by Godfrey Giles
During the American Revolution, not every spy carried secret letters or operated under a false name. Sometimes, all they needed was an ordinary reason to be somewhere.
Ann Bates was a schoolteacher from Philadelphia who supported the British cause.
In 1778, she began working as a spy for the British Army. Her disguise was surprisingly simple: she pretended to be a traveling merchant selling small goods to American soldiers.
This allowed her to enter Continental Army camps without immediately attracting suspicion.
While moving among the soldiers, Bates gathered information about troop numbers, weapons, artillery positions, and military preparations.
She was particularly useful because she could recognize different types of artillery, something that made her reports valuable to British commanders.
And unlike many of the famous spies of the Revolution, Bates wasn't working for George Washington.
She was spying on him.
Her story is an interesting reminder that the American Revolution wasn't simply a war between Americans and British soldiers. Thousands of colonists remained loyal to the Crown, and some actively worked against independence.
If you were a soldier in Washington's army, would you have suspected a woman selling supplies of being a British spy?
And how many other people might have passed through military camps without anyone realizing what they were actually doing?
Ann Bates is one of the historical figures you can talk to on Virtual Wayback. You can ask her about her missions, why she supported the British, and what it was like gathering intelligence inside enemy camps.
The 1607 construction of the triangular palisade at James Fort painted by Sydney King for the National Park Service. This painting is a historical reconstruction based on archaeological evidence, period accounts, and what historians know about early 17th-century fortifications and colonial life.
In this timeline, France, through multiple military victories in the Seven Years' War, successfully captured British North America, and after the war ended, exchanged Hanover for sovereignty over British North America. New France would transform from a "fur-trading post empire" into a vast continental empire ruled by a French-speaking minority over an English-speaking majority. In the early period, the French crown retained the grassroots autonomy and agricultural economy of the former British colonies, but reclaimed sovereignty for the crown and established a governor-general to administer them uniformly; the area west of the Appalachian Mountains was designated as an Indigenous buffer zone and a French military-agricultural zone, with English settlers forbidden to cross. Economically, the French pursued mercantilism, monopolizing trade and restricting colonial industry, but the English-speaking population reached 1.5 million while the French-speaking population was only 70,000, a ratio of about 20:1, making assimilation and control extremely difficult. To change the demographic disadvantage, France relaxed religious restrictions, funded the immigration of veterans and farmers, and recognized mixed-race populations, but French immigration still could not catch up with the English-speaking population.
After 1760, English-speaking population growth and land demand continually eroded the western prohibition, while the unequal political status of English-speaking and French-speaking populations also triggered direct confrontation between the two sides. On the eastern seaboard, with support from Britain, multiple tax resistance movements, anti-French movements, and armed rebellions broke out. French financial and military pressure intensified, and eventually the New France colonial government compromised: the French king granted self-government to the English-speaking states, while also establishing joint development zones west of the Appalachian Mountains, thereby alleviating the conflict. The French seigneurial system was difficult to transplant into the English-speaking free-land tradition, and the West gradually formed a frontier society mixing French, English, and Indigenous peoples. As time passed, cultural blending and social change in the Americas would help promote the intellectual emancipation of the colony's French population, thereby making it an important bastion of the Enlightenment.
This cartoon was published in the American magazine Judge on June 11, 1898, by the artist Victor Gillam; it depicts the alliance and geopolitical rapprochement (the "Great Rapprochement") between the United States and the British Empire.
Historical and Artistic Significance
The Great Rapprochement describes a fundamental shift in the relationship between Great Britain and the United States in the late Nineteenth Century. In general, the social and political objectives of the two nations converged, while both recognized their shared history and democratic institutions. Significant changes in the both countries made the Great Rapprochement mutually beneficial as well. Great Britain came to value the United States as a democratic ally at a time when the balance of power in Europe was impacted by the rise of autocracies in Russia and Germany. The relationship would become even more important as the Boar Wars revealed the overextension of British power, and the Boxer Rebellion in China threatened to further complicate the balance of power in Europe. Changes in the United States also made the new relationship possible. The United States emerged from the Civil War as an industrial nation. As a result of the Spanish-American War, the nation became an imperial power, with new possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and centuries of Anglophobia declined. As the United States began to experience difficulties governing her new "possessions," American cartoonists made the connection between Uncle Sam's problems and John Bull's problems in South Africa. Essentially, in a complex world of rising and declining powers, the two nations put aside their trouble history and instead came to appreciate their common goals and interests. Both nations had both male and female caricatures. Great Britain has John Bull and Brittania, while the United States was represented by Uncle Sam and Columbia. Images of rapprochement often used these caricatures.
Reibey, at that time named Mary Haydock, was sent to the nascent colony of New South Wales in 1792. After working in the service of Major Francis Grose, Mary later married Thomas Reibey, a freeman and businessman from Ireland.
When Thomas died in 1811 and his business partner passed away soon after, Mary took over the business and helped grow it into a hugely successful enterprise. Later in life, she also became involved in philanthropy, contributing to church life and education in the burgeoning colony.
(You can read more details about Mary Reibey's life on our website, here.)
Images: Miniature watercolour of Mary Reibey, c.1835/Australian $20 bank note
p.s. Thanks to an Age of Exploration Reddit reader Top-Expert6086 for the tip!
The lithograph was published in the book Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discovery Of The Large, Rich And Beautiful Empire Of Guiana. Raleigh wrote the account one year after his 1595 journey to the region.
Although Raleigh failed to find El Dorado, discover any new lands or bring home wealth for his queen, the book itself was a huge success and captured the imagination of the English public back home.
(The Age of Exploration will be delving into this adventure and the subsequent book at a later date.)
While South Africa is well known for apartheid which excluded non white voters, prior to the formation of the Union of South Africa the Cape Colony had a diverse and multi racial voting system. Originally the Cape Colony's voting system required voters to own at least 25 pounds worth of property or an income of 50 pounds, which was later raised to 75 pounds as the number of black africa voters increased as the Cape expanded into Xhosa terrirory.
White politicians actively courted non white voters who were a key swing vote in many voting districts. The main weakness of the Cape system was the severe overrepresentation of rural seats over urban seats which in the long term came back to bite the Cape when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. Part of the agreement to join South Africa was that the Cape would keep its voting system, which it did, however it became the mission of Afrikaaner politicians to destroy the Cape franchise which didnt truly come to fruition until 1931 when white women gained the right to vote which had the effect of havling the non white vote in the Cape as non white women were not given the vote.
This eventually allowed the NP to slowly get rid of the non white franchise from 1936 when black voters were put on a seperate voters roll voting in white representatives and in 1956 when coloureds were full removed from the voters roll.
The Cape Colony represents a path that was not taken by South Africa but one which almost certianlly existed and was defended by Cape Liberals for decades even as Afrikaaners turned to the right. A multi racial South Africa or even just an indepdent multi racial cape dominion were very real alternatives to apartheid South Africa showing that Apartheid in the Cape at least was not inevitable