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.
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Front Matter Front Matter (pp. i-vi) -
Table of Contents Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii) -
List of Illustrations List of Illustrations (pp. ix-x) -
Introduction: Popery and Politics in the British Atlantic World Introduction: Popery and Politics in the British Atlantic World (pp. 1-22)On 4 June 1702, a crowd of worshippers gathered in Boston to pay homage to their departed monarch. William III had died the previous March, and as the Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth noted, seldom had there been a more heroic leader. William had been “A Good King,” Wadsworth preached, because he “Imploy[ed] his Power and Authority for the good of his People.” The king’s greatest moment had been the manner in which he had come to the throne fourteen years earlier. At that time, England and its dominions were in “languishing circumstances,” ruled by a catholic monarch, James II, whose policies...
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PART I. Empire Imagined -
Chapter 1 Imperial Designs Chapter 1 Imperial Designs (pp. 25-53)Beginning in the 1670s administrators in Charles II’s court sought to build a new empire. As an anonymous official noted, proper management of “forraigne Plantations” was of “great consequence … to the prosperity of [the] Nation.” The king’s empire was vast, but poorly regulated. Local officials in the various plantations worked in virtual isolation from authorities in Whitehall, and unlike other European states, England did not have a single office managing colonial affairs before the mid-1670s. The consequences of this oversight were profound; the king lost revenue and power, and colonial subjects languished on their own, as evidenced in the...
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Chapter 2 Catholics, Indians, and the Politics of Conspiracy Chapter 2 Catholics, Indians, and the Politics of Conspiracy (pp. 54-82)In the summer of 1688 the governor of the Dominion of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, faced a political crisis. A group of hostile Indians had attacked the colony’s northern and western borders, killing and capturing a number of English settlers and causing frightened townspeople to take refuge in garrison houses. Even more alarming than the violence, however, were the colonists’ reactions. In Maine, local officials foolishly imprisoned several Abenaki chiefs, while the people of Marlborough, Massachusetts, assembled in arms without any instruction from the governor. To calm these fears, Andros sent his lieutenant, Francis Nicholson, on a good will...
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PART II. Empire Lost -
Chapter 3 Rumors and Rebellions Chapter 3 Rumors and Rebellions (pp. 85-112)In the last months of 1688 a new wave of fear swept England’s American colonies. On the island of Barbados, white planters believed themselves to be targets of a vast design by popish recusants, French Jesuits, and Irish servants, a plot to reduce the island to “popery and slavery” and perhaps deliver it to France. By January 1689 almost identical rumors appeared in New England, where Indians joined the list of enemies, and two months later settlers on the frontier of Maryland and Virginia began whispering of the same plot. At the same time, rumors of a different sort arrived...
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Chapter 4 The Empire Turned Upside Down Chapter 4 The Empire Turned Upside Down (pp. 113-140)In the wake of the rebellions of 1689, people from London to Boston debated the structure and meaning of the English empire in America. Not surprisingly, the colonists who had overthrown the Dominion of New England represented their action, like the larger Revolution in England, as a moderate, conservative, and consensual event. The people who took to the streets in Boston, New York, and Maryland were not firebrands but good English patriots, preserving the plantations for their rightful monarchs William and Mary against the tyrannical agents of the deposed James II. The former agents of the Stuart empire quite naturally...
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PART III. Empire Regained -
Chapter 5 The Protestant Assault on French America Chapter 5 The Protestant Assault on French America (pp. 143-176)In July 1693 a large flotilla of English naval vessels, led by Sir Francis Wheler, limped into the port of Boston. Months earlier, Wheler had sailed from England to Barbados with 3,000 men and a mandate to destroy French America. His assault on the French Antilles had foundered, however, and along the way the fleet met a more formidable adversary than the French: disease. Hundreds of men died in a plague so virulent that Wheler worried whether anyone would be left to man the ships. When they arrived in Boston, the next stop on the tour, he predicted that the...
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Chapter 6 Ambivalent Bonds Chapter 6 Ambivalent Bonds (pp. 177-206)The bloody conflict of the 1690s created a great dilemma for many colonial Americans. Nowhere was this dilemma more visible than on the Isles of Shoals, a set of rocky outcroppings off the coast of New Hampshire. The islands were famous for their independence: though they were nominally part of New Hampshire, no authority possessed any real control there, and the Isles were known as way stations for smugglers and pirates. With England and France at war, however, the islanders suddenly developed a grudging respect for authority. Fearing an enemy attack, they wrote to the provisional government in Boston in...
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Epilogue: Nicholson’s Redemption Epilogue: Nicholson’s Redemption (pp. 207-220)In 1710 a set of verses circulated around Boston paying homage to the recent English conquest of Acadia. The work began by praising the hero of the moment, the man who had commanded the victorious expedition. “Queen Anne sends Nicholson from London,” the poet began, “To save New-England from being undone; / Who being come does forward push, / Regards nor Coin nor Life a Rush.” The man in question, Francis Nicholson, must have been pleased, and perhaps a bit surprised, to be lauded in verse by a New Englander—even one of such questionable talent. After all, Nicholson had...
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List of Abbreviations List of Abbreviations (pp. 221-222) -
Notes Notes (pp. 223-266) -
Index Index (pp. 267-274) -
Acknowledgments Acknowledgments (pp. 275-277)