The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution
Diversity and Empire in the British Atlantic, 1688-1783
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:13th Oct '22
£36.99
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How did an unlikely group of peoples--Irish-speaking Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians--play an even unlikelier role in the origins of the American Revolution? Drawing on little-used sources in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution places these typically marginalized peoples in Ireland, Scotland, and North America at the center of a larger drama of imperial reform and revolution. Gaelic and Indian peoples experiencing colonization in the eighteenth-century British empire fought back by building relationships with the king and imperial officials. In doing so, they created a more inclusive empire and triggered conflict between the imperial state and formerly privileged provincial Britons: Irish Protestants, Scottish whigs, and American colonists. The American Revolution was only one aspect of this larger conflict between inclusive empire and the exclusionary patriots within the British empire. In fact, Britons had argued about these questions since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when revolutionaries had dethroned James II as they accused him of plotting to employ savage Gaelic and Indian enemies in a tyrranical plot against liberty. This was the same argument the American revolutionaries--and their sympathizers in England, Scotland, and Ireland--used against George III. Ironically, however, it was Gaelic and Indian peoples, not kings, who had pushed the empire in inclusive directions. In doing so they pushed the American patriots towards revolution. This novel account argues that Americans' racial dilemmas were not new nor distinctively American but instead the awkward legacies of a more complex imperial history. By showcasing how Gaelic and Indian peoples challenged the British empire--and in the process convinced American colonists to leave it--Samuel K. Fisher offers a new way of understanding the American Revolution and its relevance for our own times.
This book is an historical tour de force. With a wonderful comparative focus on indigenous nations of North America and Scottish and Irish Gaels, Samuel Fisher has not only provided fresh perspectives on the American Revolution but also on the transatlantic movement of peoples from the British Isles in the eighteenth century. * Sir Tom Devine, University of Edinburgh *
In 1776, the British Empire was a diverse, multinational dominion, but it was also a dominion run by — and almost exclusively for the benefit of — British, Irish, and Anglo-American Protestants. In this important, wide-ranging book, Samuel K. Fisher shows how unresolved questions over the place of Irish Catholics and Native Americans within Britain's eighteenth-century empire helped drive the conflicts that tore that empire apart. The result is a new and compelling account of the American Revolution's origins. * Eliga Gould, author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire *
Samuel Fisher looks to British, rather than purely English, history to explain why the elite in thirteen of Britain's American colonies decided suddenly in the 1770s that the imperial government had become oppressive and must be rejected. In this provocative and timely book, Fisher demonstrates how the attempt by George III to include Native Americans within his empire proved as offensive to 'exclusionary patriots' as had the actions of James II in treating Scottish Highlanders and Irish Catholics as equals with his Protestant subjects in the three kingdoms. * Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway *
With a long view and an Atlantic perspective, Samuel Fisher explains how Irish Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians reshaped the British Empire, and in doing so helped bring about the American Revolution. Thoughtfully and systematically considering empire, revolution, and nation-building in terms of inclusion and exclusion, this book challenges easy assumptions about tyranny and freedom in the eighteenth century and about the kind of society American revolutionaries created. * Colin G. Calloway, author of White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America *
The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution is a refreshing work of intellectual history... Fisher has read and interrogated primary sources and secondary literature with diligence and care. In doing so, he has offered eighteenth-century historians an invitation to revisit the structures of colonial rule in North America as well as the reasons behind the eruption of the American War of Independence. * Ioannes P. Chountis, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies *
- Winner of Honorable Mention, 2023 Donald Murphy Prize.
ISBN: 9780197555842
Dimensions: 161mm x 238mm x 29mm
Weight: 730g
336 pages