News from the American War of Independence

A huge amount of published work is available on the American War of Independence. However, one area given rather scant attention is that describing and analysing the public reaction in the colonial power, Britain. This little book tries to look at two aspects of this reaction: viz. (a) the extent of coverage given in a typical newspaper, and (b) the particular analysis presented to readers in Scotland.

This latter question is relevant because Scotland, since the Union with England earlier in that same century (1707), had assumed a large contribution to the military and thus to 'empire-building'.

The method chosen is to use "extracts". The year of 1779 is examined in the "Edinburgh Advertiser". This was a serious if popular newspaper which was published every four days with some ten pages being typical.