new taxes levied by Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation. The colonies had previously enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs and viewed Parliament's acts as a denial of their rights as Englishmen. Armed conflict began between British regulars and colonial militiamen at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Second Continental Congress sent petitions to the Crown for intervention with Parliament, but the King and Parliament ignored them. George declared the American leaders to be traitors and a year of fighting ensued. Thomas Paine's book Common Sense referred to George III as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain".

The colonies declared their independence in July 1776, listing twenty-seven grievances against the British king and legislature while asking the support of the populace. Among George's other offenses, the declaration charged, "He has abdicated Government here ... He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people." The gilded equestrian statue of the King in New York was pulled down. The British captured the city in 1776 but lost Boston, and the grand strategic plan of invading from Canada and cutting off New England failed with the surrender of British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne following the battles of Saratoga.

Prime Minister Lord North was not an ideal war leader, but George III managed to give Parliament a sense of purpose to fight, and North was able to keep his cabinet together. North's cabinet ministers the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, proved to lack leadership skills suited for their positions.

George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war with the rebels, despite the opinions of his own ministers. In the words of British historian George Otto Trevelyan, the King was determined "never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal." He wanted to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse". Later historians defend George by saying that, in the context of the times, no king would willingly surrender such a large territory, and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporaneous monarchs in Europe. After Saratoga, both Parliament and the British people were in favour of the war; recruitment ran at high levels and political opponents, though vocal, remained a small minority.

Portrait by [Johann Heinrich von Hurter de], 1781 (Royal Collection)

With the setbacks in America, Lord North asked to transfer power to Lord Chatham, whom he thought more capable, but George refused to do so; he suggested instead that Chatham serve as a subordinate minister in North's administration, but Chatham refused; he died later in the same year. North was allied to the "King's Friends" in Parliament and believed that George III had the right to exercise powers. In early 1778, Louis XVI of France (Britain's chief rival) signed a treaty of alliance with the United States. The French fleet outran the British naval blockade of the Mediterranean and sailed to America. The conflict now affected America, Europe, and India. Charles III of Spain had misgivings because of his own colonies but decided to side with France in the war in limited fashion in 1779. One faction of the Dutch Republic aided the Americans, whereas another aided Britain, whose allies included Loyalists and German auxiliaries. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both resigned from the government. Lord North again requested that he also be allowed to resign, but he stayed in office at George III's insistence.

During the summer of 1779, a combined French-Spanish naval fleet threatened to invade England and transport 31,000 French troops across the English Channel. George III said that Britain was confronted by the "most serious crisis the nation ever knew". In August, 66 warships entered the English channel, but sickness, hunger, and adverse winds forced the French-Spanish armada to withdraw, ending the invasion threat.

In late 1779, George III advocated sending more British warships and troops across the Atlantic to the West Indies. He boldly said: "We must risk something, otherwise we will only vegetate in this war. I own I wish either with spirit to get through it, or with a crash be ruined." In January 1780, 7,000 British troops under General Sir John Vaughan were transported to the West Indies. Nonetheless, opposition to the costly war was increasing, and in June 1780 contributed to disturbances in London known as the Gordon riots.

As late as the siege of Charleston in 1780, Loyalists could still believe in their eventual victory, as British troops inflicted defeats on the Continental forces at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Guilford Court House. In late 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the siege of Yorktown reached London; North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned the following year. George drafted an abdication notice, which was never delivered. He finally accepted the defeat in America and authorized peace negotiations. Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaties of Paris signed in 1782 and 1783. In early 1783, George III privately conceded "America is lost!" He reflected that the Northern colonies had developed into Britain's "successful rivals" in commercial trade and fishing. Up to 70,000 Loyalists fled to Canada, the Caribbean, or England.

John Adams was appointed American minister to London in 1785, by which time George had become resigned to the new relationship between his country and the former colonies. He told Adams, "I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."

Government

In A new way to pay the National Debt (1786), James Gillray caricatured King George III and Queen Charlotte awash with treasury funds to cover royal debts, with Pitt handing him another money bag.

With the collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham became prime minister for the second time, but died within months. The King then appointed Lord Shelburne to replace him. Charles James Fox, however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the Fox-North Coalition. Portland became prime minister, with Fox and Lord North, as foreign secretary and home secretary respectively.

The King disliked Fox intensely, for his politics as well as his character: he thought Fox unprincipled and a bad influence on the Prince of Wales. George III was distressed at having to appoint ministers not of his liking, but the Portland ministry quickly built up a majority in the House of Commons, and could not be displaced easily. He was further dismayed when the government introduced the India Bill, which proposed to reform the government of India by transferring political power from the East India Company to Parliamentary commissioners. Although George actually favoured greater control over the company, the proposed commissioners were all political allies of Fox. Immediately after the House of Commons passed it, George authorised Lord Temple to inform the House of Lords that he would regard any peer who voted for the bill as his enemy. The bill was rejected by the Lords; three days later, the Portland ministry was dismissed, and William Pitt the Younger was appointed prime minister, with Temple as his secretary of state. On 17 December 1783, Parliament voted in favour of a motion condemning the influence of the monarch in parliamentary voting as a "high crime" and Temple was forced to resign. Temple's departure destabilised the government, and three months later the government lost its majority and Parliament was dissolved; the subsequent election gave Pitt a firm mandate.

