“I want a Packet to arrive”: Making New York City the headquarters of British America, 1696–1783

Abstract

“I want a Packet to arrive”: Making New York City the headquarters of British America, 1696–1783 Rohit T. Aggarwala (bio) One of New York City’s key distinctions in the late colonial period was its role as the headquarters of the British Army in America, almost continuously from 1755 to 1783. It is clear that the army’s presence gave Manhattan a far greater exposure to British officialdom than other colonial American cities, and influenced both its social and cultural development as well as its political evolution. How the city was chosen for such a role has been less clear. Most historians mention that New York held a strategic location that London officials had long appreciated; thus, they imply but do not assert that a geopolitical decision placed the headquarters in New York. In fact, however, this focus on broad geographical forces, and on London officials, obscures the very significant story behind how the headquarters came to be in Manhattan.1 This is because New York’s role was not shaped by theory but by several individual experiences of how the city served the British generals. Although some London bureaucrats did imagine New York as a logical headquarters for British America, their ideas were consistently rejected by political leaders and had no direct influence on where the army was based. Instead, each person who held the title of “Commander-in-Chief of His [End Page 7] Majesty’s Forces in North America” chose where to base his operations, and each was—in theory at least—unbound by his predecessor’s decisions. The reasons they chose New York varied with their needs. During the Seven Years’ War, they were driven by Manhattan’s location as the terminus of the transatlantic packet ship. After that, a combination of personal preference and community specialization helped keep the headquarters in New York. While geopolitical analysis did lead to the Army’s return to New York in 1776, the analysis turned out to be flawed. The decisions of the commanders-in-chief reflect many of the forces that geographers and economists identify as the reasons cities form, why they locate where they do, and how and why they prosper. The most powerful forces are transportation costs, through which geography affects prices and the availability of goods; communications advantages, through which geography affects knowledge; and agglomeration economies, through which proximity improves economic performance.2 Historian William Cronon noted the power of “second nature,” through which man-made conditions, such as infrastructure investments, economic logic, and even habits shape human activity with the same power as natural geography.3 Others have observed the power of government to lure—or drive—people to capital cities and places of military investment.4 All of these proved relevant to Manhattan’s case in the final years of British control. But New York’s career as the British headquarters reminds us that while these forces certainly shape urban geography, they do so only through human interpretation and action. Because people are not always rational, nor always perfectly informed, their specific priorities, knowledge, [End Page 8] and interpretations shape how geographic reality is perceived and thus how they act on it. The British generals who placed their offices in New York in the late colonial period were not responding to the city’s theoretical or comprehensive advantages, but to the way the city’s location served their very immediate needs. As such, this episode helps illuminate not only a moment in the city’s history but also the power—and limitations—of geography as an independent force. “The Government is in the Crown” Long before the 1750s, New York had been imagined as a potential capital for all of continental British America. In these imaginings, it was indeed geopolitics that drove decision-making. The Board of Trade—the body in London intended to coordinate colonial policy—noticed that Manhattan was centrally located among the mainland colonies, had a border with the Iroquois and French, and had a government directly appointed by the Crown. This led them to identify New York as the obvious place to house an administration overseeing the entire continent. The board held firmly to...