Why did British politicians on both sides of the Atlantic propose a confederal rather than incorporating union in 1754? This question has been difficult to answer because most scholars have focused on the Albany Plan of Union outside of its imperial context, seeing in the plan either evidence of nascent American nationalism, a point of divergence between American and British conceptions of empire, or a missed moment to establish parliamentary supremacy over America. I show instead that the British and American plans for confederal union in 1754 formed part of an intensely partisan and pan-imperial debate about the nature of the British imperial constitution. The failure to adopt a confederal imperial constitution in 1754 had more to do with the contingency of the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War than with diverging British and American visions of empire or nascent American nationalism.

为什么大西洋两岸的英国政治家在 1754 年提出建立邦联而不是合并联邦？这个问题很难回答，因为大多数学者都把注意力放在帝国背景之外的奥尔巴尼联盟计划上，他们在该计划中看到了新生的美国民族主义的证据，美国和英国帝国概念之间的分歧点，或者错过了建立议会对美国至高无上的时刻。相反，我表明，英国和美国 1754 年建立邦联联盟的计划构成了关于大英帝国宪法性质的激烈党派和泛帝国辩论的一部分。