The Three Youngest Daughters of King George III by John Singleton Copley, c. 1785, depicting: Princesses Mary (left with tambourine), Sophia (upper right), and Amelia (baby).

Pitt's appointment was a great victory for George. It proved that the King could appoint prime ministers on the basis of his own interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords. During and after Pitt's ministry, George was extremely popular in Britain. The British people admired him for his piety and for remaining faithful to his wife. He was fond of his children and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy, in 1782 and 1783 respectively. Nevertheless, he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend rigorous lessons from seven in the morning and to lead lives of religious observance and virtue. When his children strayed from George's principles of righteousness, as his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed.

By this time, George's health was deteriorating. He had a mental illness characterised by acute mania. Until the mid-20th century, the King's illness was generally considered to be psychological. In 1966, a study by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter suggested that the illness was physiological, caused by the liver disorder, porphyria. Although meeting with some contemporary opposition, the view gained widespread scholarly acceptance. A study of samples of George's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of arsenic, a cause of metabolic blood disorders and thus a possible trigger for porphyria. The source of the arsenic is not known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics. The theory was also established in the public mind through influential dramatisations, such as Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III, and in Nicholas Hytner's subsequent film. From 2010 this view has been increasingly challenged, and Macalpine and Hunter's study criticised. Recent scholarship discounts the porphyria theory and contends that George's illness was psychiatric, most probably bipolar disorder.

George may have had a brief episode of disease in 1765, and a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to recuperate and in August visited the Bishop of Worcester at Hartlebury Castle and Viscount Mount Edgcumbe at Cotehele, Cornwall, with the Queen, and their daughters the Princess Royal and Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth. It was the furthest he had ever been from London, but his condition worsened. In November of that year, he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and his voice to become hoarse. George would frequently repeat himself and write sentences with over 400 words at a time, and his vocabulary became "more complex, creative and colourful", possible symptoms of bipolar disorder. His doctors were largely at a loss to explain his illness, and spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia. Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards; George's doctors, who included Francis Willis, treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic poultices to draw out "evil humours".

In the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of a regency during the King's incapacity. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for the Prince of Wales to act as regent, Fox suggested, to Pitt's consternation, that it was the Prince's absolute right to act on his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that it was for Parliament to nominate a regent, and wanted to restrict the regent's authority. In February 1789, the Regency Bill, authorising the Prince of Wales to act as regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons, but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George recovered.

Later reign

War in Europe

After George's recovery, his popularity, and that of Pitt, continued to increase at the expense of Fox and the Prince of Wales. His humane and understanding treatment of two insane assailants, Margaret Nicholson in 1786 and John Frith in 1790, contributed to his popularity. James Hadfield's failed attempt to shoot George in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 15 May 1800 was not political in origin but motivated by the apocalyptic delusions of Hadfield and Bannister Truelock. George seemed unperturbed by the incident, so much so that he fell asleep in the interval.

The French Revolution of 1789, in which the French monarchy had been overthrown, worried many British landowners. France declared war on Great Britain in 1793; in response to the crisis, George allowed Pitt to increase taxes, raise armies, and suspend the right of habeas corpus. Pitt prosecuted British radicals for treason in 1794, and in October 1795, crowds attacked George's carriage on his way to opening Parliament, demanding an end to the war and lower bread prices. In response, Parliament passed the Treason and Seditious Meetings Acts a month later. The First Coalition to oppose revolutionary France, which included Austria, Prussia, and Spain, broke up in 1795 when Prussia and Spain made separate peace with France. The Second Coalition, which included Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in 1800. Only Great Britain was left fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic.

A brief lull in hostilities allowed Pitt to concentrate effort on Ireland, where there had been an uprising and attempted French landing in 1798. In 1800, the British and Irish Parliaments passed an Act of Union that took effect on 1 January 1801 and united Great Britain and Ireland into a single state, known as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". George used the opportunity to abandon the title "king of France", which English and British sovereigns had maintained since the reign of Edward III. It was suggested that George adopt the title " Emperor of the British Isles", but he refused. As part of his Irish policy, Pitt planned to remove certain legal disabilities that applied to Roman Catholics. George III claimed that to emancipate Catholics would be to violate his coronation oath, in which sovereigns promise to maintain Protestantism. Faced with opposition to his religious reform policies from both the King and the British public, Pitt threatened to resign. At about the same time, George had a relapse of his previous illness, which he blamed on worry over the Catholic question. On 14 March 1801, Pitt was formally replaced by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Henry Addington. Addington opposed emancipation, instituted annual accounts, abolished income tax and began a programme of disarmament. In October 1801, he made peace with the French, and in 1802 signed the Treaty of Amiens.

George did not consider the peace with France as real; in his view it was an "experiment". The war resumed in 1803, but public opinion distrusted Addington to lead the nation in war, and instead favoured Pitt. An invasion of England by Napoleon seemed imminent, and a massive volunteer movement arose to defend England against the French. George's review of 27,000 volunteers in Hyde Park, London, on 26 and 28 October 1803 and at the height of the invasion scare, attracted an estimated 500,000 spectators on each day. said: "The enthusiasm of the multitude was beyond all expression." A courtier wrote on 13 November that "The King is really prepared to take the field in case of attack, his beds are ready and he can move at half an hour's warning." George wrote to his friend Bishop Hurd, "We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his threatened invasion ... Should his troops effect a landing, I shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and my other armed subjects, to repel them." After Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of invasion was extinguished.

