FORUM: 1776. Views from the British World: Ambivalent Independence: Scottish Dissent, Parliamentary Reform, and Britain's American Revolution

Abstract

Timed to coincide with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that launched a revolution that created the United States of America, this series of articles complicates traditional narratives of this transformative event by situating it in a larger British world context.

This article links political struggle within the Church of Scotland, itself rooted in the economic dislocations brought about by British Empire from 1707, to a wider transatlantic dissenting tradition that was closely engaged with the cause of the American colonies, as well as with the radical reform of Britain's parliamentary government. Scottish dissenters both inside and outside Scotland itself helped to forge the intellectual and political conditions for the American Revolution, a revolution they did not seek to confine to the North American colonies alone.