‘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.