Liberty's Exiles

American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

By: Maya Jasanoff

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

National Book Critics Circle Award, Nonfiction, 2012

After the American Revolution, 60,000 British loyalists fled the U.S. for Canada, the Caribbean, India, and other points abroad. Jasanoff traces their harrowing journeys across the globe, shedding light on their ambitions, the post-revolutionary world they encountered, and their legacies.

©2011 Maya Jasanoff (P)2012 Recorded Books

America's First Civil War

What did you love best about Liberty's Exiles?

Maya Jasanoff's narrative on what might be thought of as America's first civil war — the Revolution — is an engaging and comprehensive account of Americans who remained loyal to Britain and their postwar efforts to reclaim their lives in Canada, the Caribbean, India, Africa, and other parts of the British Empire. The narrator, L.J. Ganzer, does an able job, but because the author is female I think the narrator should have been female too.

Liberty's exiles

I have read other books on the loyalist of the American Revolution , however I have never read or heard of a book where the loyalists are treated as a Diaspora . I have heard of loyalists who have gone to Britain or other places of the globe but never treated as a group. Good read.

Excellent

I have listened twice now and I purchased the book. Excellent information captured a piece of forgotten history.

Staggering in its Breadth

Jasanoff is an exceptionally talented historian who has apparently left no archive unopened in this sweeping history of the War of American Independence as an episode in British imperial history, indeed possibly the opening act in the modern age of imperialism. The lens she uses is that of the American Loyalists, who, as she demonstrates, were far more diverse than the familiar picture painted by old-style Canadian “Red Tory” historians (which Jasanoff, along the way, argues is a post-1812 revision and oversimplification). As it turns out, the lens is something of a kaleidoscope: Loyalists of all classes, colors, and motivations end up not only in provinces that would later become Canada, but in Jamaica, the Bahamas, the unwon American backcountry, Great Britain, Sierra Leone, and India (sometimes by roundabout routes that take them as far as the Philippines). We also see—and begin to understand why Jasanoff (not an Americanist, but a historian of the British Empire) has taken on this story—the re-merging of British and American interests after the “Revolution,” and the emergence of an English-speaking liberal global hegemony, as well as a pretty compelling case that republicanism (for better or worse, Jasanoff isn’t saying) and imperialism are hardly at odds. Acknowledged but unexplored is the fact that a majority of Loyalists simply remained in what became the United States.
A masterful achievement that I highly recommend.
As for the audio version, woman’s voice might have been nice, as the author is a woman. Ganser’s voice and diction are not ideally suited to scholarly writing. He consistently mis-emphasizes Jasanoff’s oft-used phrase “For all that X Y Z ...,” as if it were offset with a comma, and this becomes rather annoying after about ten times. And he very occasionally misreads French words as (apparently unfamiliar) English words. Nevertheless, it’s a long book to have read into a microphone, and on the whole his reading is of very high quality and not at all soporific. So I say, “Well done, Mr. Ganser.”

Whatever happened to the Loyalists?

History is written by the victors, I enjoyed listening to the plight of the Loyalists after the war. However way too long with inconsequential details and big words. the whole thing could have been cut in half with just as much effect. would have also preferred a little more in the "during" the war, as it were it is only in the aspect of post-war. But interesting audiobook