The Proclamation of 1763, issued October 7, 1763, by Great Britain’s Board of Trade under King George III, represented an attempt to control settlement and trade on the western frontier of Britain’s North American colonies. The proclamation essentially closed the Ohio Valley to settlement by colonists by defining the area west of the Appalachian Mountains as Indian land and declaring that the Indians were under the protection of the king. No settlement or land purchases were to be conducted there without the Crown’s approval. The proclamation also defined four new colonies that Great Britain had won from France in the just-concluded Seven Years’ War (1756–1763, known in its American manifestation as the French and Indian War). These colonies were Quebec (which in fact had long been settled), East and West Florida, and the island of Grenada.