The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

This book is an historical tour de force. With a wonderful comparative focus on indigenous nations of North America and Scottish and Irish Gaels, Samuel Fisher has not only provided fresh perspectives on the American Revolution but also on the transatlantic movement of peoples from the British Isles in the eighteenth century. * Sir Tom Devine, University of Edinburgh * In 1776, the British Empire was a diverse, multinational dominion, but it was also a dominion run by — and almost exclusively for the benefit of — British, Irish, and Anglo-American Protestants. In this important, wide-ranging book, Samuel K. Fisher shows how unresolved questions over the place of Irish Catholics and Native Americans within Britain's eighteenth-century empire helped drive the conflicts that tore that empire apart. The result is a new and compelling account of the American Revolution's origins. * Eliga Gould, author of Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire * Samuel Fisher looks to British, rather than purely English, history to explain why the elite in thirteen of Britain's American colonies decided suddenly in the 1770s that the imperial government had become oppressive and must be rejected. In this provocative and timely book, Fisher demonstrates how the attempt by George III to include Native Americans within his empire proved as offensive to 'exclusionary patriots' as had the actions of James II in treating Scottish Highlanders and Irish Catholics as equals with his Protestant subjects in the three kingdoms. * Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway * With a long view and an Atlantic perspective, Samuel Fisher explains how Irish Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians reshaped the British Empire, and in doing so helped bring about the American Revolution. Thoughtfully and systematically considering empire, revolution, and nation-building in terms of inclusion and exclusion, this book challenges easy assumptions about tyranny and freedom in the eighteenth century and about the kind of society American revolutionaries created. * Colin G. Calloway, author of White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America *