‘The Patron of Mankind’

Abstract

This chapter looks at the impact of geopolitical thinking on colonial conceptions of nationality. Paying particular attention to the influential parties that gathered around the Livingston family in New York and William Smith in Philadelphia during the 1750s, it shows how the idea of Britain as the ‘arbiter of Europe’ informed a continentalist understanding of Britain as a nation defined by its unique role in the European system. This, in turn, left an enormous mark on the way in which colonists conceived of the Hanoverian monarchy, underwriting the personality cults of George II and—in his early reign—George III. Similar phenomena affected other national leaders, most notably William Pitt the Elder. At the same time, the continentalist flavour of colonial nationalism promoted a porous kind of Britishness, allowing for the incorporation of settlers from other parts of Europe like the Netherlands and Germany, and even other religious groups—including, on some rare occasions, Roman Catholics and non-Europeans.