Wrong Side of Independence: The Fate of Loyalists

The Wrong Side of Independence: Loyalists and the American Revolution

The talk addresses a much-overlooked portion of the American population who – for often very different reasons – opted to remain loyal to the Crown and suffered many consequences during the ruptures that led to the American Revolution and the creation of the United States of America. In this 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, the talk explores the motives, composition, and experiences of loyalists who wrote, fought, and then fled in the aftermath of the Patriots’ victory – preferring to remain imperial subjects, and only reluctantly being absorbed and reincorporated into the new republican country.

Dr. Ben Marsh is Honorary Reader in History at the University of Kent, where he taught between 2014-2025. A historian of Early America and the Atlantic World, Ben has published widely on social and economic history, including award-winning books on the settlement of Georgia -The Female Frontier and on attempts to grow silk in Atlantic societies Unravelled Dreams. He edited a collaborative volume Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolution (2018) and was the director of the DCMS-funded UK educational schools project “The Age of Revolution: Making the World Over” in 2018-2025 which created pioneering resources for schools (including graphic novels and games) about the period 1775-1848. He is President of the Canterbury Branch of the Historical Association, and currently writing about empire, slavery, and dirt-eating. He is also the lyricist and musician with the “Marsh Family” musical group.