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An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean (Early American Studies)
An Empire Divided The American Revolution and the British Caribbean - Early American Studies Author:Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy There were twenty-six, not thirteen British colonies in America in 1776. Of these, the six colonies in the Caribbean--Jamaica; Barbados; the Leeward Islands; Grenada and Tobago; St. Vincent; and Dominica--were among the wealthiest. These island colonies were closely related to the mainland by social ties and tightly connected by trade, yet when ... more »revolution came, the majority of the white island colonists did not side with their compatriots on the mainland. A major contribution to the history of the American Revolution, An Empire Divided traces a split in the politics of the mainland and island colonies after the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-66, when the colonists on the islands chose not to emulate the resistance of the patriots on the mainland. Once war came, it was increasingly unpopular in the British Caribbean; nevertheless, the white colonists cooperated with the British in defense of their islands. O'Shaughnessy decisively refutes the widespread belief that there was broad backing among the Caribbean colonists for the American Revolution and deftly reconstructs the history of how the island colonies followed an increasingly divergent course from the former colonies to the north.« less