Rough Crossings

Rough Crossings

Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution

Simon Schama

   ISBN 0 563 48709 7

The British Loyalists who left the United States after 1783, like the émigrés who fled France after 1789 or Russia after 1918, were the shrapnel of revolution. The explosive force of social and political turmoil in America spread shards of Britishness across the globe. In the years after the American Revolution, most of them landed in Nova Scotia, the West Indies and Britain. Some ended up in East Florida, Bermuda, the Bahamas and even India. A major fragment ultimately fell to earth in West Africa.

Because the Loyalists were so widely scattered, their story has never been fully told. They were also on the wrong side of history -- at least from the American perspective -- and few historians have given voice to their plight.