Bonds of Belonging

Subjecthood and the British Empire

Bibliographic Data

ID10067296
AuthorsHannah Weiss Muller (0000-0001-6068-9135, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume53
Issue1
Pages29-58
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of British Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/jbr.2013.211
OpenAlexW2101054105
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited48

In the 1760s and 1770s, rancorous struggles over the rights of French Catholic subjects threatened the political and economic stability of Grenada and Quebec, both formerly French colonies ceded to Britain at the close of the Seven Years' War (1756–63). This article analyzes claims of subject status made during those decades, focusing on petitions in which numerous inhabitants made demands for privileges they believed to be their due. These memorials reveal the fundamental role that “new” and “adopted” subjects played in shaping the boundaries of “British” subjecthood, as well as highlight key characteristics that made subjecthood an organizing principle of the mid-eighteenth-century British Empire. Indeed, the bonds between subject and sovereign, the ones articulated and performed each time subjects approached their monarch or his representatives, operated at a symbolic and functional level to integrate an empire that had become increasingly diverse by the 1760s

Empire · Genealogy · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · Subject (documents · Australian History and Society · Canadian Identity and History · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law

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