Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: reviews 1 9 1 Britons who first sought to exclude them, before coming to embrace inclusion, were Scottish Whigs, which of course included many Gaels.A long view approach likewise both benefits from, and is challenged by, Fisher's inclusion of imperial go-betweens.Such actors are essential to his demonstration of the agency of excluded groups and the ways in which they were able to force the imperial state to consider and, in some cases, to implement more inclusive forms of empire.Fisher identifies the imperial gobetweens as members of excluded groups who sought better outcomes for their people through negotiation and accommodation, rather than by resisting the imperial state though alignment with France.Fisher demonstrates how such actors could manipulate the British state's fears for their own benefit, such as when the Mohawk chief Hendrick Peters Theyanougin claimed in 1753 that the Covenant Chain was broken in order to push imperial officials to take greater control over Indian diplomacy.Yet Fisher's identification of the Campbells of Argyll as both the key imperial go-betweens and the most important provincials for managing the excluded population in Scotland both pre-and post-1745 leads to an oversimplified account of the pacification of the Highlands and the rehabilitation of Highlanders into the imperial fold.Overall, the book's engagement with the contradictions and changing conceptions of empire in three separate imperial theatres makes it essential reading for any scholar of the American Revolution.Despite the difficulties inherent in a comparative account dealing with such a long period, the book's key argument that peoples other than white Britons in England or the colonies played an important role in shaping empire in North America, and therefore must be considered when examining the outbreak of the American Revolution, is an important one that is well developed throughout.
Author: R. J. W. Mills
Institution: University of St Andrews
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4394754164