From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia

BOOK REVIEW: From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia by Greg Brooking (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2024. $29.95 paperback)

Greg Brooking’s From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia is a biography of colonial and revolutionary Georgia’s royal governor set as an enticing and highly readable story of an Englishman who came to form his life and identity around his work overseas before it was swept away by the Patriot cause. Brooking draws inspiration from previous loyalist histories. Specifically, he mentions in his introduction Bernard Bailyn’s The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, which he hopes the reader will see influencing his work on Wright.

James Wright was born on May 8, 1716 in London. Nine years later, his father Robert Wright took his family to Charlestown, South Carolina (today’s Charleston) where his son James would come to establish himself both as a colonial official and a wealthy planter. James Wright served as South Carolina’s attorney general and its agent to London before assuming the position of Georgia’s lieutenant governor under Henry Ellis, who he would later replace as the colony’s last governor.

Both his grandfather Sir Robert Wright and father Robert Wright served as chief justices, with the former working in England and the latter Charlestown. Sir Robert Wright’s career took a turn during the Glorious Revolution as his loyalty to King James II found him in prison where he died. While Sir Robert he had several marriages, Robert Wright behaved similarly in fathering seven children out of wedlock. Brooking states it is likely that situation influenced his decision to move his family to the colonies.

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Brooking sets the tone for James Wright’s colonial career early by saying he was, “tortured by a dual patriotism.” – that is, he felt a loyalty to both his colony and country. While an Englishman on assignment, Wright spent so much of his lifetime in the colonies that he clearly considered it more than a job. It was that connection that the reader comes to understand between Wright and Georgia that Brooking uses to make the strife of the American Revolution not just a professional disruption for the governor but a personal one.

During the revolution, there were times when Wright felt British generals “have always set their faces against this province … and they will do nothing for us.” This seems to have been Wright’s sentiment post-revolution upon leaving the colonies until his death, as he believed more attention to Georgia would have kept it out of Patriot hands.

The reader comes to see the Patriots differently through Wright’s career. Brooking does not present Wright as a tyrant who the Patriots heroically ousted to correct the many wrongs of colonial rule. If anything, they were a mob stirring up trouble whose presence and activities Wright tried to navigate in holding onto his authority. It is not hard to see why Wright would commit to his duty so insistently when Brooking describes Patriots’ intentions in 1775 as “trying to tear down the foundation his life rested upon and replace it with an entirely new one.”

Brooking’s describes Wright as a “conservative” in his governing style. While he had sympathy for angry colonists, he felt legal means were the only ones for redress, not mob violence. He comes off as a man of great status and wealth, but one who believed the interests of the mother country and his colony could both be a priority.

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Concerning sources, Brooking makes great use of correspondence between Wright and other officials. This gives a very humanizing dimension to a story most American readers would find otherwise distant.

At 230 pages, Brooking’s biography flows well in telling the story of Georgia’s struggles during the American Revolution through the eyes of its governor. It does not exclusively concern the Revolution as Brooking includes instances of Wright’s dealings with Indian cession and his relationship with the institution of slavery. Still, it should find a good home in a collection of Loyalist histories.

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