The members were formerly associated with the Luther Blissett Project and wrote the international best-selling novel Q. Manituana was initially conceived as the first episode of an 18th-century pan-Atlantic trilogy which the authors called "the Atlantic Triptych".

All novels would be set in the last three decades of the 18th century, all across the Atlantic Ocean (North America, Europe, the West Indies and Africa), before and during the American and the French Revolutions.

They described historical fiction as "a form we practised for many years, until we decided to move on and use history in other ways […] We treasure what we have learned from exploring that genre and forcing its conventions, and we dedicate ourselves to new experiments”.

In an entry on their weblog, Wu Ming wrote that "Manituana was written between 2003 and 2007, and it soaked up all the tensions of that period: S11, the Neoconservative hegemony on US foreign policy, the lies on Saddam allegedly keeping weapons of mass destruction hidden in the desert, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush winning his second term thanks to the Christian right in 2004, Silvio Berlusconi conquering the hearts and minds of the majority of Italians etc.

[4]" British newspaper The Independent wrote The authors gleefully revise orthodox history to present the loyalist Mohawks as victims of canting, racist rebels who march into battle under banners such as "Civilisation and death to all savages".