Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss Of America And The Remaking Of The British Empire By Maya Jasanoff

On November 25, 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing the American Revolution to an end. Patriots celebrated their departure and the confirmation of US independence. But for tens of thousands of American loyalists, the British evacuation spelled worry, not jubilation. What would happen to them in the new United States? Facing grave doubts about their futures, some sixty thousand loyalists - one in forty members of the American population - decided to leave their homes and become refugees elsewhere in the British Empire. They sailed for Britain, for Canada, for Jamaica, and for the Bahamas; some ventured as far as Sierra Leone and India. Wherever they went, the voyage out of America was a fresh beginning, and it carried them into a dynamic if uncertain new world. As they dispersed across the empire, the loyalists also carried things from their former homes, revealing an enduring American influence on the wider British world.
Through archival research and storytelling, historian Maya Jasanoff re-creates the journeys of ordinary individuals in Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss Of America And The Remaking Of The British Empire By Maya Jasanoff (Harperpress)