P. J. MARSHALL. Remaking the British Atlantic: The United States and the British Empire after American Independence.

Abstract

In this sequel to his masterful The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America c. 1750–1783 (2005), P. J. Marshall continues his examination of the perceptions and realities of Britain's changing place in the world. It is particularly illuminating to read an expert on British India completing the overthrow of Vincent T. Harlow's concept of a British “swing to the east,” which had been orthodoxy since the 1960s. Marshall's latest work details continuing British political investment in Ireland, the West Indies, and British North America. The relationship between Britain and the new American republic is the central subject of this book, and the author concedes that his research has been concentrated in British archives. The instability of the new American state was complemented by the insecurity of Britain's political elite in the 1780s. The peace terms conceded by Lord Shelburne's government were more generous than fair, due to his attitudes, errors, and the effectiveness of American diplomats. The settlement was very unpopular in Britain, which mattered less than the abiding resentment against America by several influential officeholders: Charles Jenkinson, second baron Hawkesbury; Guy Carleton, baron Dorchester; John Holyroyd, baron Sheffield; George Germain, viscount Sackville; and William Knox. American claims that the British were actively subverting the American government were exaggerated, but the British political establishment was insistent about the repayment of pre-revolutionary debts and the compensation of loyalists. Britain remained in the ceded Old Northwest, and showed disdain for any commercial treaty with the United States. If something of a thaw in British official attitudes was beginning as the American Constitution remade that new nation, these attitudes refroze with the coming of the French Revolution.