Charlotina

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Charlotina was the name proposed for a colony, the establishment of which was suggested in a pamphlet appearing in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1763, entitled The Expediency of Securing our American Colonies by Settling the Country Adjoining the River Mississippi, and the Country upon the Ohio, Considered. Had such a colony been erected it would have included the region lying between the Maumee River, Wabash River and Ohio River, the upper Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The colony was one of several proposed at the end of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain acquired the vast region of New France in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Like the Mississippi Land Company's proposal for a new colony, however, nothing came of Charlotina, because the British government decided, with the Royal Proclamation of 1763, to forbid the creation of new colonies in the Mississippi Valley.

The title of the proposed colony is incorrectly spelled "Charlotiana" in some sources, a result of a manuscript error being repeated.[1] Variations of the name, including "Charlottina" and "Charlotta", were revived in 1770 as suggestions for a newly proposed colony with different boundaries, but the name "Vandalia" was chosen instead. All of these names were in honor of Queen Charlotte, who was thought to be descended from the Vandals.[2] Vandalia, like Charlotina, was never established.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Alvord, Critical Period, p. 139, note 1.
  2. ^ Abernethy, Western Lands, 52–54.

[edit] References

  • Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. Western Lands and the American Revolution. Originally published 1937. New York: Russell & Russell, 1959.
  • Adams, James Truslow. Dictionary of American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940.
  • Alvord, Clarence W. The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, vol. 1. Cleveland, Ohio: Arthur Clark, 1917.
  • Alvord, Clarence W, ed. The Critical Period, 1763–1765. Volume 10 of the Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library. Springfield, Illinois: Illinois State Historical Library, 1915. Online at Google Book Search; contains a reprint of the pamphlet in which the colony was proposed.