"Necessity Has No Law: Centering Royal Governors in Pre-Revolutionary Debates

Royal Governors sent to the British North American colonies in the decades prior to the

Revolutionary War faced the difficult task of overseeing provincial assemblies comprised of

refractory local elites. The governors’ task was complicated by an imperial structure imposed by

London that created doubt regarding the parameters of authority. A series of controversies in the

Southern Colonies during the French and Indian War demonstrate flaws in the British imperial

constitution related to: the governors’ dual role as chief executive and colonial administrator, the

confused and sometimes contradictory British bureaucratic hierarchy, and the absence of

centralized coordination among the colonies. Provincial administration was also hampered by the

governors’ capacity to exercise power based on their own proclivities. The dysfunctional outcomes

arising from these controversies contributed to the growing divergence of metropolitan officials’

and colonial elites’ vision of the imperial constitution.