5 - ‘An echo to that on the other side’: Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in the mid-Atlantic colonies, c. 1710-1717

Summary

In 1710 Robert Hunter sailed for New York City to take up the post of governor of the British colonies of New York and New Jersey. Hunter had hopes of an easy time, pursuing the interests of Queen Anne, but vicious transatlantic party rivalries were alive and well in the colonies and not isolated to Westminster and Grub Street. The early years of Hunter's tenure (1710–19) were a time of increasing dynastic uncertainty and witnessed a series of seismic political changes including the death of Queen Anne, the Hanoverian succession and the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. That Hunter successfully survived the political morass of the two colonies, each with its own unique political issues made all the more uncertain by the vagaries of an adolescent imperial structure influenced by the rage of party, is a tribute to his political acumen. An examination of the period surrounding Hunter's government, however, provides more than a biographical tribute to a single man; it captures elements of Whig and Tory British party conflicts, religious controversies and the integration of an Atlantic public sphere. Hunter's period in office is a fascinating example of the increasingly transatlantic nature of party politics, communications and the currency of Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World in the contentious final years of Queen Anne.

Accusations of Jacobitism featured prominently in the political and religious controversies engulfing the mid-Atlantic in the early eighteenth century. A thorough examination of Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism provide compelling evidence that the transatlantic nature of Britain's rage of party contributed to the anglicisation of the mid-Atlantic. Accusations of loyalty to the Stuarts, nonjuring or outright Jacobitism were an integral part of transatlantic political, religious and print debate. Such accusations reflect more than petty expressions of local antipathy. Accusations and expressions of Jacobitism in the mid-Atlantic not only point towards the significance and currency of Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic, they also demonstrate the integration of the colonial region into a British Atlantic political culture.

Religious controversies facilitated the extension of Britain's rage of party into the mid-Atlantic colonies. Governor Hunter's troubled relationship with High Church Tories in New York and New Jersey provides a perfect illustration of the complexity of imperial politics and the prevalence of shared ideologies.