The Scratch of a Pen -- 1763 and the Transformation of America by Colin G. Calloway, Oxford UP '06, $26, 224 pages, ISBN #0195300718. Index, source notes, no bibliography, maps and b&w illustrations sprinkled through text.
No less a historian than Francis Parkman has written that with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, concluding the French and Indian War, "half a continent...changed hands at the scratch of a pen." Lots of intelligent people should not be embarrassed to ask, "What's the Treaty of Paris?"
Author Calloway would doubtless forgive that question too. For his mission in this new book is to enlighten his readers, to help them realize that by the peace treaty, France and Spain gave over all land east of the Mississippi, including Canada, to the British. As with any new occupier, the lives of the occupied changed markedly, and this was no exception. In fact, Calloway asserts that 1763 planted the seeds of the American Revolution, noting that the "taxation without representation" that Britain began to impose resulted from the fact that war had made the tax assessor nearly bankrupt.
The Scratch of a Pen is part of Oxford University Press's Pivotal Moments of American History series. It has received a starred review from Publishers' Weekly.
