Imperium in Imperio : The Peacetime Commander in Chief as a Linchpin of Colonial Reform

The commander in chief of the British forces in North America functioned as a linchpin for many of the colonial reforms that British ministries implemented after 1763. The office’s existence outside the authority of any single colony made the commander in chief a critical instrument for metropolitan reformers seeking to systematize and subordinate colonial governance. Aside from enforcing the Proclamation Line, regulating Indigenous trade, implementing the American Mutiny Act, ensuring peace in the west, and overseeing the expanded American establishment, the commander in chief also policed colonial resistance in the emerging imperial crisis. Yet the advent of a peacetime commander in chief in America is often overlooked as a reform in and of itself. While questions of sovereignty during this period often focus on the place of colonial assemblies, the creation of this new military commander in the colonies produced its own contests for authority from 1763 to 1774. Particularly for officials such as colonial governors, the division in authority between civil and military power represented a contradiction in sovereignty—an imperium in imperio . Men skeptical of this centralized power, as well as many who were merely self-interested, challenged the authority of the commander in chief and revealed the contradictions in British approaches to the structure of North American governance.