Empire Ablaze

“Passionate, provocative, and deeply humane, Cutterham’s urgent reinterpretation of the American Revolution restores sabotage, solidarity, and working-class dreams to the center of a world-changing upheaval.”
—Richard Bell, author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World

“Tom Cutterham uses the picaresque life of arsonist James Aitken to tell a ripping good yarn about labor, class, radical ideas, and the American revolution. A vivid and well-researched transatlantic history from below.”
—Marcus Rediker, co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

“In this beautifully-written gem of a book Tom Cutterham tells the story of James Aitken, a Scot who sought to sabotage the Royal Navy in Portsmouth in the name of American independence. In so doing Cutterham makes a larger argument about class and the roles played common people, like Aitken, in making a new, revolutionary, world. In Cutterham’s hands James Aitken emerges as a subject worthy of Broadway musical or a Netflix series. The 250th anniversary of US Independence will see the publication of many books on the American Revolution. Empire Ablaze stands out from the crowd and deserves the widest possible audience.”
—Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh