Kenneth Morgan

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Kenneth Morgan | Robert Dinwiddie's Reports on the British American Colonies | The William and Mary Quarterly, 65.2 | The History Cooperative

Sources and Interpretations

Robert Dinwiddie's Reports on the British American Colonies

THREE reports written by Robert Dinwiddie, dated 1740, 1743, and 1748, supply detailed information on the military strength, shipping, trade, commodity output, and black population of the British American colonies. Of interest to students of early American history and particularly to specialists in the economic history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world, these documents offer a snapshot of the economic strength of Britain's American and West Indian colonies during the 1740s. The three reports are printed here together for the first time. The first was presented to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, known as the Board of Trade. The second was addressed to Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle. Another version of the second report was sent to Henry Pelham at the Treasury. The third was also addressed to Pelham.¹ Dinwiddie's reports stand out from other contemporary compilations because they furnish precise estimates of the demographic, economic, and military state of the British North American and West Indian colonies at a given point in time by a well-informed individual.	1
Born October 3, 1692, into a Presbyterian family in Glasgow, Scotland, one of nine children of a merchant, Dinwiddie was educated at the University of Glasgow. After graduating in 1710/11, he embarked on a trading career, possibly in his father's countinghouse. His main occupation consisted, however, of a series of increasingly influential posts in the colonies. In 1718 he settled in Saint George's Parish, Bermuda. Appointed to the new position of comptroller of Admiralty rights in Bermuda on September 1, 1721, he was acting as customs collector there in 1725, though he was not officially recognized as such until 1730 when he petitioned for payment for his services. Dinwiddie became a member of the Bermuda Council in 1730. He remained in Bermuda until 1738. In addition to his official duties, which were neither time consuming nor well paid, he was a shipowner, merchant, and substantial businessman, becoming the richest man in Saint George's Parish. Sometime before 1738 he married Rebecca Auchinleck, the only daughter of the main Anglican clergyman in Bermuda. The couple had two daughters.²	2
Dinwiddie's career in the customs service advanced when, on April 11, 1738, he was appointed surveyor general of the southern colonies, which extended from Pennsylvania down through the Carolinas to Jamaica and the Bahamas (the surveyor general of the northern colonies was responsible for New Jersey northward to Newfoundland). The position was a life appointment with an annual salary in excess of £300. The Surveyor and Auditor-General of His Majesty's Revenues in America, Horatio Walpole, brother of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, selected Dinwiddie for the post, knowing him to be a skillful officer and a man of integrity.³	. . .

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