A new history of Loyalism using revolutionary New England as a case study.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England begins with a snapshot of the region on the eve of the Boston Tea Party. The colonists' Republican tradition helped them spark the Revolution, but their special history also threatened the unity of the United States throughout the Revolutionary War, for Loyalists tried to discredit New Englanders as a naturally rebellious people. Yet Ingersoll shows that the rebels never sought to drive the dissenters out of the new nation, and accorded them a remarkable degree of liberal toleration, with the great majority of Loyalists ultimately becoming citizens of the new states.

The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England begins with a snapshot of the region on the eve of the Boston Tea Party. The colonists' Republican tradition helped them spark the Revolution, but their special history also threatened the unity of the United States throughout the Revolutionary War, for Loyalists tried to discredit New Englanders as a naturally rebellious people. Yet Ingersoll shows that the rebels never sought to drive the dissenters out of the new nation, and accorded them a remarkable degree of liberal toleration, with the great majority of Loyalists ultimately becoming citizens of the new states.

Thousands of British American mainland colonists rejected the War for American Independence. Shunning rebel violence as unnecessary, unlawful, and unnatural, they emphasized the natural ties of blood, kinship, language, and religion that united the colonies to Britain. They hoped that British military strength would crush the minority rebellion and free the colonies to renegotiate their return to the empire. Of course the loyalists were too American to be of one mind. This is a story of how a cross-section of colonists flocked to the British headquarters of New York City to support their ideal of reunion. Despised by the rebels as enemies or as British appendages, New York’s refugees hoped to partner with the British to restore peaceful government in the colonies. The British confounded their expectations by instituting martial law in the city and marginalizing loyalist leaders. Still, the loyal Americans did not surrender their vision but creatively adapted their rhetoric and accommodated military governance to protect their long-standing bond with the mother country. They never imagined that allegiance to Britain would mean a permanent exile from their homes.

"For most Americans, the Revolution's main achievement is summed up by the phrase 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Yet far from a straightforward attempt to be free of Old World laws and customs, the American founding was also a bid for inclusion in the community of nations as it existed in 1776. America aspired to diplomatic recognition under international law and the authority to become a colonizing power itself. The Revolution was an international transformation of the first importance. To conform to the public law of Europe's imperial powers, Americans crafted a union nearly as centralized as the one they had overthrown, endured taxes heavier than any they had faced as British colonists, and remained entangled with European Atlantic empires long after the Revolution ended. No factor weighed more heavily on Americans than the legally plural Atlantic where they hoped to build their empire. Gould follows the region's transfiguration from a fluid periphery with its own rules and norms to a place where people of all descriptions were expected to abide by the laws of Western Europe -- 'civilized' laws that precluded neither slavery nor the dispossession of Native Americans."--Jacket

In this thought-provoking history, Gilbert illuminates how the fight for abolition and equality - not just for the independence of the few but for the freedom and self-government of the many - has been central to the American story from its inception."--Pub. desc.

Adding to a dynamic new wave of scholarship in Atlantic history, The Loyal Atlantic offers fresh interpretations of the key role played by Loyalism in shaping the early modern British Empire. This cohesive collection investigates how Loyalism and the empire were mutually constituted and reconstituted from the eighteenth century onward. Featuring contributions by authors from across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, The Loyal Atlantic brings Loyalism into a genuinely international focus. Through cutting-edge archival research, The Loyal Atlantic contextualizes Loyalism within the larger history of the British Empire. It also details how, far from being a passive allegiance, Loyalism changed in unexpected and fascinating ways — especially in times of crisis. Most importantly, The Loyal Atlantic demonstrates that neither the conquest of Canada nor the American Revolution can be properly understood without assessing the meanings of Loyalism in the wider Atlantic world.

How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entities Historians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern nations emerged. Treating this pivotal moment as a bridge rather than a break, The Imperial Nation offers a sweeping examination of four of these modern powers—Great Britain, France, Spain, and the United States—and asks how, after the great revolutionary cycle in Europe and America, the history of monarchical empires shaped these new nations. Josep Fradera explores this transition, paying particular attention to the relations between imperial centers and their sovereign territories and the constant and changing distinctions placed between citizens and subjects. Fradera argues that the essential struggle that lasted from the Seven Years’ War to the twentieth century was over the governance of dispersed and varied peoples: each empire tried to ensure domination through subordinate representation or by denying any representation at all. The most common approach echoed Napoleon’s “special laws,” which allowed France to reinstate slavery in its Caribbean possessions. The Spanish and Portuguese constitutions adopted “specialness” in the 1830s; the United States used comparable guidelines to distinguish between states, territories, and Indian reservations; and the British similarly ruled their dominions and colonies. In all these empires, the mix of indigenous peoples, European-origin populations, slaves and indentured workers, immigrants, and unassimilated social groups led to unequal and hierarchical political relations. Fradera considers not only political and constitutional transformations but also their social underpinnings. Presenting a fresh perspective on the ways in which nations descended and evolved from and throughout empires, The Imperial Nation highlights the ramifications of this entangled history for the subjects who lived in its shadows.