In A Kick at the Broad-Bottoms! (1807), James Gillray caricatured George's dismissal of the Ministry of All the Talents.

In 1804, George's recurrent illness returned; after his recovery, Addington resigned and Pitt regained power. Pitt sought to appoint Fox to his ministry, but George refused. Lord Grenville perceived an injustice to Fox, and refused to join the new ministry. Pitt concentrated on forming a coalition with Austria, Russia, and Sweden. This Third Coalition, however, met the same fate as the First and Second Coalitions, collapsing in 1805. The setbacks in Europe took a toll on Pitt's health, and he died in 1806, reopening the question of who should serve in the ministry. Grenville became prime minister, and his " Ministry of All the Talents" included Fox. Grenville pushed through the Slave Trade Act 1807, which passed both houses of Parliament with large majorities. George was conciliatory towards Fox, after being forced to capitulate over his appointment. After Fox's death in September 1806, the King and ministry were in open conflict. To boost recruitment, the ministry proposed a measure in February 1807 whereby Roman Catholics would be allowed to serve in all ranks of the armed forces. George instructed them not only to drop the measure, but also to agree never to set up such a measure again. The ministers agreed to drop the measure then pending, but refused to bind themselves in the future. They were dismissed and replaced by the Duke of Portland, as the nominal prime minister, with actual power being held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Spencer Perceval. Parliament was dissolved, and the subsequent election gave the ministry a strong majority in the House of Commons. George III made no further major political decisions during his reign; the replacement of Portland by Perceval in 1809 was of little real significance.

Final years

In late 1810, at the height of his popularity, King George, already virtually blind with cataracts and in pain from rheumatism, suffered a relapse into his mental disorder and became dangerously ill. In his view, the malady had been triggered by stress over the death of his youngest and favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. The princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of distress and crying every day... were melancholy beyond description." George accepted the need for the Regency Act 1811, and the Prince of Wales (later George IV) acted as regent for the remainder of the King's life. Despite signs of a recovery in May 1811, by the end of the year, George III had become permanently insane, and lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death.

Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in 1812 and was replaced by Lord Liverpool. Liverpool oversaw British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The subsequent Congress of Vienna led to significant territorial gains for Hanover, which was elevated from an electorate to a kingdom. Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He developed dementia, and became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was incapable of knowing or understanding that he was declared King of Hanover in 1814, or that his wife died in 1818. At Christmas 1819, he spoke nonsense for 58 hours, and for the last few weeks of his life was unable to walk.

He died of pneumonia at Windsor Castle at 8:38 pm on 29 January 1820, six days after the death of his fourth son Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. His favourite son, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, was with him. George III lay in state for two days, and his funeral and interment took place on 16 February in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Over the course of George's reign, a coalition of abolitionists and Atlantic slave uprisings caused the British public to spurn slavery. According to the historian Andrew Roberts, "George never bought or sold a slave in his life. He never invested in any of the companies that did such a thing. He signed legislation to abolish slavery." George wrote a document in the 1750s "denouncing all of the arguments for slavery, and calling them an execration and ridiculous and 'absurd'," but the King and his son, the Duke of Clarence, supported the efforts of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants to delay the abolition of the British slave trade for almost 20 years. Pitt conversely wished to see slavery abolished but, because the cabinet was divided and the King was in the pro-slavery camp, Pitt decided to refrain from making abolition official government policy. Instead, he worked toward abolition in an individual capacity.

On 7 November 1775, during the American War of Independence, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that offered freedom to the slaves of Rebel masters if they enlisted to put down the colonial rebellion. Dunmore was the last Royal Governor of Virginia, appointed by King George III in July 1771. Dunmore's Proclamation inspired slaves to escape from captivity and fight for the British. On 30 June 1779, George III's Commanding General Henry Clinton broadened Dunmore's proclamation with his Philipsburg Proclamation. For all colonial slaves who fled their Rebel masters, Clinton forbade their recapture and resale, giving them protection by the British military. Approximately 20,000 freed slaves joined the British, fighting for George III. In 1783, given British certificates of freedom, 3,000 former slaves, including their families, settled in Nova Scotia.

Between 1791 and 1800, almost 400,000 Africans were shipped to the Americas, by 1,340 slaving voyages, mounted from British ports, including Liverpool and Bristol. On 25 March 1807 George III signed into law An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, under which the transatlantic slave trade was banned in the British Empire.

George was succeeded by two of his sons, George IV and William IV in turn, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to Victoria, the only legitimate child of his fourth son Prince Edward.

George III lived for 81 years and 239 days, and reigned for 59 years and 96 days: both his life and his reign were longer than those of any of his predecessors and subsequent kings; only queens Victoria and Elizabeth II lived and reigned longer.

Extract from Observations on the Transit of Venus, a manuscript notebook from the collections of George III, showing George, Charlotte and those attending them.

