Patriots Before Revolution

A new history of the Patriot movement before the American Revolution, tracing its origins to reform movements in British politics

The American revolutionaries—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams—called themselves Patriots. But what exactly did it mean to be a Patriot? Historian Amy Watson locates the origins of Patriotism in British politics of the early eighteenth century, showing that the label "Patriot" was first adopted by a network of British politicians with radical ideas about the principles and purpose of the British Empire. The early Patriots' ideological mission was not American independence but, rather, imperial reform: Patriots sought to create a British Empire that was militant, expansionist, confederal, and free.

Over the course of the next half century, these British reformers used print media and grassroots mobilization efforts to build an empire-wide political party with adherents in London, Edinburgh, New York City, and the new colony of Georgia. While building this party, the Patriots' advocacy drew Britons into a series of violent political conflicts over taxes and civil liberty, as well as three expansive global wars, the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–48), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), and the Seven Years' War (1756–63). Patriot ideas and organizations came to divide Britons on increasingly sharp political lines, laying the groundwork for the revolutionary decades to come.

“This bold account shows how a radical Patriot movement erupted and crystallized amid the turbulent politics of the British Empire in the decades before the American Revolution—a revelatory depiction of a robust tradition of imperial reformers and dissidents whose virtues and vices flowed directly to the Founders.”—Nicholas Popper, author of The Specter of the Archive: Political Practice and the Information State in Early Modern Britain

“This fine and nuanced book turns the conventional story about the eighteenth‑century British Empire on its head. Instead of stability and consensus, Amy Watson offers a finely textured story of conflict and partisan machinations. She also takes that tale across the ocean to the American colonies, placing the empire in its proper transatlantic context. Americans, too, were part of the grand debate over what Britain’s Empire would be, one that generated both light and heat long before 1763.”—Patrick Griffin, University of Notre Dame

“Well-researched, lucidly presented, and intellectually challenging, this splendid book recalibrates the emergence and influence of the Patriot Party in both Britain and the American colonies in the mid‑eighteenth century.”—Allan I. Macinnes, University of Strathclyde

“With elegant prose that elevates a captivating narrative based on deep and original archival research, Watson presents a truly Atlantic conversation that reveals the interconnected politics of figures in Westminster, Edinburgh, Savannah, New York, and beyond.”—Mark G. Hanna, University of California, San Diego

Amy Watson is assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She lives in Birmingham, AL.

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