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The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America
Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary WarThe successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.
364 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 18, 2014
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About the author
Gerald Horne
72 books405 followersDr. Gerald Horne is an eminent historian who is Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. An author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews, his research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations, war and the film industry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
February 16, 2022
I really wanted to absolutely love this book. I wanted to 5 star it and have it a favorite and recommend it to everyone.
It's full of information and historical analysis pointing to the wholly correct and anti-racist conclusion that American independence was largely spurred by American obsession with enslaving Africans and the creation of white identity. Horne provides countless examples and events explaining the creation of whiteness, the uprisings of Africans, and the disgusting attitudes of Europeans, especially European American colonists - all of which is virtually non-existent in public education in America. Public education it is, after reading this, impossible to deny is atrociously racist.
The problem with the book is the very dry academic style writing. It is dense and overly wordy and difficult to follow.
A very simple example:
"As the 1756 war was concluding, there were more sales of Africans from Massachusetts to far-flung sites, a kind of ersatz abolitionism that was to become au courant in the republic: ultimately, there was a conflation on the mainland of getting rid of both slaves and Africans generally, since the latter - in whatever guise - were perceived as a threat to internal security."
That is one long sentence with both ersatz and au courant. Pretty standard for the book.
If you can deal with extremely dry academic writing then the book is absolutely worth the read. If the book had been written more concisely I think it would be up there with greatest non-fiction books on the history of slavery and racism.
It's full of information and historical analysis pointing to the wholly correct and anti-racist conclusion that American independence was largely spurred by American obsession with enslaving Africans and the creation of white identity. Horne provides countless examples and events explaining the creation of whiteness, the uprisings of Africans, and the disgusting attitudes of Europeans, especially European American colonists - all of which is virtually non-existent in public education in America. Public education it is, after reading this, impossible to deny is atrociously racist.
The problem with the book is the very dry academic style writing. It is dense and overly wordy and difficult to follow.
A very simple example:
"As the 1756 war was concluding, there were more sales of Africans from Massachusetts to far-flung sites, a kind of ersatz abolitionism that was to become au courant in the republic: ultimately, there was a conflation on the mainland of getting rid of both slaves and Africans generally, since the latter - in whatever guise - were perceived as a threat to internal security."
That is one long sentence with both ersatz and au courant. Pretty standard for the book.
If you can deal with extremely dry academic writing then the book is absolutely worth the read. If the book had been written more concisely I think it would be up there with greatest non-fiction books on the history of slavery and racism.
April 21, 2014
This was originally published on my blog: http://elizabethannsalem.wordpress.co...
As a graduate student, my comprehensive exam lists were filled with books that reinterpreted the history of slavery using new documentary sources, revealing a history where slaves exercised agency and resisted the harsh conditions in which they lived. While the history of slavery during the antebellum period has been extensively analyzed and documented, the history of slavery during the colonial period has been paid far less attention by historians. As Gerald Horne points out in The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (published on April 18th), this is because paying attention would force historians (and, by extension, Americans) to acknowledge the very deep relationship between slavery and the American Revolution—a relationship that is uncomfortable to examine, because it forces a reevaluation of the very meaning of that revolution.
Horne, a prolific writer and the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston, builds on Atlantic World scholarship and the history of slavery to pose a compelling thesis: because slavery was the foundation of the economy of the colonial Western Hemisphere, the history of the American Revolution is not centered on 1776, but 1688. The Glorious Revolution helped make possible the rise of a merchant class whose wealth was based in the slave trade (as traders or planters), and slavery throughout the British colonies, both in the Caribbean and North America, increased accordingly. The end result was instability, as both slavery and the resistance to slavery grew.
The ramifications of this instability, however, played out differently in the colonies and in London: London moved toward abolition and a realization that free Africans allied to Britain could be useful in playing the game of imperial politics against Spain and France, while the merchants of North America, realizing that the institution of slavery was threatened, moved toward “independency.” Meanwhile, Africans, caught in the middle, pursued alliances with indigenous peoples and with Britain’s imperial enemies, conducting slave revolts on their own—a cycle that would later prove disastrous for those Africans remaining within the territorial bounds of the newly formed United States. Independence, Horne points out, was not the story about Enlightenment ideals of liberty as espoused by the Founding Fathers, but was a conservative counter-revolution. Americans were fighting for the right to keep and increase slavery (thus making the later Confederate claim for being the true heirs of the American Revolution plausible, but that’s a story for another day).