George III was dubbed "Farmer George" by satirists, at first to mock his interest in mundane matters rather than politics, but later to portray him as a man of the people, contrasting his homely thrift with his son's grandiosity. Under George III, the British Agricultural Revolution reached its peak and great advances were made in fields such as science and industry. There was unprecedented growth in the rural population, which in turn provided much of the workforce for the concurrent Industrial Revolution. George's collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now owned by King's College London but housed in the Science Museum, London, to which it has been on long-term loan since 1927. He had the King's Observatory built in Richmond-upon-Thames for his own observations of the 1769 transit of Venus. When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he at first named it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) after the King, who later funded the construction and maintenance of Herschel's 1785 40-foot telescope, which at the time was the biggest ever built.

George III hoped that "the tongue of malice may not paint my intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve" but, in the popular mind, George III has been both demonised and praised. While very popular at the start of his reign, by the mid-1770s George had lost the loyalty of revolutionary American colonists, though it has been estimated that as many as half of the colonists remained loyal. The grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence were presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he had committed to establish an "absolute Tyranny" over the colonies. The declaration's wording has contributed to the American public's perception of George as a tyrant. Contemporary accounts of George III's life fall into two camps: one demonstrating "attitudes dominant in the latter part of the reign, when the King had become a revered symbol of national resistance to French ideas and French power", while the other "derived their views of the King from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of the reign, and they expressed in their works the views of the opposition".

Building on the latter of these two assessments, British historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Trevelyan and Erskine May, promoted hostile interpretations of George III's life. However, in the mid-twentieth century the work of Lewis Namier, who thought George was "much maligned", started a re-evaluation of the man and his reign. Scholars of the later twentieth century, such as Butterfield and Pares, and Macalpine and Hunter, are inclined to treat George sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and illness. Butterfield rejected the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in which an historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance. His capacity for synthesis, and his ability to dovetail the various parts of the evidence ... carried him into a more profound and complicated elaboration of error than some of his more pedestrian predecessors ... he inserted a doctrinal element into his history which, granted his original aberrations, was calculated to project the lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or truth." In pursuing war with the American colonists, George III believed he was defending the right of an elected Parliament to levy taxes, rather than seeking to expand his own power or prerogatives. In the opinion of modern scholars, during the long reign of George III, the monarchy continued to lose its political power and grew as the embodiment of national morality.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

4 June 1738 - 31 March 1751: His Royal Highness Prince George

31 March 1751 - 20 April 1751: His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh

20 April 1751 - 25 October 1760: His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

25 October 1760 - 29 January 1820: His Majesty The King

In Great Britain, George III used the official style "George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and so forth". In 1801, when Great Britain united with Ireland, he dropped the title of king of France, which had been used for every English monarch since Edward III's claim to the French throne in the medieval period. His style became "George the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith."

In Germany, he was "Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire" ( Herzog von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Erzschatzmeister und Kurfürst des Heiligen Römischen Reiches) until the end of the empire in 1806. He then continued as duke until the Congress of Vienna declared him "King of Hanover" in 1814.

Before his succession, George was granted the royal arms differenced by a label of five points Azure, the centre point bearing a fleur-de-lis Or on 27 July 1749. Upon his father's death, and along with the dukedom of Edinburgh and the position of heir-apparent, he inherited his difference of a plain label of three points Argent. In an additional difference, the crown of Charlemagne was not usually depicted on the arms of the heir, only on the Sovereign's.

From his succession until 1800, George bore the royal arms: Quarterly, I Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or ( for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules ( for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent ( for Ireland); IV tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent ( for Saxony), overall an escutcheon Gules charged with the crown of Charlemagne Or (for the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire).

Following the Acts of Union 1800, the royal arms were amended, dropping the French quartering. They became: Quarterly, I and IV England; II Scotland; III Ireland; overall an escutcheon of Hanover surmounted by an electoral bonnet. In 1816, after the Electorate of Hanover became a kingdom, the electoral bonnet was changed to a crown.

References

Bibliography

Baer, Marc (22 December 2021). "George III (1738-1820)". Encyclopedia Virginia.

Black, Jeremy (2006). George III: America's Last King. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11732-9.

Bullion, John L. (1994). "George III on Empire, 1783". The William and Mary Quarterly. 51 (2). Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture: 305-310. doi:10.2307/2946866. JSTOR 2946866.

(Subscription or Cannon, John (2004). "George III (1738-1820)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10540. UK public library membership required.)

Fraser, Antonia (1975). The Lives of the Kings and Queen of England. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-76911-1.

Medley, Dudley Julius (1902). A Student's Manual of English Constitutional History. p. 501.

Roberts, Andrew (2023). George III: The Life and Reign of Britain's Most Misunderstood Monarch. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-141-99146-7. OCLC 1334883294.

Thomas, Peter D. G. (1985). "George III and the American Revolution". . 70 (228): 16-31. doi:10.1111/j.1468-229X.1985.tb02477.x.

Willcox, William B.; Arnstein, Walter L. (1988). The Age of Aristocracy 1688 to 1830 (Fifth ed.). D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-13423-6.

Further reading

Black, Jeremy (1996). "Could the British Have Won the American War of Independence?". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 74 (299): 145-154. JSTOR 44225322. Online 90-minute video lecture given at Ohio State in 2006; requires Real Player.

