Dangerous Economies

We are much more accustomed to thinking of eighteenth-century New York as a colonial rather than imperial city. Before the American Revolution, however, those who lived in British North America were not just colonists, but also subjects of the British Empire. The British Empire in its turn has usually connoted more or less competent government officials, a bewigged and distant Board of Trade, and an enormous British military humming the chorus of Rule Britannia: "Britons never shall be slaves." Yet all empires, regardless of their modes of administration or control, consist at heart of individuals living their daily lives and often unconscious of what it might mean to live in an empire. Book jacket.

Serena R. Zabin is Associate Professor of History at Carleton College.