North American Colonies Research Articles

The Routledge Guidebook to Smith's Wealth of Nations

The Routledge Guidebook to Smith's <i>Wealth of Nations</i>

Conspiracies and Restorative Violence in American Culture

From the earliest days of the British North American colonies, violence permeates American society. At the political-economic level, violence established and expanded the nation through slavery and military conquest. At the inter-personal level, people chose violence to resolve disputes, and for entertainment. The one consistent element has been the ‘masterless men’, white males who feel that whiteness and divinely endowed liberty entitle them to more than they currently have in property, employment, or status. Endowed with the right of self-determination and cultural reinforcement for feelings of inherent superiority, they have embraced fantastical conspiracies and restorative violence as personal gratification and cultural terror management whenever they feel that perceived social inferiors are succeeding beyond their appropriate social position, especially through military service, economic entrepreneurship, and election victory. Conspiracy and violent fantasy promise to restore racial-masculine hierarchy from an allegedly ideal past to fulfill God’s divine purpose for the United States.

The Worlds of William Penn

The Worlds of William Penn

Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn

Reviewed by: Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn John Paul Nuño Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era. By Mike Bunn. ( Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2020. Pp. xiv, 289. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-413-3.) In recent years, scholars have begun addressing the historiographical gap that relegated West and East Florida to the status of forgotten British North American colonies, especially in the traditional narrative of the American Revolution. Even to a greater extent than for East Florida, scholarship on West Florida has been particularly sparse, except for older foundational texts by Cecil Johnson and, later, Robin Fabel. More recently, Andrew McMichael's Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785–1810 (Athens, Ga., 2008) and Kathleen DuVal's Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York, 2015) have shed light on the colony's history. The latter recontextualizes and complicates the traditional narrative of the American Revolution for a general audience. DuVal focuses on historical figures whose lives illuminate important themes and the contingent nature of the period. Entering into the fray is Mike Bunn's Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era, which is also aimed at a general audience but provides more of a comprehensive narrative focused on the creation and eventual conquest of British West Florida. Bunn is a public historian, the director of Historic Blakeley State Park, and the editor of Muscogiana, a journal of the Muscogee County, Georgia, Genealogical Society. His book fits well within his efforts to educate the public. He explains to his readers that he seeks to present a "broad arc of the life of the colony" while demonstrating that the history of West Florida, once seen as inconsequential, is "worth telling and remembering" (p. xii). Bunn embarks on this mission by taking a chronological approach that details the British founding of the colony and ambitious plans to develop it. Of note here is the ineffective leadership of Governor George Johnstone, who fostered political divisiveness in the colony. The author then devotes several chapters to themes such as settlement, daily life, and earning a living. He also includes an [End Page 147] informative chapter on the Indian trade despite acknowledging that most of his work does not focus on the Indigenous population. His decision to include this chapter is vital since Florida's Native peoples had the power to significantly shape events on the ground. Toward the second half of the book, Bunn returns to a chronological scope by outlining the events of the American Revolution on the Gulf Coast. Readers will find James Willing's notorious incursion into West Florida and Bernardo de Gálvez's stereotype-defying performance as an effective Spanish colonial administrator and military leader particularly interesting. This book is primarily a synthesis of secondary works, in which the author is well versed, supplemented by primary sources from the British Colonial Office and published archival materials. The text serves a general audience that would benefit from an introduction to the nuts and bolts of the British colonization of West Florida. However, an academic reader may find that the end-notes, which are condensed in one note at the end of each paragraph, are not always clearly delineated. Further, the text would benefit from a tighter conceptual and thematic focus. Nonetheless, it succeeds in its objective of showing that the history of the colony enriches our understanding of the American Revolution. Bunn's work contributes to the larger project of presenting more nuanced narratives of southern history to the public, which is not inconsequential. John Paul Nuño California State University, Northridge Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America’s Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn

The late eighteenth-century Spanish Gulf Coast remains one of the least examined and woefully misunderstood regions of North America. American historians of the period generally focus on revolutionary developments in New England or on the French and British imperial struggle to define the Great Lakes region. Yet the Gulf was a dynamic nexus of empire in which three imperial metropolises—Britain, France, and Spain—all vied with one another, and, after 1783, with the United States and numerous Native American peoples and maroon communities to strengthen and expand their own spheres of control. By the late eighteenth century, the destiny of this region had coalesced as the number of competitors had been reduced to only Spain and the nascent United States.Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony provides an explanation of how and why the colony of West Florida remained loyal to Britain during the period of the American Revolution, and how Spanish forces wrested it from British hands. The examination, through eleven chapters, explains the British takeover of the Gulf Coast in the post-1763 period. During the Seven Years’ War, Spain had lost control of Havana, the capital of Cuba; to secure the return of this valuable city, Spain ceded La Florida (East and West Florida) to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Subsequent chapters also explain the role of government and of Indian trade and describe the sparsely located settlements and daily life of the inhabitants, as well as how the colony prospered. Without a stable cash crop, settlers cultivated indigo and cochineal for dyes, harvested pine timber for construction and naval stores, traded with the Indians for deerskins, herded cattle and raised hogs for meat, and exploited slavery.The revolutionary struggle that erupted between Britain and the North American colonies inevitably brought the Gulf Coast into the fray even though the settlers remained steadfastly loyal to Britain. James Willing, a former captain in the Colonial Navy, brought the war to West Florida when he took Patriot forces down the Mississippi River to compel settlers to take an oath of neutrality. Although Willing occupied Natchez and plundered nearby plantations, he was defeated by a Loyalist force and taken captive by the British. Spain took advantage of the disorder and removed Britain from the Gulf. Spanish troops in New Orleans under Bernardo de Gálvez seized Baton Rouge in the fall of 1779 and Mobile in early 1780. By May 1781, Gálvez had captured Pensacola and its garrison, leaving the British with no ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The 1783 Peace of Paris returned the territories of West Florida and East Florida to Spain but initiated growing problems regarding the boundary with the newly established United States.By its very nature, well-written history is interdisciplinary because it addresses events and people, economics, politics, class and society, and why and how important decisions were made. Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony does so by integrating the Gulf Coast into the American revolutionary struggle. Using an extensive collection of primary and secondary sources, Bunn ably describes, in an engaging style, how the British ultimately lost the Gulf to Spanish control. He also places the colony into the broader narrative of American territorial expansion, which is a valuable lesson for those trying to understand the development of the United States.

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Conceptual contours of migration studies in and from Asia

Transatlantic Lifelines: Anne Bradstreet’s “Elegie upon That Honorable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney”

The legacy of Sir Philip Sidney, the distinguished Elizabethan courtier-poet, was the subject of numerous claims to memorialization. On 17 October 1586 Sidney died in battle at Arnhem in the United Netherlands. Less than a week later, his corpse was transported to Flushing, of which Sidney had been Governor, and in the following year Sidney’s body was “interr’d in stately Pauls”, as recorded by Anne Dudley Bradstreet—the first known poet of the British North American colonies. While Bradstreet is omitted from most early modern and contemporary literary accounts of Sidney’s legacy, this article demonstrates that Bradstreet’s commemoration of Sidney from across the Atlantic presents new insights into his afterlife and the female poet’s formulations of early modern nationhood. Bradstreet’s first formal poem, “An Elegie upon that Honorable and renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney” (comp. 1637–8), was a tribute to Sidney as well as to her own Anglo-American literary heritage and England’s rolls. Bradstreet exhibits her complex relationship to Sidney along the same lines that she reconceives her English identity. A comparison of the two published seventeenth-century editions of Bradstreet’s elegiac poem (1650, 1678) shows how she translates descent and lineage from kinship (and kingship) into poetic creation. In the process, Bradstreet takes her place not only as a “semi-Sidney”, as Josuah Sylvester characterized Sidney’s descendants, but also as a Sidneian Muse—in America.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution

In the early republic, a potent mix of commercial aspirations and ideological naivete characterized US diplomatic relations with South America. Tyson Reeder's book explores how North American visions of inevitable republicanism and free trade across the Western Hemisphere came to naught in Brazil. Surveying the give-and-take of state and merchant power emanating from North America, Brazil, Portugal, and Britain between 1760 and 1830, Reeder argues that experiences with international trade in the early republic disproved US revolutionary assumptions about the incompatibility of monarchy and commercial freedom.The monograph is divided into four parts. Part 1 establishes the context of trading and state relationships between the British and Portuguese empires in the eighteenth century's latter half. Portugal, Madeira, and Brazil bought North American grain, North Americans consumed Madeira wine, and Brazilian gold powered credit relationships with the British Atlantic and the slave trade from Angola. Unlike the British, who enforced illicit trading prohibitions in the North American colonies (a flash point for eventual revolutionary turmoil), the Portuguese never took a hard line on smuggling and mercantilism within their empire. Portuguese subjects in Brazil rarely perceived unlicensed trade as incompatible with fealty to the monarchy.Part 2 examines how the shifting political terrain of British imperial crisis and the American War of Independence altered trading priorities and commercial relationships. Independence from Britain meant that North Americans no longer enjoyed the trading privileges resulting from long-term British naval protection of the Portuguese. Portuguese bans on direct trade with the nascent United States deepened North American convictions that empires and monarchies could not be trusted trading partners.In part 3, Reeder explores how the hopes of US free traders for open trade with an independent Brazil aligned with neither that colony's late eighteenth-century fate nor US lawmakers' early nineteenth-century commercial policies. Early republic luminaries like Thomas Jefferson thought revolution, independence, and free trade inevitable for Brazil. Meanwhile, the Portuguese feared the US republican example in Brazilian uprisings like the 1789–90 Minas conspiracy. Nevertheless, the Portuguese court's movement to Brazil further liberalized Brazilian trade. As Reeder argues, the United States, not trade liberalization, was the problem for Portugal. Compounding the challenges for US merchants, the 1807 Embargo Act forbade the export of US products until foreign powers ceased interfering with US neutral trade. To North American merchants, this disastrous act “seemed to betray liberal ideologies to garner respect from European powers—a betrayal magnified as the Portuguese monarchy liberalized imperial commerce” (p. 134).Reeder examines the deeper dimensions of this disenchantment in part 4's discussion of the nineteenth century's first decades. Initially, North American observers prefigured rebels against Portuguese control in 1817 Pernambuco as latter-day versions of the 1776 patriots in Boston. North American seafarers accepted privateering commissions from José Gervasio Artigas, caudillo of the disputed Banda Oriental of present-day Uruguay and Brazil, to raid Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the pursuit of the region's independence. To maintain future trading opportunities and good standing in the community of nations, US politicians passed the 1817 Neutrality Act, which denied privateers safe harbor in US ports. Ultimately, Brazil's 1822 transition to an imperial monarchy engendered US prejudices about how Brazil's suspect racial composition made republicanism impossible and new conceptualizations of Brazil as a slaveholding paradise.Reeder offers a compelling investigation of trade mentalities and ideological projection. As Brazil delayed independence and then formed into an independent monarchy that liberalized trade, this unique course of decolonization “exposed the fragility of North Americans' commitment to hemispheric republicanism and its tepid attachment to free trade” (p. 237). Reeder's comparative commercial psychoanalysis illuminates deep connections between Brazil and the early United States that scholars have often overlooked. His research is deeply grounded in archival material from Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and Britain. At times, the book can be a bit repetitive and reductionist in its restatement of the paradoxical relationship between imperialism and free trade. Its single-minded focus on the Luso-Atlantic world also left me wondering about where else US beliefs in republican commercial liberalism were being put to the test. This lack of wider context notwithstanding, the book adds a wonderful case study to works such as Caitlin Fitz's Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (2016), on the ideological aspirations of US political thought toward Spanish American independence movements, and Eliga Gould's Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (2012), on the US struggle for legitimacy in the nineteenth-century community of nations. It will be an important book for historians of Atlantic commerce and early US–Latin American relations.

Slavery and the “American Way of War,” 1607–1861

AbstractSlavery and warfare were inextricably intertwined in the history of Britain’s North American colonies and, subsequently, the early republic. Yet this deep connection has not been acknowledged in the historiography. In particular, the debate about an “American way of war” has neglected the profound significance of slavery as a formative factor in America’s “first way of war.” Here, these two forms of organized, systemic violence are considered not merely within a comparative framework but as phenomena whose relationship is so deeply enmeshed that they cannot be meaningfully understood in isolation. Slavery is thus placed centrally in an examination of American war making, from the colonial to the antebellum period. Three main areas are highlighted: slave raiding against Native Americans, slavery as a factor in imperial and national strategy-making and diplomacy, and slavery as an “internal war.”

Origin of Sovereignty and Boundaries of Royal Prerogative in Tory Political Controversy in Great Britain in Last Third of 18&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Century

The discourse on the nature and boundaries of royal sovereignty, which unfolded with the coming to power of George III in Great Britain, is considered. The key features and changes in the constitutional views of the Tories that took shape in the 60—90s of the 18th century are examined in the article. The relevance of the study lies in determining the nature and role of the discourse under study in the formation of a new Tory identity, concentrating on the integral role of the monarch. The novelty of the research lies in the emphasis on the religious component of this discourse, as well as in the use of church sermons as a special kind of source. At the same time, some excerpts of sermons are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. It is emphasized that during the period under study, the Tory party did not have a political ideology, and the current policy was influenced by fears about the stability of the English constitution associated with the events in the North American colonies. The validity of the cautious approaches of the supporters of the critical direction in modern British historiography to the assessment of Tory identity in the last third of the 18th century is shown. The author’s assessment of how Toryism of the 60—90s of the 18th century reinterprets the experience of the “old Tories”, combining traditional respect for the royal prerogative with the recognition of the rights and privileges of parliament.

Catherine O'Donnell. Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation. Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. 112. $84.00 (paper).

Catherine O'Donnell. Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation. Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. 112. $84.00 (paper). - Volume 60 Issue 3

The Representations of British North America in the British Press after the American Revolution (c. 1783–1815)

The ways Britons imagined and represented their British North American colonies after the loss of the thirteen colonies in 1783 is a theme that is largely under researched. Through the study of British newspapers, both London-based and local, this article aims at understanding what images and representations Britons had of their Canadian colonies from the end of the War of Independence to the end of the War of 1812. Such analysis shows British North America offered more than the image of “a few acres of snow”. It also explores the manners in which those images of North America sprang from and contributed to the spreading of the imperial propaganda in the British public sphere.

RUSSIA’S ROLE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES

In the article the authors show the place of Russia in the struggle for the independence of the United States. They reveal the concept of «military neutrality», its essence and content. They define the basic principles of the world colonial system in the XVIII century, the foundations of interrelation between world powers and their colonies. They identify the priorities and interests for the development of foreign policy relations. They establish causal links between the war of the North American colonies of Great Britain for their independence and the policies of a number of European powers (Russia, Great Britain, France), as well as the consequences to which it led.&#x0D; &#x0D; The article considers the history of the struggle for independence and the formation of a new state of the United States of America, the development of foreign policy relations. The authors focus on the history of Russian-American relations in the second half of the XVIII century in the political aspect, and emphasize the increasing penetration of Russia’s influence in the scientific and cultural spheres which directly influenced and enriched the two countries. The relations between Russia and the United States and their history are studied. The history of relations between Russia and Great Britain is shown. The authors analyze the history of attempts to involve the Russian Empire in the war on the side of Great Britain, the position of the Russian government and Catherine II, as well as their attitude to these attempts.&#x0D; &#x0D; The authors give prominence to a number of world political figures and note their personal contribution to the process of struggle for independence and the further development of the United States of America. Unknown moments of their biographies are revealed.&#x0D; &#x0D; Conclusions are drawn about the role and the place of the leading countries of the period under study in the struggle for freedom and independence of the future superpower.

The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World

The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World

Catherine O’Donnell Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation

Catherine O’Donnell Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States: Faith, Conflict, Adaptation

“I am willing to love all mankind, except an American”: Britain’s North American Colonies in Samuel Johnson’s Works

The article focuses on a British intellectual and lexicographer Samuel Johnson’s (1709–1784) views on the rights and freedoms of people living in Britain’s North American colonies. It accounts for the reasons of Johnson’s negative attitude to colonial people’s attempts to repeal taxes and seek representation in the English parliament. The writer despised American colonists, for he believed them to descend from the first settlers who had oppressed and enslaved the indigenous population. Moreover, the lexicographer believed that the majority of American colonists belonged to the lower classes, were descendants of criminals and paupers who had disturbed the peace in the Old World and had fled to the New World to escape their just punishment. The unrest in the American colonies in the 1770s only aggravated Johnson’s prejudices. His worldview prevented the lexicographer from understanding why American colonists weren’t satisfied with the position of British subjects and wanted to be represented in the British Parliament. Johnson believed that American colonists were anarchists wishing to shatter the British rule. В центре внимания статьи — взгляды английского интеллектуала и лексикографа Сэмюэла Джонсона (1709–1784) на права и свободы жителей североамериканских колоний Британии. Объясняются причины негативного восприятия Джонсоном попыток колонистов добиться отмены налоговых сборов и получения представительства в английском парламенте. Литератор относился к американским колонистам с презрением, поскольку считал их либо потомками первых колонистов, угнетавших и порабощавших аборигенное население, либо «надсмотрщиками» рабов. Более того, антипатия лексикографа основывалась на представлении о том, что большинство американских колонис-тов являлись выходцами из социальных низов, преступниками и нищими, нарушавшими спокойствие в Англии и часто бежавшими от правосудия в Новый свет. Волнения в американских колониях в 1770-е годы лишь усугубили эти представления Джонсона. Мировоззренческие установки не позволяли лексикографу понять, почему американским колонистам недостаточно быть подданными британской короны без права выбирать своих представителей в парламент, поэтому колонисты казались ему сторонниками анархии, желающими поколебать устоявшийся в Британии порядок.

O’Donnell, Catherine. Jesuits in the North American Colonies and the United States. Faith, Conflict, Adaptation. Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2020. 112 pp.

Archivo Teológico Granadino es una revista científica fundada por José A. de Aldama S.I. en 1938 como Anuario de Historia de la teología moderna que, como órgano de la Facultad de Teología de Granada, publica estudios sobre el tiempo comprendido entre 1400 y 1900, especialmente sobre el período post-tridentino, edita en su lengua original manuscritos inéditos de la misma época y publica una sección bibliográfica con boletines específicos sobre cuestiones histórico-teológicas.

An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic by Kate Luce Mulry (review).

Reviewed by: An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic by Kate Luce Mulry Eric H. Ash (bio) An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic By Kate Luce Mulry. New York: New York University Press, 2021. Pp. 361. The Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, after years of civil war and various experiments in ruling England without a king under Oliver Cromwell, was both a hopeful and a nervous time. The return of King Charles II inaugurated a period of rebuilding and renewed stability, but memories of political unrest, religious strife, violence, and bloodshed were still very fresh. To reunite his fractious nation and reestablish English rule in its various overseas colonies, Charles and his advisors promoted a number of projects intended to improve the physical environment, both in England and across the empire. Kate Luce Mulry's book makes an important contribution to the understanding of those projects—and the many intertwined purposes they were intended to serve. Mulry succeeds in weaving together threads of political history, the history of medicine and public health, and environmental history to tell a compelling story: the Restoration drive to restore the English monarchical state and empire by improving the health, character, and productivity of its restive and far-flung subjects through enhancements to their environment. This is a very ambitious project with a lot of moving parts. It explores a series of case studies, including the many proposals for rebuilding a safer and healthier London in the aftermath of the 1665 plague epidemic and the Great Fire of 1666; land drainage projects in the English Fens, Ireland, and the Delaware River valley in North America; numerous projects to improve lands and increase food production throughout England and its empire; and the desire to transform the newly-acquired colony of Jamaica into an imperial garden of sorts, not only to grow valuable plants "naturalized" from the East Indies but also to create a paradise of order, harmony, and sweet aromas that would soothe a wild and unruly colonial populace. The great success of the book lies in Mulry's skillful linking of public health, agricultural productivity, natural philosophy, and political priorities of the restored monarchy. Draining wetlands perceived by most as "waste" land and planting food crops there would provide wholesome sustenance for English subjects, a vital concern for any king who hoped to foster political stability and establish his own legitimacy. It would also impose a sense of order on a chaotic landscape and improve the perceived character of its inhabitants, transforming them from so-called rude and lazy pastoralists into good, honest, hard-working English farmers and subjects. This was true whether the land and people in question were in the riot-prone Fens, in rebellious Ireland, or in the wilds of England's North American colonies. Likewise, planting an orderly and profitable garden of sweet-smelling [End Page 1243] plants in Jamaica would assert English authority and ownership over land that the English myopically perceived to be wild and unclaimed. But this plan was developed in conjunction with a plan to create a similar garden in London, where sweet smells might also be used to calm a potentially rebellious urban population. Moreover, the successful transplantation of foreign plants to Jamaican soil would demonstrate that it was possible for English colonizers to transplant themselves as well, to become "naturalized" to Jamaica without necessarily losing their English identities in the process. Many of the projects that Mulry explores in the book did not come to fruition; some were only partially realized, and some never made it past the proposal stage. She makes a convincing argument, however, that unrealized projects can provide important clues regarding the goals, priorities, and sense of possibilities shared by the king and his advisors, the Council of Foreign Plantation, the nascent Royal Society, and entrepreneurial landowners and colonizers, among others. Complicating the common historical view that Charles II had little real interest in the scientific investigations of the Royal Society, Mulry shows how that body served the king as a "Parliament of Nature," promoting a number of improvement projects that had the crown's attention and favor. Her commitment to...

"Let us unanimously lay aside foreign Superfluities": Textile Production and British Colonial Identity in the 1760s

T. H. Breen's The Marketplace of Revolution reshaped Revolutionary War scholarship by arguing that protesting British taxes on material goods both galvanized and united colonists from multiple backgrounds. Essays published in Rhode Island's Newport Mercury demonstrate, however, that arguments in favor of home textile production in the British North American colonies were not confined solely to protesting colonists. The months leading up to the Stamp Act crisis in 1765 saw twenty such articles by colonists who would identify as Loyalists during the Revolutionary War; the years following the Stamp Act crisis saw twenty-three articles by colonists who would identify as Patriots arguing in favor of home textile production in Rhode Island. The Second Calico Act in 1721 had stated that residents of the British Isles could only purchase British-made textiles, but that American colonists were to be encouraged to purchase imported fabrics from India. The break caused by the American Revolution would come in time, but for the moment, Rhode Island colonists were eager to claim their right to the privileges and protections of British subjecthood through their identities as textile-producing Britons.

Why did Louis XIV establish High Courts of Justice in North America?

Summary Why did Louis XIV establish high courts in the distant and sparsely populated North-American colonies? The logic of the establishment of the Sovereign Council of Québec in 1663 and the Superior Council of Louisiana in 1712 is indeed in no way similar to the one which led to the creation of high courts in the metropolitan territories previously under foreign sovereignty. In the colonies, there was no need to safeguard the provincial privileges, in particular that to be judged in accordance with the local customs and procedural rules. Historians have emphasized the idea that justice foremost asserted the king’s authority on his overseas territories and France’s position on the international scene. Colonial institutions were thus merely considered as extensions of the metropolitan model. This paper proposes to study the high courts of New France through the prism of legal transplant theories, focusing on the objectives and expectations of the donor rather than on their objects or on the obstacles faced by the receiver. We assert that the overseas high courts were a means to define and orientate the French colonial policy rather than an end in themselves. Their judicial and, above all, regulatory competences made them indeed a particularly suitable instrument for the fulfillment of the monarchy’s political and economic expectations.