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

Remarks on Reduction of the Cherokee, July 21, 1746

By the mid-eighteenth century, the renewal of war against France placed a tremendous strain on Britain's global indigenous alliances. This item refers to the "reduction" of the Cherokee nation in the southern colonies of British North America in the Seven Years' War. The remarks about "reducing" the Cherokee in North America embodied a characteristic spirit of state-backed violence against indigenous communities who operated against the interests of the Crown. Though alliance with Britain held the potential to benefit indigenous communities, efforts by indigenous peoples to reassert control over those alliances also met, at times, with violent suppression by the British. Catalog Record

Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

Bound Manuscript CollectionThis collection includes over 300 volumes of a diverse set of material relating to political, religious, literary and domestic life in the eighteenth-century British world.Extent: over 300 volumesSummary: This extensive and diverse collection of bound manuscripts both supplements the other manuscript collections highlighted in this exhibition, but also stands as a largely untapped and robust resource for any scholar studying eighteenth-century Britain and her Empire. It includes several diaries and commonplace books of prominent political and religious figures, travel journals, account books, autograph books, engravings and religious writings. In addition, the bound manuscripts collection contains more ephemeral items such as recipe books, newspaper clippings, broadsides, songbooks, tickets and much more that offer a glimpse into daily and domestic life. This vast collection is an incredibly rich trove of material that mirrors eighteenth-century society in full, offering insight into anything from high philosophical and political debates to concerns and daily life of the family. Whether consulted in tandem with other collections or on its own, this collection promises to be invaluable for any scholar of the eighteenth-century British world.