Acknowledgement of My Dissertation

It took me eight years to complete this doctorate program. I have finally defended my dissertation last Friday. My feeling is pretty complicated. While I am happy that I can close this chapter of my life, I am also eager to find a job to take a good use of this hard-earned degree. After I submit this dissertation to ProQuest, probably no one will read the acknowledgement. But I think it is a very important part of this dissertation. While it does not make any argument on Loyalism, it reflects my gratitude toward those who have helped me up to this point. I cannot complete this research and write this dissertation without these people's help. So, I would like to share this acknowledgement here as an expression of gratitude toward those who have helped me.   

I have taken a long journey to write this dissertation. So many people have helped me so much in this journey, and they deserve my most sincere gratitude. First of all, I want to honor my late mentor and advisor, Dr. Michal Jan Rozbicki, who passed away in 2019, a year before I could finally complete this dissertation. This project was inspired by his book, Cultural and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution. I found this book in a bookstore in New York City in the summer of 2011. The title caught my eyes. I read it and was interested in his idea that promoted the dialogue between politics and culture. So I emailed him and with his encouragement, I applied and came to Saint Louis University in 2012. He highly valued my research project from the very beginning and had guided me in developing this project and polishing the ideas of this dissertation for many years until his sudden passing. I told him that I could not come to SLU without funding, and he was so kind that he helped me to secure funding. I served as his graduate assistant at the Center for Intercultural Studies for five years, and we developed a very close relationship by working together. His passing has been a great loss to me, as well as to many other colleagues at Saint Louis University. I cannot write this dissertation without him, and will always remember him deeply in my heart. I believe he is watching me somewhere, and I hope I will not disappoint him.

I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. Lorri Glover, who took me in after Dr. Rozbicki passed away and has been a tremendous help to me and guided me to finish this dissertation. She has been on my dissertation committee from the beginning, and has organized a writing group in which I finished a draft of chapter one and developed the idea of chapter five in this dissertation. I will never forget that she called me the day when we learned about the sad news of Dr. Rozbicki’s passing. Realizing how panicked, puzzled, and confused that I could be, she called and comforted me, and assured me that she would help me finish this project that I had started with Dr. Rozbicki. I cannot complete this dissertation without her.

Many other historians have helped me through this journey. I want to thank Dr. Kyle Bulthuis, who supervised my work at Utah State University. Back in 2010, when I told him I was considering picking a topic between Loyalists and Anti-Federalists, he suggested I pursue the former. Even after I came to Saint Louis University, he was still kind and helpful to me. I also want to thank Dr. Jeffrey Pasley at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He has been on my dissertation committee from the beginning and has provided honest and helpful suggestions to many drafts of my chapters. We have attended many conferences together and he always tried to introduce me to other fellow historians.  I took a graduate seminar course with Dr. Silvana Siddali, and wrote a bibliographical essay for that course. That essay later became the foundation of the literature review of my dissertation project. When Dr. Rozbicki passed, Dr. Siddali was willing to join my dissertation committee. She has provided many encouraging comments and useful suggestions to my early drafts. Her knowledge and kindness have inspired me.

I also want to express my gratitude toward many other professors at Saint Louis University, such as Dr. Torri Hester, who comforted me a lot when Dr. Rozbicki passed, Dr. Filippo Marsili, who has been an encouraging colleague and friend to me, and Dr. Pauline Lee, who esteems my skill, hired me to be her research assistant after I ran out of my funding, and has been very generous to me. Dr. Lee’s generosity included allowing me to use her office for my dissertation defense when this pandemic crisis forced us to conduct the defense on Zoom and I could not do my defense at home with three boys running around. I also want to thank Dr. Charles Parker who mentored me as a teaching assistant in the methodological course for undergraduate students. I learned a lot in that experience, and he has also introduced me to the School for Professional Studies that led me to a wonderful experience of online teaching. I am also grateful to Dr. Philip Gavitt. Ever since I came to SLU in 2012, he has been really helpful to me. I wrote a paper about Matteo Ricci in his graduate seminar in spring 2013. I had much doubt about my writing, but his praise and encouragement helped me to refine my work and find my confidence. Then we worked together in a graduate reading course preparing for my comprehensive exams in summer 2013. He has helped me so much ever since. He helped me to be more prepared for my secondary field, and introduced me to other books on early modern history that are linked to my own research interests. He passed away on May 28, 2020, and I will forever keep him in my memory.

  I want to thank my family for their supports. None of them are historians, but they have borne with me all the way since I decided to major in history at the age of 18. I want to thank my parents. They never stopped me from pursuing a career of historian, and never discouraged me to study American history. They have been very supportive and have made great sacrifices to make it possible for me to complete this dissertation and degree. I also want to thank my mother-in-law. First of all, she allowed her precious daughter to marry me, a poor graduate student. She has been caring and supportive to our life and our decisions. Her unconditional love has support my wife and me. I would not be able to get to where I am now without her. I especially want to mention my dear grandparents here. When we were in the airport heading to Utah for my master’s degree in American history, my grandmother, despite her age, took an extremely early train from a city about 300 kilometers away to the airport to see us off. My tears ran out of my eyes when I was on the airplane. Considering the average length of PhD programs in humanities, I wondered whether I could see my grandparents again in my lifetime. During these ten years in America, I only went back to Taiwan three times. The last time was in 2016, when I learned that my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer after my grandfather had passed away. I went back to Taiwan after attending a conference in Hong Kong. And that was the last time I saw her alive. This dissertation is also dedicated to them, who always supported my dream and were proud of me.

