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An Empire on the Edge

How Britain Came to Fight America

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Written from a strikingly fresh perspective, this new account of the Boston Tea Party and the origins of the American Revolution shows how a lethal blend of politics, personalities, and economics led to a war that few people welcomed but nobody could prevent.  


In this powerful but fair-minded narrative, British author Nick Bunker tells the story of the last three years of mutual embitterment that preceded the outbreak of America’s war for independence in 1775. It was a tragedy of errors, in which both sides shared responsibility for a conflict that cost the lives of at least twenty thousand Britons and a still larger number of Americans. The British and the colonists failed to see how swiftly they were drifting toward violence until the process had gone beyond the point of no return.

At the heart of the book lies the Boston Tea Party, an event that arose from fundamental flaws in the way the British managed their affairs. By the early 1770s, Great Britain had become a nation addicted to financial speculation, led by a political elite beset by internal rivalry and increasingly baffled by a changing world. When the East India Company came close to collapse, it patched together a rescue plan whose disastrous side effect was the destruction of the tea.


With lawyers in London calling the Tea Party treason, and with hawks in Parliament crying out for revenge, the British opted for punitive reprisals without foreseeing the resistance they would arouse. For their part, Americans underestimated Britain’s determination not to give way. By the late summer of 1774, when the rebels in New England began to arm themselves, the descent into war had become irreversible. 
           

Drawing on careful study of primary sources from Britain and the United States, An Empire on the Edge sheds new light on the Tea Party’s origins and on the roles of such familiar characters as Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Thomas Hutchinson. The book shows how the king’s chief minister, Lord North, found himself driven down the road to bloodshed. At his side was Lord Dartmouth, the colonial secretary, an evangelical Christian renowned for his benevolence. In a story filled with painful ironies, perhaps the saddest was this: that Dartmouth, a man who loved peace, had to write the dispatch that sent the British army out to fight.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 7, 2014
      Covering the three years leading up to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, journalist Bunker (Making Haste from Babylon) wisely jettisons a hero/villain dichotomy in favor of a nuanced global analysis of Britain’s failure to hold onto its American colonies. Bunker opens his riveting narrative with an account of the East India Company’s maneuvers to secure tea for the thirsty British market. In 1771, the company miscalculated demand and ended up with a crippling amount of unsold stock that, with the help of the British government, it intended to unload on the 13 colonies. By 1772, the colonists, accustomed to running their own economies and local governments, pushed back at what they viewed as unwarranted intrusions into their affairs. This serious difference of opinion over the nature of the colonial relationship became crystal clear when a group of American raiders attacked a British customs schooner, the Gaspée, off the coast of Rhode Island. Relations with Britain deteriorated, culminating with the dumping of the East India Company’s tea in the Boston harbor. This was a major property crime and another direct challenge to Parliament’s authority. With a sharp eye for economic realities, Bunker persuasively demonstrates why the American Revolution had to happen. Illus.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from July 15, 2014
      Bunker (Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History, 2010) delivers an eye-opening study of the British view of the American Revolution and why they were crazy to fight it.England never had a solid plan for administering the American colonies, situated on a continent they couldn't understand and could never hope to rule. Their existence was purely economic, a market for English goods and an exclusive supplier of tobacco, rice, timber, fur, rum, sugar and other important exports. Those who governed for England sent few, if any, reports, and those were incomplete and/or about the coming trouble. Thomas Gage, the commander in chief of the British Army in America, was responsible for territory from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas, in addition to the western bases, from Quebec to Alabama, that Britain gained after the Seven Years' War. On the other hand, King George III's influence was limited. Things might have carried on as usual except for the 1772 banking crash and resulting recession. Speculation, greed, extortion and fraud brought the East India Company to its knees, deep in debt with a mountain of tea losing value to a worldwide smuggling trade. The author lists countless mistakes, misunderstandings and plain stupidity, all of which led to revolution. The ultimate cause of the revolt was Britain's staunch belief in the twin pillars of the British constitution: parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law in a government built on land ownership. Colonists had no rights, and only landowners could attend town meetings. Questions of taxation, religious freedom and the bailout of the East India Company were really just flash points, and the failure of British leadership to recognize the warning signs will astonish readers who thought the Revolution was just about tea.A scholarly yet page-turning, superbly written history.

      COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from September 1, 2014

      Bunker (Making Haste from Babylon) attempts, from a British point of view, to "explain how and why the government in London permitted" the American Revolution to happen. In that respect, this book may be thought of as a pleasing companion to Andrew O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The author's focus is on the three years leading up to open warfare, with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 presented as a climax and an emphasis on the actions of two Britons: statesman William Legge and Prime Minister Frederick North. Reading like Benjamin Woods Labaree's The Boston Tea Party, Bunker's book argues that, for the British, America was "a continent she did not comprehend and could not hope to rule." The author is particularly attuned to economic context and concerned with how events unfolded in practice, rather than what was said in theory. He concludes by stating that the American Revolution was first and foremost "a rebellion [that] took place in the mind." VERDICT This title is recommended to historians of all kinds, professional and amateur alike, who are interested in colonial history.--Mark Spencer, Brock Univ., St. Catharines, Ontario, CA

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      August 1, 2014
      Americans tend to view their separation from Great Britain as a triumph of liberty and, of course, a cause for celebration. British historians often view American independence as the result of misunderstandings and blunders, especially on the side of successive British governments. Bunker, a historian and journalist, generally falls into the latter camp, although he also parcels out some blame to the American side. Bunker's absorbing history concentrates on the critical years between the end of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, and the outbreak of sustained and violent American resistance at Lexington and Concord, in 1775. In essence, these years saw a failure of British governments to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of their empire in North America. Bunker convincingly illustrates how little direct control Parliament exercised over this vast territory, which stretched from the Atlantic to the Mississippi after 1763. Bunker asserts that this lack of control allowed these American colonies to prosper and were also a source of wealth for Britain. Unfortunately, the failure to understand this led to British efforts to tighten imperial control, engendering an escalating cycle of resistance and repression. Bunker has provided a well-argued and plausible theory on the causes of what British politicians called the American controversy. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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