Global Encounters and the Archives: Britain’s Empire in the Age of Horace Walpole

Letter to George Grenville, November 1762

The year 1759 may have been Britain's annus mirabilis in the Seven Years' War (1756 –1763), but it was the 1763 Treaty of Paris that cemented Britain's position as a global empire on which the sun never set. This letter from Secretary of State Lord Bute to George Grenville on the negotiations for the Treaty of Paris affords insights into the delicate nature of treating with France for peace. In addition to contending with the unpredictability of other European courts, Britain's ministers of state relied on their ideas about the political-economic potential of specific colonial holdings when making their concessions to France and Spain. Central to this document was John Stuart, Lord Bute, who received appointments as secretary of state in 1761 and prime minister in 1762. Bute was a close relative of Clan Campbell, the government's primary indigenous Highland ally in the eighteenth century. His central role in the 1763 Treaty of Paris exemplifies the rising influence of Highland clan chieftains and their relatives to the highest levels of state governance in the 1760s –a controversial development that led many to conceive of Bute and others as "Scottish Intruders" in ministerial politics.

Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

John Stuart, Lord Bute

Grenville Papers (1742-1762)The Grenville Papers contain correspondence of a central imperial official during the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution.Extent: 5 volumes of 322 lettersSummary:The five volumes of the Grenville Papers contain 322 letters of George Grenville (1712-1770), Britain's leading minister in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War and the author of the Stamp Act. Dated from 1742-1787, they span the War of Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the entirety of British political and martial conflict with America and the aftermath of the American Revolution. While some of this collection has been published in edited volumes, these contain only excerpts and so much of the material remains unstudied. These letters do more than simply offer a robust view of the life of an absolutely central political figure of the mid-eighteenth century, but they help to reconstruct a global view of British political economy and diplomacy during a series of European and colonial conflicts that helped to forge Britain's global identity.