Robert Proud was a member of a group of Loyalist historians who wrote during and after the American Revolution. This group included Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, Alexander Hewat of South Carolina, Jonathan Boucher, George Chalmers, and a few others. In their writings these men criticized and deprecated the American Revolution and its fruits. Their work has been largely remembered collectively as the Loyalist school of American historians. Only Thomas Hutchinson, the best of them, has achieved wide individual recognition. In Robert Proud's case, the man and his one published work, The History of Pennsylvania, in North America, have been completely subsumed by the Loyalist school, giving rise to biographical and psychological studies of Proud as a typical Loyalist instead of critical examinations of Proud the historian.

It is necessary to bring Proud's work to the forefront, if only to separate its considerable flaws from its few simple merits...