Republic and Empire

Trevor Burnard (1960–2024) was Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull and director of the Wilberforce Institute. He was the author of numerous books on Caribbean plantation history and imperial history and served as editor of the Oxford Bibliography Online in Atlantic History. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy is professor of history at the University of Virginia. His books include An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean and the prizewinning The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire.

“Republic and Empire shows how a global perspective can yield fresh insight even on a topic as well-trodden as the American Revolution.”—New Criterion“Here is proof of one undeniable good achieved by the revolution: when it came to ‘the greatest curse that ever has afflicted the human race,’ it reawakened not only the American but the world’s conscience. Republic and Empire, in its unflinching way, carries on that tradition.”—Edward Short, Literary Review“This book will bring general readers up to speed with current scholarship on the Age of Empires.”—David Armitage, HistoryExtra Magazine“In this impressive distillation of a wide range of imperial scholarship, the authors present a compelling case for recognizing both the roots and the course of the American Revolution as profoundly influenced by events in the wider British Empire following its expansion in and immediately after the Seven Years’ War.”—Stephen Conway, University College London“The American Revolution was at once a civil war, a war of colonial liberation, and an imperial crisis. Viewing the conflict through empire’s eyes, O’Shaughnessy and Burnard reveal hidden connections and overlooked legacies that shaped the world of 1776 and continue to ramify around the globe.”—Jane Kamensky, Monticello“Timely, critically important contribution to our understanding of the American nation’s origins in a constitutional crisis and civil war that led half of Britain’s American colonies to declare independence. Balancing a welcome emphasis on the uncertain progress of the war with convincing accounts of why so many other colonies remained loyal, Burnard and O’Shaughnessy illuminate the contingent contexts that shaped individual and collective decisions in a revolutionary age.”—Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia“A masterful reappraisal of the American Revolution by two preeminent historians. Andrew O’Shaughnessy and the late Trevor Burnard brilliantly capture the duality at the heart of America’s founding: 1776 was both the beginning of a protracted imperial civil war and the birth of a democratic republic.”—Christa Dierksheide, author of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America