ABSTRACT
This chapter compares two colonies Ireland and Jamaica that were placed in a different situation than they expected as a result of the tumultuous changes initiated by a war in which they were anxious observers rather than active participants. White Protestants in Ireland and white planters and merchants in Jamaica were both relatively satisfied in the early 1770s with their position within the British Empire and found it difficult to understand the motivations that led Americans to foment revolution in 1776. Despite the differences between the two colonies, there is good reason why a comparison of each place in the 1780s makes sense. The two colonies were places full of people loyal to the British Empire who found themselves living in a quite different imperial polity than what they had envisaged living in a decade earlier. During the American Revolution, when Britain needed all the Loyalists it could get, Jamaica tended to be treated reasonably well in imperial counsels.
