ll aspects of these loyalist migrations

he hardest consideration was what to do about the property losses,from vast estates to humble oxcarts, that nearly every loyalist refugeehad sustaine

LOYALISTS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE 211they actually conform to the new metropolitan ideas of colonial subjecthood? As migrants from one part of the British Empire to others?athome neither in the United States nor for the most part in Britain?loyalist refugees constitute an especially intriguing group through which tothink about the meanings of imperial belonging. By explicitly affiliatingthemselves with Britain, they help illuminate a defining peculiarity ofBritishness: its unusually portable and flexible quality. The loyalists, likemillions of imperial subjects well into the twentieth century, laid claimto being British though they did not live within the British nation-state.This is why Bailey's heart swelled when he saw the British flags inHalifax harbor. But what did loyalists mean and expect by associatingthemselves with the empire and how did the British respond? Looking atloyalists suggests that, though the 1780s marked a decided refashioningof the empire's extent, population, and self-image, the decade also laidthe groundwork for persistent tensions within that empire. Enduringcontests about how far to incorporate and how far to assimilate, aboutwho did and did not count as British and how to make such a determination would inflect conceptions of British subjecthood and imperialgovernance for at least a century to come.Following the loyalists into the British Empire affords the chance toconsider how Britain coped with thismass migration and how successfulitwas at accommodating different types of refugees

t the same time, loyalist migrants help shed new light on an oldquestion in British imperial historiogr

Jacobites:

e in fortymembers

ut hehad also "landed in a strange country, destitute of money, clothing,dwelling or furniture," and his future was in the hands of chan

oyalists in the British Empir

Maya Jasanof