Butterfield, Herbert (1965). "Some Reflections on the Early Years of George III's Reign". Journal of British Studies. 4 (2): 78-101. doi:10.1086/385501. JSTOR 175147. S2CID 162958860.

Macalpine, Ida; Hunter, Richard (1966). "The 'insanity' of King George III: a classic case of porphyria". Br. Med. J. 1 (5479): 65-71. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.5479.65. PMC . PMID 5323262.

Macalpine, I.; Hunter, R.; Rimington, C. (1968). "Porphyria in the Royal Houses of Stuart, Hanover, and Prussia". British Medical Journal. 1 (5583): 7-18. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.5583.7. PMC . PMID 4866084.

O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson (Spring 2004). "'If Others Will Not Be Active, I Must Drive': George III and the American Revolution". Early American Studies. 2 (1): iii, 1-46. doi:10.1353/eam.2007.0037. S2CID 143613757.

Roberts, Andrew (2021). The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III. Viking Press. ISBN 978-1984879264.

Robertson, Charles Grant (1911). England under the Hanoverians. London: Methuen.

Robson, Eric (1952). "The American Revolution Reconsidered". History Today. 2 (2): 126-132. British views

External links

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George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 - 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king.

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This source gave me info on the proclamation of 1763. This proclamation lead to the taxes on the colonies. The taxes lead to the American revolution, this lead to the birth of the U.S.A.

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Great Britain's victory over France in the Seven Years' War, also known as the French and Indian War, gave it control over all of eastern North America. Most native tribes had allied with the French during the conflict, and they soon found themselves dissatisfied by British rule. In May 1763, just a few months after the formal conclusion of the Seven Years' War, a pan-tribal confederacy led by Ottawa chief Pontiac rose up in rebellion. His warriors attacked a dozen British forts, capturing eight of them, and raided numerous frontier settlements. Hundreds died in the process. In response, the British handed out smallpox-infected blankets to Pontiac's followers. Moreover, a gang of whites known as the Paxton Boys massacred 20 defenseless Native Americans who had nothing to do with the fighting.

In an attempt to prevent similar incidents from occurring, King George III issued a royal proclamation on October 7, 1763, which established three new mainland colonies (Quebec, West Florida and East Florida), extended Georgia's southern border and gave land to soldiers who had fought in the Seven Years' War. More notably, it banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, at least "for the present, and until our further pleasure be known." Those colonists already there were ordered to relocate. Acknowledging that "great frauds and abuses have been committed," the proclamation furthermore prohibited individuals from buying tribal territory. Instead, only the crown could now make such purchases. "We shall avoid many future quarrels with the savages by this salutary measure," said General Thomas Gage, who commanded all British forces in North America.

The British made a perfunctory effort to enforce the proclamation, periodically stopping settlers as they headed west and forcibly removing others. On one occasion, redcoats from Fort Pitt in present-day Pittsburgh even burned the huts of some nearby pioneers and escorted them back across the boundary. For the most part, though, colonists disregarded the proclamation without fear of punishment. Some wanted only enough land for themselves and their families, whereas others were speculators looking to make a hefty profit down the road. George Washington, for one, wrote to his agent in 1767 in support of illegally buying as much Native American land as possible. The Proclamation of 1763 will soon be revoked, Washington explained, because-"this I say between ourselves"-it was only meant "as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians." Other famous speculators included Patrick Henry, best known for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, and Henry Laurens, who later served as president of the Continental Congress.

Washington's prediction proved prescient the following year, when the British moved the boundary line westward as part of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. Under the deal, the Iroquois agreed to give up parts of present-day New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia in exchange for cash, gifts and the (soon-to-be-broken) promise of a permanent border. But although the Iroquois claimed those lands, they did not live there. The tribes that did, such as the Shawnee, were infuriated, and ended up going to war with the British in 1774. Meanwhile, further south, the Cherokee surrendered tens of thousands of square miles in a series of treaties. Also losing territory were the Creeks, who purportedly referred to the colonists as Ecunnaunuxulgee, or "People greedily grasping after the lands of the red people."

Ultimately, the new acquisitions failed to quiet colonial discontent with the Proclamation of 1763. And though it would be later overshadowed by other complaints against the British, such as the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the so-called Intolerable Acts and the Boston Massacre, it remained enough of a concern that the Declaration of Independence criticized King George III for "raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands." By winning their freedom from the British in 1783, the Americans rendered the proclamation moot. But it has lived on to this day in Canada, where it forms the legal basis for native land rights. "We must recall the intent that brought all our ancestors together so many years ago," Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, national chief of Canada's Assembly of First Nations, said earlier today at a 250th anniversary event, "and ensure that [we live up] to the promises in the treaties and other agreements that stem from the foundation of the royal proclamation."

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Great Britain's victory over France in the Seven Years' War, also known as the French and Indian War, gave it control over all of eastern North America. Most native tribes had allied with the French during the conflict, and they soon found themselves dissatisfied by British rule.

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This source has info on the explorers who went to the new world and their adventures. It gives info on viking explorers and asks the question whether Christopher Columbus actually discovered America.

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The Vikings Discover the New World

The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) and from that base sailed along the coast of North America, observing the flora, fauna and native peoples. Inexplicably, Vineland was abandoned after only a few years.

Did you know? Explorer Henry Hudson died when his crew mutinied and left Hudson, his son and seven crewmembers adrift in a small open boat in the Hudson Bay.

Although the Vikings never returned to America, other Europeans came to know of their accomplishments. Europe, however, was made up of many small principalities whose concerns were mainly local. Europeans may have been intrigued by the stories of the feared Vikings' discovery of a "new world," but they lacked the resources or the will to follow their path of exploration. Trade continued to revolve around the Mediterranean Sea, as it had for hundreds of years.

The Reformation, the Renaissance and New Trade Routes

Between 1000 and 1650, a series of interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance, the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy.

The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church's response in the Counter-Reformation marked the end of several centuries of gradual erosion of the power of the Catholic Church as well as the climax of internal attempts to reform the Church. Protestantism emphasized a personal relationship between each individual and God without the need for intercession by the institutional church.

In the Renaissance, artists and writers such as Galileo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo adopted a view of life that stressed humans' ability to change and control the world. Thus, the rise of Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation, along with the Renaissance, helped foster individualism and create a climate favorable to exploration.

At the same time, political centralization ended much of the squabbling and fighting among rival noble families and regions that had characterized the Middle Ages. With the decline of the political power and wealth of the Catholic Church, a few rulers gradually solidified their power. Portugal, Spain, France and England were transformed from small territories into nation-states with centralized authority in the hands of monarchs who were able to direct and finance overseas exploration.

As these religious and political changes were occurring, technological innovations in navigation set the stage for exploration. Bigger, faster ships and the invention of navigational devices such as the astrolabe and sextant made extended voyages possible.

A Faster Route to the East

But the most powerful inducement to exploration was trade. Marco Polo's famous journey to Cathay signaled Europe's "discovery" of Chinese and Islamic civilizations. The Orient became a magnet to traders, and exotic products and wealth flowed into Europe. Those who benefited most were merchants who sat astride the great overland trade routes, especially the merchants of the Italian city-states of Genoa, Venice and Florence.

The newly unified states of the Atlantic-France, Spain, England and Portugal-and their ambitious monarchs were envious of the merchants and princes who dominated the land routes to the East. Moreover, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, war between European states and the Ottoman Empire greatly hampered Europe's trade with the Orient. The desire to supplant the trade moguls, especially the Italians, and fear of the Ottoman Empire forced the Atlantic nations to search for a new route to the East.

Portugal: Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco de Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral

Portugal led the others into exploration. Encouraged by Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese seamen sailed southward along the African coast, seeking a water route to the East. They were also looking for a legendary king named Prester John who had supposedly built a Christian stronghold somewhere in northwestern Africa. Henry hoped to form an alliance with Prester John to fight the Muslims.

During Henry's lifetime the Portuguese learned much about the African coastal area. His school developed the quadrant, the cross-staff and the compass, made advances in cartography and designed and built highly maneuverable little ships known as caravels.

After Henry's death, Portuguese interest in long-distance trade and expansion waned until King John II commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to find a water route to India in 1487. Dias sailed around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean before his frightened crew forced him to give up the quest. A year later, Vasco da Gama succeeded in reaching India and returned to Portugal laden with jewels and spices.

In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered and claimed Brazil for Portugal, and other Portuguese captains established trading posts in the South China Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea. These water routes to the East undercut the power of the Italian city-states, and Lisbon became Europe's new trade capital.

Spain and Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus launched Spain's imperial ambitions. Born in Genoa, Italy, around 1451, Columbus learned the art of navigation on voyages in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. At some point he probably read Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly's early fifteenth-century work, Imago mundi, which argued that the East could be found by sailing west of the Azores for a few days.

Columbus, hoping to make such a voyage, spent years seeking a sponsor and finally found one in Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain after they defeated the Moors and could turn their attention to other projects.

In August 1492, Columbus sailed west with his now famous ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa María. After ten weeks he sighted an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. Thinking he had found islands near Japan, he sailed on until he reached Cuba (which he thought was mainland China) and later Haiti.

Columbus returned to Spain with many products unknown to Europe-coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, potatoes-and with tales of dark-skinned native peoples whom he called "Indians" because he assumed he had been sailing in the Indian Ocean.

Although Columbus found no gold or silver, he was hailed by Spain and much of Europe as the discoverer of d'Ailly's western route to the East. John II of Portugal, however, believed Columbus had discovered islands in the Atlantic already claimed by Portugal and took the matter to Pope Alexander II.

Twice the pope issued decrees supporting Spain's claim to Columbus's discoveries. But the territorial disputes between Portugal and Spain were not resolved until 1494 when they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew a line 370 leagues west of the Azores as the demarcation between the two empires.

Despite the treaty, controversy continued over what Columbus had found. He made three more voyages to America between 1494 and 1502, during which he explored Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Each time he returned more certain that he had reached the East.

Subsequent explorations by others, however, persuaded most Europeans that Columbus had discovered a "New World." Ironically, that New World was named for someone else. A German geographer, Martin Waldseemüller, accepted the claim of Amerigo Vespucci that he had landed on the American mainland before Columbus. In 1507 Waldseemüller published a book in which he named the new land "America."

