The question of why New Yorkers were such reluctant revolutionaries has long bedeviled historians. In an innovative study of New York City between 1763 and 1776, Joseph S. Tiedemann explains how conscientiously residents labored to build a consensus under difficult circumstances.

New Yorkers acted the way they did not because they were mostly loyalist or because a few patrician conservatives were able to stem the tide of revolution but because the population of their city was so heterogeneous that consensus was not easily achieved.

In framing his argument, Tiedemann explains the limitations of interpretations offered by progressive, New Left, and consensus historians. Citing the works of scholars as diverse as Walter Laqueur, Theda Skocpol, and Louis Kriesberg, Tiedemann pays close attention to the dynamics of British colonial rule and its impact on New York.