James P. Amboske

James Amboske explores the ways in which massive emigration from Scotland to North America in this period forced Scots living at home and in the American colonies to reevaluate the benefits Scots and Scotland derived from participating in the British empire.  Britain's triumph over the French and its allies in the Seven Years' War expanded Britain's hold over North America, creating new opportunities for subjects on both sides of the Atlantic to acquire lands and recruit colonists to settle them.  As Scottish Highlanders and Lowlanders took advantage of the new American world the Seven Years' War made by emigrating and resettling in colonies like North Carolina, New York, or Nova Scotia, Scots at home and in the colonies contested the larger imperial implications of this population transfer precisely when Americans began disputing Parliament's authority.  It is a transatlantic story of the American Revolution told from the perspective of British subjects contesting the meaning of empire in an age of imperial instability.