An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came To Fight America

Bunker (Making Haste from Babylon) attempts, from a British point of view, to "explain how and why the government in London permitted" the American Revolution to happen. In that respect, this book may be thought of as a pleasing companion to Andrew O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The author's focus is on the three years leading up to open warfare, with the Boston Tea Party of 1773 presented as a climax and an emphasis on the actions of two Britons: statesman William Legge and Prime Minister Frederick North. Reading like Benjamin Woods Labaree's The Boston Tea Party, Bunker's book argues that, for the British, America was "a continent she did not comprehend and could not hope to rule." The author is particularly attuned to economic context and concerned with how events unfolded in practice, rather than what was said in theory. He concludes by stating that the American Revolution was first and foremost "a rebellion [that] took place in the mind."