From Empire to Revolution

Book excerpt: "From Empire to Revolution is the first biography devoted to an in-depth examination of the life and conflicted career of Sir James Wright (1716-1785). Greg Brooking uses Wright's life as a means to better understand the complex struggle for power in both colonial Georgia and the larger British Empire. James Wright lived a transatlantic life, taking advantage of every imperial opportunity afforded him. He earned numerous important government posts and amassed an incredible fortune, totaling over £100,000 sterling. An English-born grandson of Chief Justice Sir Robert Wright, James Wright was raised in Charleston, South Carolina following his father's appointment as that colony's chief justice. Young James served South Carolina in a number of capacities, public and ecclesiastical, prior to his admittance to London's famed Gray's Inn to study law. Most notably, he was appointed South Carolina's attorney general and colonial agent to London prior to his gubernatorial appointment in Georgia in 1761. His long imperial career delicately balanced dual loyalties to Crown and colony and offers a crucial lens on loyalism and the American Revolution that also connects a number of contexts important in recent early American and British scholarship, including imperial and Atlantic history, Indigenous borderlands, race and slavery, and popular politics"--