Networks

Abstract

This chapter turns to the role of private actors in facilitating the various forms of European engagement with the British Empire. Long-distance and transnational networks undoubtedly played a key role, sometimes underpinning types of continental European involvement of which ministers and officials in London, and state servants in imperial sites, disapproved, and wished to discourage or even stop. But private actors did not always work to undermine the efforts of British governments to preserve an exclusionary empire. Their independent activities could dovetail neatly with official policy. Landowners and employers in the colonies wanted to promote settlement to secure more tenants and more labour. British governments wanted to see the North American colonies settled so that their economic potential could be realized and their security improved. On some occasions, private actors even worked directly with state officials to facilitate foreign participation in the empire through contractual arrangements to secure settlers or soldiers.