The Disaffected: Britain's Occupation of Philadelphia during the American Revolution by Aaron Sullivan

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Disaffected: Britain's Occupation of Philadelphia during the American Revolution by Aaron Sullivan Robynne Rogers Healey (bio) The Disaffected: Britain's Occupation of Philadelphia during the American Revolution aaron sullivan University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019 296 pp. Aaron Sullivan's thoughtful analysis of the nine-month British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777–78 makes a substantial contribution to histories of the American Revolution. There is no shortage of scholarship on Americans who won the Revolutionary War; as Sullivan says, "the victorious Patriots began writing them almost at once" (6). More recently, historians of the period have turned their attention to the Loyalists, generally considered the losers in this war. The bifurcation of early Americans into two camps—Patriot or Loyalist—has presented a false dichotomy of political commitment based on the assumption that everyone held strong political convictions for one of the two opposing sides. Sullivan draws our attention to the experience of an important, underexamined group identified by both the Revolutionaries and the British as "the disaffected," the significant group of "Americans who stood apart [or tried to stand apart] from and outside those two warring camps" (6). Standing apart from the fray may have been easier for those in locations untouched directly by the war, but for those living at the heart of the conflict, the experience of navigating the Revolution while trying not to choose a side was complex indeed. Viewed through the binary lens of ardent Patriot or zealous Loyalist, the behavior of those outside those identities appears as "fickle, opportunistic, [End Page 941] apathetic, or even treasonous" (7). Considered from the perspective of disaffection, Sullivan contends, the actions of these people appear "rational and consistent" (7). Moreover, the framework of disaffection provides insights to the Revolution in southeastern Pennsylvania that was neither glorious nor idealistic but, rather, "a messy affair that, for so many Americans, simply had to be endured" (17–18, emphasis in original). Sullivan's book poses a number of questions seldom asked by historians of the Revolution. Focusing on the disaffected "questions old assumptions about American loyalties, explores the darker facets of the Patriots' ideology, and challenges traditional narratives of when and how the Revolution was won" (5). Philadelphia and environs, deeply divided and replete with a disaffected population, was "a particularly rich site" for this case study. Sullivan himself contends that more work needs to be done in other locations to see whether the role of disaffection was unique to Philadelphia's population or common in the colonies seeking independence from Britain (228). While The Disaffected will hopefully not be the last word on this topic, Sullivan's carefully researched and clearly written case study complicates the story of a society neatly divided between Patriot and Loyalist and provides an excellent model for future work in this area. Given the importance of change over time in Sullivan's findings, the book is arranged into six chronological chapters covering the months before, during, and after the occupation. These chapters, each with a single-word title ("Consent," "Invasion," "Siege," "Occupation," "Evacuation," and "Aftermath"), provide context and analysis of the social, economic, political, and military conditions related to the occupation of Philadelphia from the fall of 1777 to the summer of 1778. Interspersed between each of these chapters are five interludes that tell the stories of three disaffected families: the Quaker merchant family of Elizabeth and Henry Drinker; the family of noncombatant James Allen and his Patriot-turned-Loyalist brothers; and the Whitall family, Quaker farmers in New Jersey. These short interludes reconstruct the varied lived experiences of the disaffected and personalize the arguments advanced in the longer chapters. Interludes 1 and 3 examine the wealthy, mostly Loyalist, Allen family, especially James Allen, a privileged Pennsylvanian who retreated to his country home in an effort to avoid politics and the war unfolding around him. Interludes 2 and 4 give insights into the Quaker Drinker family's experience: Henry's exile to Virginia and Elizabeth's experiences caring for her family in a city and [End Page 942] household occupied by the British military. Finally, interlude 5 details the experiences of the Whitalls, disaffected Quaker farmers who lived across the Delaware River...