The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
The Books
Ramusio Map (1534). Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library
Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2011)
By Matthew Burnett and Abby Fisher
In Liberty’s Exiles, Maya Jasanoff details the story of American loyalists during and after the American Revolution. She splits the narrative into three sections, the first discussing how loyalists experienced the Revolution, why some decided to leave America, and how they did so. Throughout this section, Jasanoff writes of the struggle many went through as they debated where their loyalties lay. Showing allegiance to the crown often endangered the lives of the loyalists and their families. Many ended up leaving their properties and fleeing to loyalist strongholds such as New York City, where they hoped not be persecuted for their ideals. Jasanoff also details the effect the end of the war had on loyalists, as many felt abandoned by the British. They believed that Britain could have done more to protect their property and offered some sort of compensation for those that had to leave their entire livelihoods behind. The second section focuses on loyalists that fled to Britain and British North America, centering around how the refugees were compensated for their losses and dealt with forming new communities. Many loyalists found it difficult to flee to Britain. Many of them had never been there, and while they initially viewed Britain as their home, their immersion into a completely different culture clarified that Britain was, in fact, a foreign country to them as well. Loyalists who fled to British North America were not much better off, as they had very little with which to establish settlements and received almost no help from the crown. The third section focuses on refugees in the Caribbean and Africa, specifically how they dealt with challenging environmental and economic conditions and the escalated tensions over slavery and race. Initially, colonies in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, seemed desirable as they were close to America and had an agreeable climate; however, economic restrictions made it very difficult for refugees to establish themselves. Britain also tried to establish a free colony in Africa, but this was difficult because of the prevalence of slavery in the territories surrounding the colony of Sierra Leone.
The loyalist diaspora. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, thousands of American loyalists were forced to move to from their American homes to places as far as away as Africa and India. Image from Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles, 2-3.
Jasanoff offers an innovative perspective by looking at the loyalist point of view. Typically, historians portray the loyalists as being closely aligned with British ideals. However, Jasanoff dispels this myth showing that (a) loyalist feelings spanned a large spectrum and (b) many loyalists grew disillusioned by the British by the end of the Revolution. Throughout Liberty’s Exiles, Jasanoff exposes her readers to several different loyalists of all different ideologies and offers a nuanced interpretation of the heterogeneity behind the term loyalism. At one end of the spectrum were loyalists like Charles Inglis, an assistant rector in New York City. As a member of the Anglican Church, Inglis felt that he had to remain loyal to the crown. However, this did not mean that he had any involvement in the war; he simply felt he owed something to the crown and did not want to fight against it. On the other end of the spectrum were some members of the British Army, such as General Cornwallis. These loyalists were only concerned with putting forth the British cause; they paid no mind to how it affected others. Closer to the middle were men like John Cruden or Sir Guy Carleton. They were undeniably loyalists and served in the British Army, but they were concerned with more than just blindly spreading British ideals. They fought for those who did not have a voice; specifically, Cruden fought for all the refugees, and Carleton fought for many of the free black loyalists. Being able to uncover this spectrum allows Jasanoff to demonstrate that loyalists were more than a homogenous mixture of Britons and British supporters. There was plenty of variation among the ranks.
Sir Guy Carleton. In the spectrum of loyalism, some American loyalists active fought for Britain while others tried hard to maintain both their loyalty to the crown and to avoid direct involvement in the war. Carleton fell somewhat in the middle. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Benjamin West, "Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783." Despite the welcoming reception depicted in West's painting, many American loyalists who fled to Britain in the aftermath of the American Revolution felt that life in Britain different too dramatically from American life for them to fell that they belonged in the motherland. Image from The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
Above all else, Liberty's Exiles informs its readers of the innate human desire to belong. Among the first loyalists, Maya Jasanoff writes of a reluctance to decide where their loyalties lay. Many loyalists expressed fear for their safety or the safety of their families if they chose to speak out against the increasingly popular patriotic beliefs. As the onset of the American Revolution drew ever closer, loyalists, regardless of where they fell on the spectrum that described them, were forced to choose between two very black-and-white options: would they fight for or against so-called tyranny? Maya Jasanoff repeatedly clarifies that for most loyalists, the decision was not so simple. Many loyalists agreed with Patriotic arguments, such as the need for more colonial representation in the British Parliament. However, many loyalists felt that the colonies would be better off if they remained a part of the British Empire. When the Patriots won the American Revolution, many loyalists found their hopes of compromise and continued prosperity within the new United States dashed. Being made to choose forced a new (and, quite probably, unwanted) identity on the loyalists. Suddenly, that opinion-driven identity alienated the loyalists from their friends and family, as well as from their home. Their voices and opinions were unwanted even by the new societal and governmental structure that touted ideals of representation and freedom. Many loyalists were nomads before they fled America; they no longer belonged, ideologically or literally, to the land they called home. And fleeing did not often provide the loyalists with the comfort for which they hoped. While some Loyalists considered Britain the motherland, many felt that when they returned or fled to Britain, the culture and experience of life in Britain differed too dramatically from colonial American life for them to find any comfort or normalcy in their new homes. Loyalists were ideological travelers as well as literal ones; their opinions lay somewhere in between patriotism and colonialism, and few places to which they fled seemed fitting to their ideals.