This book contributes to a small but growing genre: studies of the history of transatlantic links. It is drawn to adopt this transatlantic perspective by the realisation that many problems in the domestic histories of both America and Britain are more accessible when so addressed. The transatlantic dimension provided a screen on to which the tightly-knit problems of its constituent societies were projected, a screen on which inconclusive local processes can be observed unfolding to a conclusion often absent in some parochial setting. The object of this book is not to provide a comprehensive or even an outline history of domestic events on either side of the Atlantic; it is, rather, to attempt a selective and thematic enquiry into the nature of transatlantic ties and the inner causes of their dissolution. It takes its standpoint on territory bounded by the historical disciplines of political theory, law and religion; it examines the aspirations for civil and religious liberty, legal government and moral regeneration that were expressed and pursued within the boundaries of those bodies of ideas. Its ambition is to add some insights drawn from colonial history to the history of Britain, and to contribute some insights from British scholarship to the history of America.

British and American history was long explained chiefly through the eyes of rival elites – the Founding Fathers and their aristocratic British opponents.