Spanish Explorers After Columbus

More Spanish expeditions followed. Juan Ponce de León explored the coasts of Florida in 1513. Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean in the same year.

Ferdinand Magellan's expedition (in the course of which he put down a mutiny and was later killed) sailed around the tip of South America, across the Pacific to the Philippines, through the Indian Ocean and back to Europe around the southern tip of Africa between 1519 and 1522.

Two expeditions led directly to Spain's emergence as sixteenth-century Europe's wealthiest and most powerful nation. The first was headed by Hernán Cortés, who in 1519 led a small army of Spanish and Native Americans against the Aztec Empire of Mexico. Completing the conquest in 1521, Cortés took control of the Aztecs' fabulous gold and silver mines.

Ten years later, an expedition under Francisco Pizarro overwhelmed the Inca Empire of Peru, securing for the Spaniards the great Inca silver mines of Potosí.

In 1535 and 1536, Pedro de Mendoza went as far as present-day Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he founded a colony. At the same time, Cabeza de Vaca explored the North American Southwest, adding that region to Spain's New World empire.

A few years later (1539-1542), Francisco Vásquez de Coronado discovered the Grand Canyon and journeyed through much of the Southwest looking for gold and the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola. About the same time, Hernando de Soto explored southeastern North America from Florida to the Mississippi River. By 1650, Spain's empire was complete and fleets of ships were carrying the plunder back to Spain.

Religious Motivations

As European powers conquered the territories of the New World, they justified wars against Native Americans and the destruction of their cultures as a fulfillment of the European secular and religious vision of the New World. The idea of "America" antedated America's discovery and even Viking exploration.

That idea had two parts: one paradisiacal and utopian, the other savage and dangerous. Ancient tales described distant civilizations, usually to the west, where European-like peoples lived simple, virtuous lives without war, famine, disease or poverty. Such utopian visions were reinforced by religious notions. Early Christian Europeans had inherited from the Jews a powerful prophetic tradition that drew upon apocalyptic biblical texts in the books of Daniel, Isaiah and Revelations. They connected the Christianization of the world with the second coming of Christ. Such ideas led many Europeans (including Columbus) to believe it was God's plan for Christians to convert pagans wherever they were found.

If secular and religious traditions evoked utopian visions of the New World, they also induced nightmares. The ancients described wonderful civilizations, but barbaric, evil ones as well. Moreover, late medieval Christianity inherited a rich tradition of hatred for non-Christians derived in part from the Crusaders' struggle to free the Holy Land and from warfare against the Moors.

European encounters with the New World were viewed in light of these preconceived notions. To plunder the New World of its treasures was acceptable because it was populated by pagans. To Christianize the pagans was necessary because it was part of God's plan; to kill them was right because they were Satan's warriors.

France: Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain

While Spain was building its New World empire, France was also exploring the Americas. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano was commissioned to locate a northwest passage around North America to India. He was followed in 1534 by Jacques Cartier, who explored the St. Lawrence River as far as present-day Montreal.

In 1562, Jean Ribault headed an expedition that explored the St. Johns River area in Florida. His efforts were followed two years later by a second venture headed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière. But the Spanish soon pushed the French out of Florida, and thereafter, the French directed their efforts north and west. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain built a fort at Quebec and explored the area north to Port Royal and Nova Scotia and south to Cape Cod.

Unlike Spain's empire, "New France" produced no caches of gold and silver. Instead, the French traded with inland tribes for furs and fished off the coast of Newfoundland. New France was sparsely populated by trappers and missionaries and dotted with military forts and trading posts. Although the French sought to colonize the area, the growth of settlements was stifled by inconsistent policies.

Initially, France encouraged colonization by granting charters to fur-trading companies. Then, under Cardinal Richelieu, control of the empire was put in the hands of the government-sponsored Company of New France. The company, however, was not successful, and in 1663 the king took direct control of New France. Although more prosperous under this administration, the French empire failed to match the wealth of New Spain or the growth of neighboring British colonies.

The Netherlands: Henry Hudson Leads the Dutch

The Dutch were also engaged in the exploration of America. Formerly a Protestant province of Spain, the Netherlands was determined to become a commercial power and saw exploration as a means to that end.

In 1609, Henry Hudson led an expedition to America for the Dutch East India Company and laid claim to the area along the Hudson River as far as present-day Albany. In 1614 the newly formed New Netherland Company obtained a grant from the Dutch government for the territory between New France and Virginia. About ten years later another trading company, the West India Company, settled groups of colonists on Manhattan Island and at Fort Orange. The Dutch also planted trading colonies in the West Indies.

England: John Cabot and Sir Walter Raleigh

In 1497 Henry VII of England sponsored an expedition to the New World headed by John Cabot, who explored a part of Newfoundland and reported an abundance of fish. But until Queen Elizabeth's reign, the English showed little interest in exploration, being preoccupied with their European trade and establishing control over the British Isles.

By the mid-sixteenth century, however, England had recognized the advantages of trade with the East, and in 1560 English merchants enlisted Martin Frobisher to search for a northwest passage to India. Between 1576 and 1578 Frobisher as well as John Davis explored along the Atlantic coast.

