ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: October 7
The Royal Proclamation of 1763
King George III was not yet mad, but he sure made the Americans mad. How? By shitting on their manifest destiny bullshit and saying no actually you’re not allowed to commit a genocide and steal all that land from Native Americans. What? You thought your revolution was about taxation without representation. Okay. Sure.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 7, 1763--
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 happened on October 7. In 1763. In case that part wasn’t obvious. The proclamation said hey this area west of the Appalachian Mountains? You pasty people need to stay the fuck out. A massive region of Trans-Appalachia was deemed an Indian Reservation, and potential settlers and land speculators were ever so pissed.
The proclamation was a result of the end of the Seven Years War. Britain had kicked French ass and taken over “their” territories in the Americas. The proclamation was about limiting colonial expansion. Now “manifest destiny” was not actually a thing yet, at least not in name. The term wasn’t popularized for another eighty years, proclaiming that Americans (of the mayosapien persuasion) were destined to expand and settle across North America, never mind that a bunch of other people had been living there already for about a dozen or so millennia. They felt they were “exceptional” and had the moral right to take all that land because low melanin Christian reasons.
And then this limey king fuck said yeah no. Stay on your side of the border.
And a bunch of colonizers said fuck you and started settling there anyway, which led to Odawa War Chief Pontiac saying fuck these invaders we shall rebel. It was a small yet brutal war. You know those stories about blankets infected with smallpox given to Native Americans? That happened.
Anyway, the proclamation woke the “you’re not the boss of me” attitudes in colonists that created resentment and division between the alabaster Americans and the British, disunity that eventually led to the American Revolutionary War. And once the colonizers won that war they were free to do a genocide and take a whole bunch more land.
Those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. So manifest your destiny of buying my book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.
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I've always hated what was done to First Nations. When I first learned about what happened to those people, I was mighty pissed. I actually declared "That is bullshit" in the middle of History class (1969). It's still happening to this day.
Very good. It’s true, of course.
[But to be fair (not to indigenous Americans of course), Britain could just stfu by then - and certainly after - on the subject of killing the hell out of entire populations. ]