This new book looks at British Politics in the 1760's and 1770's during the American Revolution. Perry looks particularly at colonialism and the colonial administration, and at the general conduct of the war with America. He also surveys the development of radicalism in Britain subsequent to the war and looks at constitutional developments during this period in Britain and America.

This is the first modern study to focus on the British dimension of the American Revolution through its whole span from its origins to the declaration of independence in 1776 and its aftermath. It is written by nine leading British and American scholars who explore many key issues including the problems governing the American colonies, Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe over the war, the impact of the American crisis on Ireland and the consequences for Britain of the loss of America.

During the twenty years before the American Revolution, thirty-seven men acted as paid agent or lobbyists for the American colonies in England. The most famous among them were Benjamin Franklin, who represented four different colonies and served for seventeen years as agenet for Pennsylvania, and Edmund Burke, who accepted the position to further his own career. Yet the other thirty-five were also a colorful and heterogenous group. This detailed study, by a Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, of their activities and of the gradual breakdown of communications between the colonies and the mother country, until the link between the two become only "a rope of sand," is, in the words of the Richmond News Leader, "a new and invigorating approach to the American fight for independence." "Soundly documented, well organized and highly readable." - The New York Historical Society Quarterly "A challenging book about an important historical institution." - The Historian "A substantial contribution to our understanding of Anglo-American history during the eighteenth century." - The New England Quarterly "Both in concept and execution, A Rope of Sand is impressive." - The Journal of American History

The American Revolution was the longest colonial war in modern British history and Britain's most humiliating defeat as an imperial power. In this lively, concise book, Eliga Gould examines an important yet surprisingly understudied aspect of the conflict: the British public's predominantly loyal response to its government's actions in North America. Gould attributes British support for George III's American policies to a combination of factors, including growing isolationism in regard to the European continent and a burgeoning sense of the colonies as integral parts of a greater British nation. Most important, he argues, the British public accepted such ill-conceived projects as the Stamp Act because theirs was a sedentary, "armchair" patriotism based on paying others to fight their battles for them. This system of military finance made Parliament's attempt to tax the American colonists look unexceptional to most Britons and left the metropolitan public free to embrace imperial projects of all sorts--including those that ultimately drove the colonists to rebel. Drawing on nearly one thousand political pamphlets as well as on broadsides, private memoirs, and popular cartoons, Gould offers revealing insights into eighteenth-century British political culture and a refreshing account of what the Revolution meant to people on both sides of the Atlantic.