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The Transformation of the Detroit Land Market and the Formation of the Anglo-American Border, 1783–1796
by
Lawrence B. A. Hatter
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In November 1783, British diplomats in Paris agreed to cede the vast territory of the trans-Appalachian west to the newly independent United States of America as part of the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. For many residents of the Great Lakes, however, the freshly minted Anglo-American boundary made no sense. Not only did the American victory at the peace table stand at odds with the inconclusive nature of the war west of the Appalachians, but also, and more importantly, the border agreed to in the diplomatic settlement defied the topography of the Great Lakes region.1 |
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During the late eighteenth century, the network of lakes and rivers that comprised the extended St. Lawrence River valley fostered a transnational political economy; rivers and lakes were commercial highways that tied the Great Lakes region together through the free movement of goods, not political barriers that divided nations or empires. These watercourses gave rise to a transnational network of patronage that structured participation in the Great Lakes Indian trade: Detroit merchants relied on their creditors and suppliers in Montreal to provide them with access to the European market in order to acquire their trade goods and sell their furs. The largely London-based lobby of merchants trading with Quebec had warned the British ministry during the Paris negotiations that the boundary they were offering the United States "cuts off all the Trading Posts and almost all the Indian Nations; the Trade with whom was the grand object of the commercial Intercourse between Great Britain and the province of Quebec." Although the Canadian merchants were disappointed by the treaty, Britain actually retained the western posts on the southern shores of the Great Lakes until 1796. Trade continued its unobstructed flow across the Great Lakes, making a mockery of the so-called border between the British Empire and the United States.2 |
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Although the Treaty of Paris created in principle an Anglo-American border, dividing the lands north and south of the Great Lakes, this article will explain how that boundary became a reality to the leading inhabitants of the Great Lakes region. I will argue that the pursuit of a regulated market by local entrepreneurs at Detroit helped convert the political economy of the Great Lakes from a transnational network of patronage to a divided system of sovereign markets. The prospect of economic opportunity born of a regulated market in real estate redirected the economic interests of Detroit's entrepreneurs from their patrons in Montreal to the federal bureaucracy as the most profitable means of exploiting land in the Northwest. The transformation of the local land market was part of a broader process at work both north and south of the Great Lakes by which British and American authorities, in conjunction with local entrepreneurs, carved out rival domestic markets from a transnational environment. As such, the creation of a regulated real-estate market in Detroit was a key development in the extension of American sovereignty in the Great Lakes region. The land market brought together entrepreneurs and the inchoate federal state in an informal partnership to promote both individual economic opportunity and the extension of federal authority.3 |
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The redirection of the economic interests of Detroit's investors from their patrons in Montreal to the federal government in Philadelphia began during the summer of 1795 because at that moment the imminent establishment of U.S. authority promised new opportunities. Local entrepreneurs anticipated enhanced profits as soon as a real-estate market regulated by the federal government replaced the local system of exchange, based on quasi-legal titles. Although this older system of quasi-legal deeds had proved sufficient for exchanges in Detroit, where face-to-face negotiations were the norm, such documentation was altogether too risky for outside investors, who could obtain guaranteed legal titles elsewhere in the trans-Appalachian west. Consequently, local entrepreneurs saw enormous potential for profit in a regulated real-estate market and mobilized support for federal supervision even before American officials arrived in Detroit. |
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