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The Making of a Timber Colony: British North America, the Navy Board, and Global Resource Extraction in the Age of Napoleon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2019

Martin Crevier
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Abstract

This article recounts the worldwide search for timber undertaken by the Navy Board, the administrative body under the authority of the Admiralty responsible for the supply of naval stores and the construction and repair of ships during the Napoleonic Wars. The closure of the Baltic by France and its European allies is considered the main factor in making British North America a timber colony. Yet the process through which the forests of the Laurentian Plateau and the North Appalachians came to fuel the dockyards of England and Scotland is taken for granted. To acquire this commodity, through merchants, diplomats, and commissioned agents, the power of the British state reached globally, reshaped ecological relationships, and integrated new landscapes to the Imperial economy. Many alternatives to the Baltic were indeed considered and tentatively exploited. Only a mixture of contingency, political factors, and environmental constraints forced the Board to contract in Lower Canada and New Brunswick rather than in areas such as the Western Cape, the Brazilian coast, or Bombay's hinterland.

Keywords

timberRoyal NavyCanadaforestsextractionEast India Company
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , December 2019 , pp. 466 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Research Institute for History, Leiden University

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Footnotes

*

Martin Crevier is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. He is currently working on an intellectual history of settler colonialism in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British world via a cluster of museums and art galleries.

References

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Duffy, M. “World-Wide War and British Expansion, 1793–1815. ” In The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century, edited by Marshall, P. J., Louis, W. M., and Low, Alaine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
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Gaudreau, G. Les récoltes des forêts publiques au Québec et en Ontario, 1840–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Grove, R.Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Gwyn, J.Ashore and Afloat: The British Navy and the Halifax Naval Yard before 1820. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Holland, R.Blue-Water Empire: The British in the Mediterranean since 1800. London: Allen Lane, 2012.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A.G. “Back to the Future: from National History to Imperial History.” Past & Present, 164:1 (August 1999), 198–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchison, R. “The Norwegian and Baltic Timber Trade to Britain 1780–1835 and Its Interconnections. ” Scandinavian Journal of History 37:5 (December 2012), 578–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, E. “Illusions of Victory: The Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar Revisited. ” Military Affairs 48:3 (July 1984), 140–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, P. M.The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. New York: Humanity Books, 2006.Google Scholar
Knight, R. J. B. “New England Forests and British Seapower: Albion Revised.” Mariner's Mirror 46:4 (Fall 1986), 221–9.Google Scholar
Lambert, A. “Strategy, Policy and Shipbuilding: The Bombay Dockyards, the Indian Navy and Imperial Security in Eastern Seas, 1784–1869.” In The Worlds of the East India Company, edited by Bowen, H. V., Lincoln, Margaret, and Rigby, Nigel. Leicester: Boydell and Brewer, 2002.Google Scholar
MacDowell, L. S.An Environmental History of Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012.Google Scholar
McCracken, E. M.The Irish Woods since Tudor Times: Distribution and Exploitation. Belfast: Newton Abbot, 1971.Google Scholar
McInnis, M. “The Economy of Canada in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. .2, edited by Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E.. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Morriss, R.The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy: Resources, Logistics and the State, 1755–1815. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Mosley, S.The Environment in World History. New York: Routledge, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, P. K. “Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire, 1688–1815,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, edited by Marshall, P. J. and Low, Alaine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Rourke, K. H. “The Worldwide Economic Impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815. ” Journal of Global History 1:1 (13 March 2006), 146–9.Google Scholar
Perry, A. On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871. Toronto; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Rangarajan, M. “Imperial Agendas and India's Forests: The Early History of Indian Forestry.” Indian Social and Economic History Review 31:2 (1994), 147–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodger, N. A. M.The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. London: Penguin, 2006.Google Scholar
Rule, J.The Vital Century: England's Developing Economy, 1714–1815. Harlow : Longman, 1992.Google Scholar
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Wynn, G.Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.Google Scholar
The National Archives, Kew, London (TNA)Google Scholar
Admiralty—Abstract of Correspondence (ADM/106)Google Scholar
Admiralty—Miscellaneous Accounting Records (ADM/49)Google Scholar
Colonial Office—Miscellaneous material regarding the timber trade (CO/325)Google Scholar
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (NMM)Google Scholar
Admiralty—In-letters to Navy Board from Admiralty (ADM/B)Google Scholar
Admiralty—In-letters to Admiralty from Navy Board (ADM/BP)Google Scholar
Chatfield Henry (CHD)Google Scholar
Halifax Dockyard—In-letters from Navy Board (HAL/E)Google Scholar
Michael Henley and Son (HNL)Google Scholar
Papers of Admiral John Markham (MRK)Google Scholar
University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New BrunswickGoogle Scholar
The Winslow Family Papers, online: https: //www.lib.unb.ca/winslow/about.html (consulted between 1 and 6 August 2017)Google Scholar
Hattendord, J., et al. British Naval Documents. London: Navy Record Society, 1993.Google Scholar
Hodges, E. W., and Hughes, E.. Selected Naval Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Saumarez, J. The Saumarez Papers: Selections from the Baltic Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Sir James Saumarez 1808–1812. London: Navy Records Society, 1968.Google Scholar
Hattendord, J., et al. British Naval Documents. London: Navy Record Society, 1993.Google Scholar
Hodges, E. W., and Hughes, E.. Selected Naval Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Saumarez, J. The Saumarez Papers: Selections from the Baltic Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Sir James Saumarez 1808–1812. London: Navy Records Society, 1968.Google Scholar
Preservation of Timber Trees Act 1766, 6 Geo. 3, c. 48.Google Scholar
Preservation of Timber Act 1772, 13 Geo. 3, c. 33.Google Scholar
Timber for the Navy Act 1772, 12 Geo. 3, c. 54.Google Scholar
[A British Merchant]. Observations on the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, Relative to the Timber Trade. London: J. M Richardson, 1821.Google Scholar
Collingwood, C. A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood. London: J. Ridgway and Sons, 1837. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/10929684.html.Google Scholar
James, J. O. European Commerce. London: Humphreys, 1805.Google Scholar
Symes, Michel. An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava. London: W. Bulmer. , 1800.Google Scholar
Hampshire Chronicle. Hampshire: England. 31 May 1802, 2; and —16 March 1812, 4.Google Scholar
Quarterly Review. London: England. 12 September 1812, 38, 118.Google Scholar
Adas, M.Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989Google Scholar
Albion, R. G.Forests and Seapower. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1926.Google Scholar
Armitage, D. “The Atlantic Ocean.” In Oceanic Histories, edited by Armitage, David, Bashford, Alison, and Sivasundaram, Sujit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, W. J. “‘System of Terror’: Samuel Bentham, Accountability and Dockyard Reform during the Napoleonic Wars.” Social History 23:1 (1998), 63–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, M., et al. “Notes,” The Mariner's Mirror 88:1 (January 2002), 79–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, A., and Bennett, B.. “Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in British India 1855–1947: A Reinterpretation.” Itinerario 32:2 (2008), 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A. “The First Age of Global Imperialism, 1760–1830.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26:2 (May 1998), 28–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A.Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830. London: Longman, 1989.Google Scholar
Beinart, W.The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Beinart, W., and Hughes, L.. Environment and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Belich, J.Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld 1783–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Bentham, M. S.The Life of Brigadier General Sir Samuel Bentham. London: Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862.Google Scholar
Brewer, J.The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.Google Scholar
Buckner, P.A. (ed). Canada and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bully, A.The Bombay Company Ships 1790–1833. Curzon, 2000.Google Scholar
Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A.G. “The Political Economy of British Expansion Overseas, 1750–1914.” The Economic History Review 33:4 (November 1980), 463–490.Google Scholar
Candow, J. E. “Sir Isaac Coffin and the Halifax Dockyard ‘Scandal. ’” Nova Scotia Historical Review 1:2 (1981), 55–60.Google Scholar
Crimmin, P. K. “‘Great Object with Us to Procure This Timber’: The Royal Navy's Search for Ship Timber in the Eastern Mediterranean and Southern Russia, 1803–1815.” International Journal of Maritime History 4:2 (December 1992), 83–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cronon, W.Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.Google Scholar
Crouzet, F.L’économie Britannique et le blocus continental: 1806–1813. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1958.Google Scholar
Darwin, J.The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davey, J. “Securing the Sinews of Sea Power: British Intervention in the Baltic 1780–1815.” International History Review 33:2 (June 2011), 161–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, R.The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Newton Abbot, U.K.: David & Charles, 1972.Google Scholar
Dubinsky, K., Perry, A., and Yu, H. (eds.). Within and Without the Nation : Canadian History As Transnational History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duffy, M. “World-Wide War and British Expansion, 1793–1815. ” In The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century, edited by Marshall, P. J., Louis, W. M., and Low, Alaine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Easterbrook, W. T., and Aitken, H.. Canadian Economic History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaudreau, G. Les récoltes des forêts publiques au Québec et en Ontario, 1840–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Grove, R.Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Gwyn, J.Ashore and Afloat: The British Navy and the Halifax Naval Yard before 1820. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Holland, R.Blue-Water Empire: The British in the Mediterranean since 1800. London: Allen Lane, 2012.Google Scholar
Hopkins, A.G. “Back to the Future: from National History to Imperial History.” Past & Present, 164:1 (August 1999), 198–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchison, R. “The Norwegian and Baltic Timber Trade to Britain 1780–1835 and Its Interconnections. ” Scandinavian Journal of History 37:5 (December 2012), 578–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, E. “Illusions of Victory: The Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar Revisited. ” Military Affairs 48:3 (July 1984), 140–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, P. M.The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery. New York: Humanity Books, 2006.Google Scholar
Knight, R. J. B. “New England Forests and British Seapower: Albion Revised.” Mariner's Mirror 46:4 (Fall 1986), 221–9.Google Scholar
Lambert, A. “Strategy, Policy and Shipbuilding: The Bombay Dockyards, the Indian Navy and Imperial Security in Eastern Seas, 1784–1869.” In The Worlds of the East India Company, edited by Bowen, H. V., Lincoln, Margaret, and Rigby, Nigel. Leicester: Boydell and Brewer, 2002.Google Scholar
MacDowell, L. S.An Environmental History of Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012.Google Scholar
McCracken, E. M.The Irish Woods since Tudor Times: Distribution and Exploitation. Belfast: Newton Abbot, 1971.Google Scholar
McInnis, M. “The Economy of Canada in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. .2, edited by Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E.. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Morriss, R.The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy: Resources, Logistics and the State, 1755–1815. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Mosley, S.The Environment in World History. New York: Routledge, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, P. K. “Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire, 1688–1815,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, edited by Marshall, P. J. and Low, Alaine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Rourke, K. H. “The Worldwide Economic Impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815. ” Journal of Global History 1:1 (13 March 2006), 146–9.Google Scholar
Perry, A. On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871. Toronto; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Rangarajan, M. “Imperial Agendas and India's Forests: The Early History of Indian Forestry.” Indian Social and Economic History Review 31:2 (1994), 147–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodger, N. A. M.The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. London: Penguin, 2006.Google Scholar
Rule, J.The Vital Century: England's Developing Economy, 1714–1815. Harlow : Longman, 1992.Google Scholar
Simmons, I.G. An Environmental History of Great Britain: From 10,000 Years Ago to the Present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Taylor, A.The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.Google Scholar
Wynn, G.Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.Google Scholar