For much of the summer I have been focused on, and writing about, Macintosh’s pivot from the West Indies in 1776 to the East Indies in 1778. The precise circumstances that led Macintosh to pursue his “Eastern scheme”—indeed, what that Eastern scheme actually was—have been a longstanding puzzle, but they have come gradually into view in the last few weeks and I have been able to enjoy the all-too-fleeting sensation of having cracked a stubborn code.

The chapter I am currently writing—the book’s fifth—will conclude at the point of Macintosh’s departure from Lorient, in France, en route to India in January 1778. Before getting to that point, however, I need to address Macintosh’s intelligence-gathering activities in France during the winter of 1777–78. Although it would be wrong to classify Macintosh as a spy during this period, since he was not formally employed in that capacity, his activities were very definitely considered to be spying by the French authorities and by the American congressional representatives living in Paris.

Macintosh was almost comically unsubtle in his efforts to gather political and military intelligence in France, and seems to have raised suspicions wherever he went. His lack of clandestine subtlety—and his unfamiliarity with what might be called spycraft—is an almost endearing quality in retrospect, but it had very real and very immediate consequences for him. The captain of the French ship that was due to carry Macintosh as far as Pondicherry, in India, was given a set of secret instructions by the authorities in Paris concerning Macintosh’s spying—instructions that eventually led to him being imprisoned at Isle de France (what is now Mauritius). This traumatic episode significantly delayed Macintosh’s arrival in India; all told, it took him almost 18 months to complete the journey, and he arrived in India jaded and dispirited.

The circumstances of his journey to India become significant (largely on account of who he met and the order in which he met them) for understanding how and why he performed a political volte-face on his arrival, from being a presumed supporter of Warren Hastings to a close ally of Hastings’ principal opponent, Philip Francis. It is to this story that the book turns in Chapter 6—a task that will consume my autumn.

I am in the extremely fortunate position to be on sabbatical during Term 1 of 2022/23, and hope to make as much headway as I can with this phase of the book. I know several institutions in the UK that have either decreased the frequency of research sabbaticals or eliminated them altogether, and it is difficult to imagine how it is possible to pursue large-scale research projects without the time and space offered by them (especially in the absence of external funding).