The Ancient Right Of The English Nation To The American Fishery; And Its Various Diminutions; Examined and Stated.
- William Bollan (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
Published in 1764 by William Bollan — a lawyer who served as colonial agent for Massachusetts Bay in London — this essay is an early and significant entry in the British pamphlet debates over American policy that preceded the Revolution. Bollan argues that England held longstanding, historically grounded rights to the fisheries off the American coast, particularly the rich cod grounds of the North Atlantic, and traces how those rights had been progressively eroded through treaties and diplomatic concessions.
Writing at a moment when Parliament was beginning to tighten its grip on colonial trade and resources, Bollan’s pamphlet frames the fishery question in terms of English national interest and legal precedent, making it both a historical account and a pointed political intervention.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.