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

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 England-born grandson of Sir Robert Wright, James Wright was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, following his father’s appointment as the chief justice of that colony. 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 becoming the governor of Georgia in 1761.

Wright’s long imperial career delicately balanced dual loyalties to Crown and colony and offers a new perspective on loyalism and the American Revolution. Through this lens, Greg Brooking connects several important contexts in recent early American and British scholarship, including imperial and Atlantic history, Indigenous borderlands, race and slavery, and popular politics.

GREG BROOKING is a social studies teacher at North Springs High School who took his PhD from Georgia State University. He has published articles in the Georgia Historical Quarterly and the Journal of the American Revolution. He lives and writes in the Atlanta suburbs.