Aristotle of ancient Greece said, “Man is by nature a social animal.” Throughout these years, I am fortunate enough to get to know many friends and colleagues who have supported me in many different ways. I want to give special thanks to Samuel Dodge, Spencer McBride, Michael Douma, Chris Minty, Michael Hattem, Idolina Hernandez, Eric Sears, Samuel Klee, Nathan Caldwell, Heesoo Cho, and Shi-Hao Liu. Some of them introduced me to primary and second sources, some of them read chapter or paper drafts for me, and some of them provided emotional support as friends.

My research has been supported by many marvelous institutions. First of all, I am grateful for the government of my home country, Taiwan. The Ministry of Education of Taiwan awarded me a Studying Abroad Scholarship in 2012. Second, I want to thank Saint Louis University for giving me the graduate assistantship at the Center for Intercultural Studies. In my years as a PhD student, I have presented my working papers in several colloquiums held by the Institute of Humane Studies at George Mason University, and I have received Hayek Fund for Scholars two times to support my trips to conferences. I have received much helpful feedback in their colloquiums and am extremely grateful for this interdisciplinary platform for polishing my research ideas. 

This research has been supported by several fellowships. I want to recognize the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which awarded me the first research fellowship I received in 2015. That was a breakpoint to me. I realized that my research could be valuable in others’ eyes. I had a very professional experience at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. And it was not just a one-month thing. I am so grateful that Endrina Tay at the Jefferson Library helped me to get access to some databases that SLU does not subscribe, such as Early American Imprints and Early American Newspapers. Without these sources, I could not finish this dissertation. I am forever grateful for the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. I also received a fellowship at the American Philosophical Society to live in Philadelphia for a month in 2016. That was also a precious experience for me. I read many letters of Benjamin Franklin and William Franklin in the archive, and was able to formulate a part of my argument there. The David Library of the American Revolution (now the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society), while was not able to award me a fellowship, invited me to conduct research there and offered me the same privilege as the fellows, including lodging and 24-hours access to the library. That was among the best two weeks I have ever had in my research career. I was able to completely immerse in the primary and secondary sources of my research, and was able to scan most of the Loyalist claims that I needed. I could not have done the research for this dissertation without these institutions’ generous offers.

I have presented earlier versions of the chapters of this dissertation in many conferences, and have been benefitted from many historians’ generous and honest suggestions. I am grateful for Dr. Sheila Skemp and Dr. Ruma Chopra’s comments at the 2015 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, and Dr. Colin Nicolson’s suggestions at the British Group in Early American History 2015 Annual Meeting. I have presented a part of an earlier version my chapter two at the “Propaganda, Persuasion, the Press and the American Revolution, 1763-1783” Conference in Hong Kong, China in 2016. I am indebted to the feedback from historians attending this conference, especially Dr. Mary Beth Norton, Dr. Frank Cogliano, Dr. Benjamin Carp, Dr. Patrick Griffin, Dr. Brad Jones, Dr. Robert Parkinson, Dr. Russ Castronovo, and Dr. Elaine Forman Crane. I really enjoyed the free discussion we had in Hong Kong. As the Chinese government enhances their control over the political and legal system in Hong Kong at this time I am completing this dissertation, I wish people in Hong Kong can one day obtain the liberty they deserve, and also wish one day the Chinese public could understand and support the value of liberty. Coincidentally, Hong Kong used to be a British colony, just like the North American colonies in the eighteenth century. Great Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, and signed an agreement guaranteeing the preservation of the distinct political system in Hong Kong. However, Great Britain had no power and authority to ensure its execution. People in Hong Kong lost their liberty little by little. The main characters in this dissertation, New York Loyalists, fought for the union of the British Empire during the American Revolution. After the Revolution, Britain sacrificed Loyalists’ interests in the process of negotiating the peace treaty with the U.S. government. Many Loyalists lost their property, and were either forced to leave their homes or forbidden to come back home. This dissertation is also dedicated to those who had to fight to pursue their liberty in this story, not only the Patriots, but also the Loyalists.

Most importantly, I dedicate this dissertation to my wife, Pei-Ling Yang, and my sons, Wang, Liang, Yue, and the baby boy in the womb, Hao. Without my lovely wife’s support and understanding, there is no way I could have written this dissertation. I love them. I am thankful to my God, who allows me to have such a marvelous family to support me, and who has given me so many blessings in my life. My wife and I decide to name our new baby boy “Hao,” which sounds like the “hal” in “Michal” in Polish, in remembrance of my late mentor Michal Jan Rozbicki, whom I owe so much for his kindness and intelligence, and to whom this dissertation is also dedicated.