Empire Ablaze: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class

by Tom Cutterham

Empire Ablaze tells the story of James Aitken-housepainter, highwayman, and escaped indentured servant-as he wandered the colonies on the eve of the American Revolution, and his dramatic mission to cripple the British navy by destroying Portsmouth dockyard and Bristol harbour. In the process, it explores how an emerging transatlantic working class experienced the transformation and crisis of Britain's eighteenth-century empire, and how enlightenment philosophy turned into popular ideas about the rights of ordinary people and the corruption of imperial authorities. Reframing the American Revolution as a British civil war, Empire Ablaze offers a fresh account of the United States' birth and the origins of radical politics in Britain, finding insights for the revolutionary struggles of our own crisis-ridden times.

Genres: History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published July 21, 2026

Reviews

[Malcolm]

The story of the American revolution, the throwing off of colonial domination by plucky democrats, committed to representative democracy (albeit a democracy of the white) against the oppressive authority of kings, is one we like to think we know well. Told through a lens of nation this works adequately, while homogenizing plucky America and oppressive Britain. And yet, here, Tom Cutterham wonders, what of the British also seeking a freer, fairer, democratic state to whom the language of liberty spoke: what, that is, of the British working class and of those who cross-crossed the Atlantic, for we’d be naïve to think that settlers travelled and stayed – after all, the 13 colonies were places of poverty, of urban dispossession, of class-based struggle. What’s more, Cutterham has a character who allows him to point to some of what this different story of colonial resistance and independence might look like.

At the heart of Cutterham’s exploration is a failed attempt to weaken the British navy by destroying its key dockyards in southern England by a young Scot, James Aitken – for which he was convicted and executed. We know of Aitken’s life because of the trial and because he wrote a confession after conviction, much of which was also a life narrative. It’s from this, from a deep grasp of the events of the colonial war, and a rich writerly craft that builds an empathetic depiction of the conditions of life of one of Edinburgh’s poor that Cutterham builds this tale of trans-Atlantic politics, of sabotage and diplomacy, of subterfuge and betrayal, and of solidarity and spy-craft.

Framed by a succinct and sharp outline of the intellectual history of revolution, a compelling sense of working class urban life in both Britain and mid-Atlantic colonies, and Cutterham’s ability to locate Aitken in the likelihood of his conditions of life, the specifics of this young man’s international travel across the Atlantic, throughout England, into France, as a worker, a bandit and thief, an inept saboteur. The upshot is a tale of a well-educated, impoverished, politically engaged, and well-read dispossessed young man frustrated by the state and the emerging capitalist order whose life as an arsonist and highwayman takes on a sense of resistance – what perhaps (although Cutterham does not invoke this parallel) Eric Hobsbawm might have called a form ‘primitive rebel’.

Cutterham packs an awful lot into his 150 or so pages, and in doing so leaves a lot out. He admits this, telling us that we have in our hands “a short book because I would like you to read it” (p9) with the clear implication that there is a much bigger story to tell. He points to part of the bigger story a couple of pages earlier, noting that “working people’s everyday experience of oppression and exploitation, along with their shared urge to resist it and to work towards that thing called liberty, was a real, active force in shaping the world’s history during the age of revolutions” (p4). In that, this is a primer in thinking the 13 colonies war of independence in a new way, while also unpacking a little known event of that war. That makes it refreshingly invigorating.

[Steven]

Cool, I’m first to review this on good reads! Tom Cutterham put together a brief and interesting read on the American revolution and the stories of some of the working class folks who played a part. The book is very accessible and has a lot of citations clearly given which one could use to read further on any topics that come up. From arson, riots, revolutionary theory, double agents, betrayal, this book is jam packed with intrigue. I am glad I picked it up.