History of Baton Rouge - British Period (1763-1779)

British Period (1763-1779)

On February 10, 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War; France ceded its territory in North America to Britain and Spain. Britain ended up with all land east of the Mississippi, except for New Orleans. Baton Rouge, now part of the newly-created British colony of West Florida, suddenly had strategic significance as the southwest-most corner of British North America. Spain for a period had rule of New Orleans and all land west of the Mississippi, administering numerous French colonial towns, such as St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve in present-day Missouri.

Baton Rouge slowly developed as a town under British rule. The colony awarded land grants and was successful in attracting European-American settlers. When the older British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America rebelled in 1776, the newer colony of West Florida, lacking a history of local government and distrustful of the potentially hostile Spanish nearby, remained loyal to the British Crown.

In 1778 during the American Revolutionary War, France declared war on Britain, and in 1779, Spain followed suit. That same year, the Spanish Governor Don Bernardo de Galvez led a militia of nearly 1,400 Spanish soldiers and a small contingent of rebellious British colonials from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, capturing the recently constructed Fort New Richmond in the Battle of Baton Rouge. The Spanish renamed the site Fort San Carlos, and took control of Baton Rouge. Galvez subsequently captured Mobile in 1780 and Pensacola in 1781, ending the British presence on the Gulf Coast.