The Empire Reformed - (Early American Studies) by Owen Stanwood (Paperback)

About the Book

The Empire Reformed describes how, in the era of the Glorious Revolution, imperial leaders and colonial subjects created new political bonds based on their common desire to save English America from the designs of French "papists" and their "savage" Indian allies.

Book Synopsis

The Empire Reformed tells the story of a forgotten revolution in English America--a revolution that created not a new nation but a new kind of transatlantic empire. During the seventeenth century, England's American colonies were remote, disorganized outposts with reputations for political turmoil. Colonial subjects rebelled against authority with stunning regularity, culminating in uprisings that toppled colonial governments in the wake of England's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688-89. Nonetheless, after this crisis authorities in both England and the colonies successfully rebuilt the empire, providing the cornerstone of the great global power that would conquer much of the continent over the following century.

In The Empire Reformed historian Owen Stanwood illustrates this transition in a narrative that moves from Boston to London to Barbados and Bermuda. He demonstrates not only how the colonies fit into the empire but how imperial politics reflected--and influenced--changing power dynamics in England and Europe during the late 1600s. In particular, Stanwood reveals how the language of Catholic conspiracies informed most colonists' understanding of politics, serving first as the catalyst of rebellions against authority, but later as an ideological glue that held the disparate empire together. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution imperial leaders and colonial subjects began to define the British empire as a potent Protestant union that would save America from the designs of French "papists" and their "savage" Indian allies. By the eighteenth century, British Americans had become proud imperialists, committed to the project of expanding British power in the Americas.

Review Quotes

"Deeply and broadly researched, The Empire Reformed offers a compelling explanation for the political turbulence in colonial North America in the late seventeenth century, and frames it powerfully in a narrative account that makes sense of events in the region from the Chesapeake northward, between the Great Lakes to the West, and the Atlantic Ocean to the East."-- "Mark Peterson, University of California, Berkeley"

"In a British historiographical context, Owen Stanwood has produced a timely intervention; in an Americanist one, a fresh interpretation of the Glorious Revolution. . . . Stanwood's masterful research and writing make an invaluable contribution to debate over this ever-intriguing event."-- "American Historical Review"

"Stanwood's book is excellent when illustrating the diverse local triggers for the Glorious Revolution in the colonies. He demonstrates that while this was a shared experience across the British Atlantic, it was also a series of events that set one colony's experience apart from another's. However, the book is most exciting when it shows how local concerns in America intersected with imperial concerns, driven from London."-- "Itinerario"

About the Author

Owen Stanwood is Associate Professor of History at Boston College.