Protestant Empire

Carla Gardina Pestana, W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University, is the author or editor of several books, including The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661.

• Introduction1. Religion before English Expansion2. Reformation and the Politicization of Religious Expansion3. Exporting the Religious Tensions of the Three Kingdoms4. Restoration Settlement and the Growth of Diversity5. Battling over Religious Identity in the Late Seventeenth Century6. Religious Encounters and the Making of a British Atlantic7. Revivalism and the Growth of Evangelical Christianity8. Revolutionary Divisions, Continuing BondsConclusion: The British Atlantic World in PerspectiveSuggestions for Further ReadingNotesIndexAcknowledgments

"A remarkably learned survey of religion and empire in the British Atlantic world." (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography) "In an ambitious, compelling discussion of Protestantism in the British Atlantic, Carla Gardina Pestana asks whether religion trumped politics and militarism in the shaping of colonies, the growth of empires, and the development of cultural identities. She makes a strong case that religion became the driving force of British expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." (William and Mary Quarterly) "Protestant Empire is the most balanced account we now possess of religion and the shaping of the British Atlantic world from the Reformation to the American Revolution. Carla Gardina Pestana lucidly shows how religion joined the various parts of that world into a bounded whole yet introduced deep divisions whose consequences remain with us today. Her successful synthesis offers an authoritative introduction to these developments for students and scholars alike." (David Armitage, Harvard University) "Britain was the world's mightiest Protestant empire, but it was also an empire of striking religious diversity and fragmentation. In this important, wide-ranging book, Carla Pestana examines the religious consequences of Britain's early modern expansion for people throughout the Atlantic basin. The result is a major contribution to the history of the British Atlantic world." (Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire)