Lord Bute and Guadalupe

raharris1973

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The British occupied the valuable French sugar island of guadalupe during the 7 years war but gave it back as part of the peace settlement. Why did the Bute ministry agree to this concession? Was it exchanged for the French evacuation of a particular place they occupied in Europe or the mediterranean? Was it exchanged for French cession of land in north America? (seems like those territories the British had not occupied yet (the mississippi watershed basically) were not defensible and at britain's mercy in 1763 though.) were the British just eager to end the war and the French convinced London they were not more weary and might launch new European or naval campaigns if Britain refused to hand back guadalupe? One explanation I heard was that plantation owners in the British sugar growing islands wanted competitive Guadalupe sugar kept out of the British imperial trading system? Any truth to that?

What if the British made a different decision? I believe william Pitt advocated keeping Guadalupe. What if Britain kept the island?

Or if the British sugar producers were in fact the decisive in the bite ministry's decision what about the solution of ceding the island to third power to both avoid the competition within the British market and deny the French crown a source of revenue.

For instance Guadalupe could be ceded to Prussia as a reward for it's alliance and serve as a means to enable Berlin to pay back it's debts sooner. Or, Guadalupe can be given to Hanover. That way it stays under the crown but not british. Was Hanover integrated into the British system of trade at this time? Other options might include spain which was awarded Louisiana eve though it was britain's enemy. Why did the get that territory by the way? Whose idea was it?
 
The Brits where already producing huge amounts of sugar in their Caribbean holdings, and the offer of Canada was just too great.

The down side is that this removed all the external theats to the thirteen colonies and eventually to the ARW.
 
The main reason not to keep Guadeloupe was that its possession was hurting the British sugar industry in the rest of the Caribbean, not least because the local French surrender had included on the British side the guarantee of French-owned property and, I think, that British operators would not come in to buy up the French plantations. Thus, the British operators on the other islands were keen to see Guadeloupe go and put substantial political pressure to that end.

Add that to the strategic gains able to be made in exchanging possession of Guadeloupe at the peace with France, and it was pretty much a done deal

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The new British King was pretty keen on ending the war, and there was concern in parliament and the palace about how much its ongoing was (1) causing William Pitt's popularity to surge and (2) adding to the national debt. Pitt was a big proponent of fighting on, but to throw him a bone they accomodated the suggestion of taking Canada rather than Guadeloupe. Most of the political class would have preferred Guadeloupe, but Pitt was insistent that the American mainland would be they key to future power, and wanted to knock France out of the continent.
 

raharris1973

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What I still do not get was what Britain was...

..getting in exchange, because it occupied both Guadeloupe and Canada (Quebec and Montreal) at the time negotiations began, and possession is nine-tenths of the law. Why was it compelled to choose between Guadeloupe or Canada.

The Brits where already producing huge amounts of sugar in their Caribbean holdings, and the offer of Canada was just too great.

So Canada, already occupied was not much of an offer.

Add that to the strategic gains able to be made in exchanging possession of Guadeloupe at the peace with France, and it was pretty much a done deal

I still do not know what they got in exchange, other than that with peace the British could cancel future offensive operations they planned and the associated expenses.

The new British King was pretty keen on ending the war, and there was concern in parliament and the palace about how much its ongoing was (1) causing William Pitt's popularity to surge and (2) adding to the national debt.

A solid argument for ending the war, but why not simply a peace settlement recognizing current occupation. The missing piece for me is if the French or their allies held any strategically valuable territories, or threatened to, which were exchanged for Guadalupe. For instance, were the Spanish holding Gibraltar under any kind of serious siege? Were the French occupying pieces of the Netherlands they withdrew from as part of the settlement?

That leaves the domestic sugar interest as the most convincing explanation:

The main reason not to keep Guadeloupe was that its possession was hurting the British sugar industry in the rest of the Caribbean, not least because the local French surrender had included on the British side the guarantee of French-owned property and, I think, that British operators would not come in to buy up the French plantations. Thus, the British operators on the other islands were keen to see Guadeloupe go and put substantial political pressure to that end.

...but that's contradictory to this assertion:

Most of the political class would have preferred Guadeloupe, but Pitt was insistent that the American mainland would be they key to future power, and wanted to knock France out of the continent.

...alright, cards on the table time, what books y'all read on this subject.

Mine that I recall are: Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, several American history textbooks, Arthur Herman's To Rule the Waves, Caleb Carr's contribution to "What If" about Pitt the Elder keeping power and forestalling the American Revolution and wikipedia.
 
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Thande

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There's also the fact that handing Canada back to the French would have driven the American colonials even more berserk than they ended up in OTL. There had already been massive fallout after the War of the Austrian Succession a few years before, when American colonial troops had bled and died to take the fortress of Louisbourg from the French, only for the British government to hand it back at the peace treaty.
 

Thande

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..getting in exchange, because it occupied both Guadeloupe and Canada (Quebec and Montreal) at the time negotiations began, and possession is nine-tenths of the law. Why was it compelled to choose between Guadeloupe or Canada.

Lord Bute worried that Britain would be physically incapable of administering all the territories we had conquered; he feared we had bitten off more than we could chew. Also Britain had seen major troop deaths from disease due to the Philippine and Cuba campaigns and he wanted to bring France to the negotiation table in case the French continued the war and it started to turn back in their favour.

Finally Britain did get some things from France in exchange which may seem minor now but were very important then--Minorca back, and Dunkirk's fortifications destroyed again as they had been after the War of the Spanish Succession. It was this, not the massive colonial losses, that provoked serious French resentment against Britain after the war and ultimately led to French support for the American rebels in the ARW. Remember priorities were very different in the eighteenth century.
 
The British occupied the valuable French sugar island of guadalupe during the 7 years war but gave it back as part of the peace settlement. Why did the Bute ministry agree to this concession?

Short answer, in a war you don't always annex everything you occupy. Actualy it even relatively rare to annex everything you occupy. Just look at all peace treaties and you see a lot of colonies returned after the peace.
 
Short answer, in a war you don't always annex everything you occupy. Actualy it even relatively rare to annex everything you occupy. Just look at all peace treaties and you see a lot of colonies returned after the peace.

This is the main answer to your question. It should also be considered that the peace negotiators didn't know about the Philippines capture, so that was another loss through sheer misfortune.

However, that said, there was still a widespread British view that what was given back was more valuable than what was kept. Both Newcastle and Pitt were strongly against it for this reason. Pitt particularly thought further conquests were possible.
 

raharris1973

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Now we are cookin'

Thande thanks for your answer that puts the bartering in concrete terms. So obvious pods for not giving back Guadalupe include French stubbornness on either Minorca or the Dunkirk fortifications. I deal with some possible consequences over in the thread on German colonies in north America.
 
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