Loyalism in the Atlantic Diaspora

During the American Revolution, an organized cadre of loyalist leaders based in New York City won support for their vision of an American future within the British Empire. That their vision of America did not win the support of a majority of colonists has negated their appeal and their significance. The conventional narrative posits loyalists as a conservative minority who yearned for an ideologically impossible relationship with the empire. But, as Andrew O’Shaughnessy shows, half the British colonies remained unwilling to separate from the benefits of the empire. However, various pockets of British societies in the western Atlantic did not identify and articulate their connection to the empire in the same language. I would like to compare what the Britons at home and the Britons in the mainland and in the Caribbean islands expected from their allegiance to the empire. In the spirit of “Globalizing Historiography,” I would like to place the loyalist diaspora in conversation and in debate.