The Treaty of Paris

FEB 10 1763 · 12:00

First page of the Treaty of Paris, 10 February 1763, between France, Great Britain, and Spain. Place: Hôtel de Grimaldi, Paris Figures: the Duc de Choiseul, French foreign minister · the Duke of Bedford, British plenipotentiary · the Marquis de Grimaldi, Spanish ambassador · William Pitt the Elder, opposing the terms in Parliament Three Continents at One Table Negotiations begin in autumn 1762, after British arms have taken Canada (1759 to 1760), Havana (August 1762), and Manila (October 1762). Choiseul prefers to recover the sugar islands (Guadeloupe and Martinique, whose annual yield exceeds Canada's by an order of magnitude) and to cede the snow. Bedford accepts: Britain takes Canada, all French territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, Florida (ceded by Spain in exchange for the recovery of Havana), Senegal, Tobago, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Grenada, and the bulk of French factories in India. France retains Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Lucia, the right to fish off Newfoundland, and (under the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau the previous November) cedes Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain in compensation for the latter's losses. Spain recovers Cuba and the Philippines; France abandons most of its first overseas empire. Empire Consolidated, Revolution Seeded Britain emerges as the first global empire of the modern type: maritime, commercial, organized around a metropolitan core whose navy can be in two oceans at once. The Royal Navy's establishment grows to over 100 ships of the line. The East India Company, in the wake of Plassey (1757) and the wartime conquest of Bengal, will collect revenue from 30 million subjects within a decade. The Westphalian sovereign state has demonstrably scaled to intercontinental dimensions. The cost is fiscal. Britain's debt at the end of the war stands at £130 million, the largest of any state in history to that date. Servicing it requires new revenue, which Parliament looks for in the lightly-taxed American colonies. The Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend duties of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773 all follow directly. The conditions for the American Declaration of Independence (see [[american-declaration-of-independence-1776]]) are constituted within the same treaty that constitutes the British global empire. The two are causally inseparable.