Thereafter, Queen Elizabeth granted charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize America. Gilbert headed two trips to the New World. He landed on Newfoundland but was unable to carry out his intention of establishing military posts. A year later, Raleigh sent a company to explore territory he named Virginia after Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen," and in 1585, he sponsored a second voyage, this time to explore the Chesapeake Bay region. By the seventeenth century, the English had taken the lead in colonizing North America, establishing settlements all along the Atlantic coast and in the West Indies.

Sweden and Denmark

Sweden and Denmark also succumbed to the attractions of America, although to a lesser extent. In 1638, the Swedish West India Company established a settlement on the Delaware River near present-day Wilmington called Fort Christina. This colony was short-lived, however, and was taken over by the Dutch in 1655. The king of Denmark chartered the Danish West India Company in 1671, and the Danes established colonies in St. Croix and other islands in the cluster of the Virgin Islands.

Sources

Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, a.d. 500-1600 (1971); John H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966; 2nd ed., 1980); David B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620, from the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth: The Exploration, Exploitation, and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English (1974).

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The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland.

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This source gave me important info on the treaty of Paris. This was the treaty that ended the seven years war. France gave land to Spain and Britan.

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Table of Contents

Treaty of Paris, (1763), treaty concluding the Franco-British conflicts of the Seven Years' War (called the French and Indian War in North America) and signed by representatives of Great Britain and Hanover on one side and France and Spain on the other, with Portugal expressly understood to be included. It was signed in Paris on Feb. 10, 1763.

By the terms of the treaty, France renounced to Britain all the mainland of North America east of the Mississippi, excluding New Orleans and environs; the West Indian islands of Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago; and all French conquests made since 1749 in India or in the East Indies. Britain, in return, restored to France the West Indian islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Marie-Galante, and Désirade; the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland; the West African colony of Gorée (Senegal); and Belle-Île-en-Mer off Brittany; Britain also ceded Saint Lucia to France. Spain at the same time recovered Havana and Manila, ceded East and West Florida to the British, and received Louisiana, including New Orleans, in compensation from the French. The French, moreover, evacuated Hanover, Hesse, and Brunswick.

French and Indian War Events

The British concessions to France in the West Indies were made partly in order to secure the French evacuation of Prussian exclaves in western Germany that France felt obliged to occupy pending Austria's settlement with Prussia (in the Treaty of Hubertusburg of Feb. 15, 1763). A vociferous section of the British public, however, would have preferred to retain the lucrative West Indian islands or to retrocede Canada instead.

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Treaty of Paris | End of French & Indian War, Peace, Colonies

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Treaty of Paris, (1763), treaty concluding the Franco-British conflicts of the Seven Years' War (called the French and Indian War in North America) and signed by representatives of Great Britain and Hanover on one side and France and Spain on the other, with Portugal expressly understood to be

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Works Cited

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Treaty of Paris.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 3 Feb. 2019,  www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Paris-1763.

This has info on the treaty of Paris. It gives details on land that was taken and given, some examples are Louisiana, Havana, and Manila.

“British-Era-1763-75 | French and Indian War | Pinterest | Map, History and American History.” Pinterest, Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/194991858836956240/.

This picture is a map of 1763 america. It has the land colonized by different empires.

Editors, History.com. “Exploration of North America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/exploration/exploration-of-north-america.

This has info on the different empires that colonized the Americas and their motives. It gives details on specific explorer including Christopher Columbus.

“George III of the United Kingdom.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom.

This is a painting of King George III he was king during the american revolution and the French Revolution. He was mentally ill where he would sometimes have violent fits. The painting was by Allan Ramsay.

Greenspan, Jesse. “Remembering the Proclamation of 1763.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 7 Oct. 2013, www.history.com/news/remembering-the-proclamation-of-1763.

This has info on the laws passed that eventually lead to the taxes on the colonies and the birth of America. These Laws were passed by King George III.

“Seven Years War 1759-63 | Ancestery | Pinterest | Seven Years' War, World War and American History.” Pinterest, Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/329677635202678692/.

This has a map of the world during the seven years war (a major global conflict). It is labeled with land from different empires.

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My historical fiction book is about two kids Peter and Kate. Peter is sent off to Derby shire (where Kate lives) after an argument with his father. They visit Kate's father in his lab as he is a scientist. His lab contains an anti-gravity machine. and then something goes wrong with the anti-gravity machine, and then the anti-gravity machine and Kate and Peter disappears. Turns out that they were transported to 1763. They have to try and escape while encountering many historical figures along the way.
WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN 1763
1763 was a very relevant time in Europe one main thing was the end of the seven years war. This was one of the biggest triumph Britain had over France. The seven years war was a war involving all of the continents it was a major global conflict. Much land was given to the British. France gave all of the land east of the Mississippi to the British. They also gave Louisiana to Spain excluding New Orleans. About this time was the beginning of a mass migration to the new world (Americas). This left Britan broke and in need of money. This is the motive to start taxing the colonies which eventually lead to the birth of the U.S.A. The King of Britain at this time was king George the III who was mentally ill.
THE CONNECTION
This ties in with my book because in my book the main characters have to travel to London because of the fact that Mr. Byng is in the new world to finish up the seven years war. Also, the main charterers of the book travel and meet king Geroge III.