The making of a timber colony: British North America, the navy board, and global resource extraction in the age of Napoleon

Abstract

This article recounts the worldwide search for timber undertaken by the Navy Board, the administrative body under the authority of the Admiralty responsible for the supply of naval stores and the construction and repair of ships during the Napoleonic Wars. The closure of the Baltic by France and its European allies is considered the main factor in making British North America a timber colony. Yet the process through which the forests of the Laurentian Plateau and the North Appalachians came to fuel the dockyards of England and Scotland is taken for granted. To acquire this commodity, through merchants, diplomats, and commissioned agents, the power of the British state reached globally, reshaped ecological relationships, and integrated new landscapes to the Imperial economy. Many alternatives to the Baltic were indeed considered and tentatively exploited. Only a mixture of contingency, political factors, and environmental constraints forced the Board to contract in Lower Canada and New Brunswick rather than in areas such as the Western Cape, the Brazilian coast, or Bombay's hinterland.