Dunmore’s New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America—with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings by James Corbett David (review)

Abstract

New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor Revolutionary America-with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings. By James Corbett David. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. Pp. 270. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Ronald L. HatzenbuehlerDunmore's New World is less a book about John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, than it is about the incongruities and weaknesses of British rule North America. Author James Corbett David attempts to give Dunmore a starring role his world, but the Scottish lord instead becomes a minor actor due to a paucity of primary sources, his own eccentricities and imperious behavior, and-eventually-the changing priorities of foreign policy planners London. In the absence of a protagonist, the author's stories of Indians, slaves, backwoodsmen, and hosts of adventurers cannot sustain his overall view of Dunmore and similar-minded Loyalists.Throughout the book, one expects Dunmore to take center stage at any moment. Despite his father's Jacobite attachments, his uncle remained loyal to George II, and young Dunmore received a commission the British army through his uncle's influence. Unlike the experiences of his relatives, however, [wjhether from his attainted parentage, his limitations as an officer, or other forces outside his control service the army failed to secure advancement, and he left the army in a state of profound frustration (15). In February 1759, his fortunes improved when he married Charlotte Stewart, the daughter of Alexander Stewart, 6th Earl of Galloway. Although Lady birth exceeded her fortune, her sister's marriage 1768 to Granville LevesonGower, 2nd Earl of Gower and president of the Privy Council, facilitated appointment as of New York the following year (16). Through this appointment, along with the governorship of Virginia and-after the American Revolution-the Bahamas, Dunmore hoped to secure the landed wealth that his family lacked Scotland, but he proved to be high-handed, headstrong, and occasionally unscrupulous his quest for fortune (4; see also 38, 44, 56, 63, 69, 85, and 163-64).Historians have long chronicled the difficult position royal governors faced when trying to assert British imperial presence the American colonies. behavior all of his appointments further complicated the situation, leading the author to concede that the Scot's personality made him especially well-suited to the role of governor due to the fact that he was ambitious, loyal, adventurous, and supremely impractical, not to mention his penchant-chronicled by his associates-for drunkenness and womanizing (21, 24). Even his three most notable initiatives-his war against the Shawnees; his proclamation offering freedom to servants and slaves Virginia who would fight for the king; and his fortifications Nassau harbor-contain their full measure of conflicting motives and questionable outcomes.Despite the author's assertion that Dunmore's War was widely praised on both sides of the Atlantic, it resulted less from efforts than from conflicting colonial land claims beyond the Ohio River and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) brokered by Sir William Johnson. The author characterizes Proclamation as unique and br[eaking] new ground, but he also concedes that Dunmore was hardly antislavery; when Dunmore became of Virginia, he embraced the institution [of slavery] with new vigor, and as late as January 1789, he purchased nine slaves . …