Proclamation of 1763

This one-page set of excerpts from the Proclamation of 1763 can be used in a wide variety of ways to aide in student understanding of the growing division between the British and the Colonists in the years preceding the Revolutionary War. As my classes explore this era, I like to emphasize the life lesson that often people react more strongly to the way we deliver bad news than to the news itself.

I ask students to underline or highlight language that the Colonists would have perceived as intolerably arrogant as we read through the excerpts and I have students suggest a modern-language equivalent for each phrase.

Students enjoy making up modern translations and delivering them with arrogant zeal.

This activity is an ideal lead-in to my Stamp Act Simulation but I also use it in Government classes when we talk about the Enlightenment and Divine Right Theory.

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