Loyalists, those who opposed the rebellion that created the United States, remain poorly understood in large part because of the teleological implications of framing the American Revolution as the inaugurating event of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. This essay shows loyalists as reasonable people who carefully assessed the specific colonial circumstances where each lived. The trajectory of three individuals, in particular, highlights the diversity of loyalism and that it drew support from all corners of colonial society. These three are the Mohawk diplomat Mary Brant, the slave-owning Georgia soldier William Martin Johnson, and the formerly enslaved Thomas Peters, who served with the British Army for the duration of the war. All three left the United States due to their ardent loyalism, dying, respectively, in Upper Canada, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone. Prioritizing loyalists highlights the violence of the rebel movement and showcases the War of American Independence as a civil war. In place of a familiar patriot and US-nationalist interpretation, recovering loyalism as a good idea emphasizes loyalists in their colonial context, assesses the transformative impact of war, and follows their diaspora throughout the British Atlantic and, especially, to British North America.

Chapter 2 discusses smallpox inoculation (variolation) in the late eighteenth century. The development of a light form of the procedure, which reduced its risks and costs, made it increasingly familiar in Britain and the English-speaking world from the 1760s. The practice likewise gained new credit, as a calculated risk, in elite and enlightened circles in continental Europe. Rulers like Catherine the Great promoted the practice, recognising its potential value to the state as well as the individual. In England, the emergence of specialist inoculators seeking the commercial edge, the practice of ‘general inoculations’ in villages, and the public health risks of popular recourse to the practice in urban settings brought to light cases of individuals previously infected with cowpox being resistant to smallpox and provided the technology and incentive to explore the possible advantages of inoculating cowpox as a safe alternative. In the meantime, the rapid expansion of smallpox inoculation, not least in European colonies, provided a launching pad for the global spread of vaccination in the decade after 1800.