Horne rightfully points out that the story of the American Revolution as it is so often told (as a progress narrative where freedom and democracy inevitably won out in the end) only favors the winners, and misses the larger context of the politics of the British Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This empire was global, not limited to North America. And British colonies in the Western Hemisphere were built on the economic basis of slavery. Africans were major players in this world—not just “helpers” in the Patriot cause. By restoring this larger context, Horne demands that we imagine a far more complicated world than that usually given to us in our history books. This picture, however, is profoundly uncomfortable, as it should be.
I did not find this book an easy read, and not just for the subject matter. In part, I suspect it was because I was reading an ARC, and there were several places where I assumed changes would be made before final printing (hopefully including Horne’s use of state nicknames, which got old quickly). I also had some trouble with Horne’s argumentative style, which kept circling around to pick up themes and events from earlier in the book. Once this style sunk into my brain, however, I was able to appreciate the significance of what Horne was arguing. So my advice would be to stick with the book until the end, because the payoff is worth it. My hope would be that Horne’s book will have a readership beyond academic circles, although I know that there are far too many people out there who won’t even brook a discussion of the Founding Fathers having motives beyond Enlightenment-inspired altruism. But the book is out there. And the fight goes on.
As a graduate student, my comprehensive exam lists were filled with books that reinterpreted the history of slavery using new documentary sources, revealing a history where slaves exercised agency and resisted the harsh conditions in which they lived. While the history of slavery during the antebellum period has been extensively analyzed and documented, the history of slavery during the colonial period has been paid far less attention by historians. As Gerald Horne points out in The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (published on April 18th), this is because paying attention would force historians (and, by extension, Americans) to acknowledge the very deep relationship between slavery and the American Revolution—a relationship that is uncomfortable to examine, because it forces a reevaluation of the very meaning of that revolution.
Horne, a prolific writer and the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston, builds on Atlantic World scholarship and the history of slavery to pose a compelling thesis: because slavery was the foundation of the economy of the colonial Western Hemisphere, the history of the American Revolution is not centered on 1776, but 1688. The Glorious Revolution helped make possible the rise of a merchant class whose wealth was based in the slave trade (as traders or planters), and slavery throughout the British colonies, both in the Caribbean and North America, increased accordingly. The end result was instability, as both slavery and the resistance to slavery grew.
The ramifications of this instability, however, played out differently in the colonies and in London: London moved toward abolition and a realization that free Africans allied to Britain could be useful in playing the game of imperial politics against Spain and France, while the merchants of North America, realizing that the institution of slavery was threatened, moved toward “independency.” Meanwhile, Africans, caught in the middle, pursued alliances with indigenous peoples and with Britain’s imperial enemies, conducting slave revolts on their own—a cycle that would later prove disastrous for those Africans remaining within the territorial bounds of the newly formed United States. Independence, Horne points out, was not the story about Enlightenment ideals of liberty as espoused by the Founding Fathers, but was a conservative counter-revolution. Americans were fighting for the right to keep and increase slavery (thus making the later Confederate claim for being the true heirs of the American Revolution plausible, but that’s a story for another day).
Horne rightfully points out that the story of the American Revolution as it is so often told (as a progress narrative where freedom and democracy inevitably won out in the end) only favors the winners, and misses the larger context of the politics of the British Empire during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This empire was global, not limited to North America. And British colonies in the Western Hemisphere were built on the economic basis of slavery. Africans were major players in this world—not just “helpers” in the Patriot cause. By restoring this larger context, Horne demands that we imagine a far more complicated world than that usually given to us in our history books. This picture, however, is profoundly uncomfortable, as it should be.
I did not find this book an easy read, and not just for the subject matter. In part, I suspect it was because I was reading an ARC, and there were several places where I assumed changes would be made before final printing (hopefully including Horne’s use of state nicknames, which got old quickly). I also had some trouble with Horne’s argumentative style, which kept circling around to pick up themes and events from earlier in the book. Once this style sunk into my brain, however, I was able to appreciate the significance of what Horne was arguing. So my advice would be to stick with the book until the end, because the payoff is worth it. My hope would be that Horne’s book will have a readership beyond academic circles, although I know that there are far too many people out there who won’t even brook a discussion of the Founding Fathers having motives beyond Enlightenment-inspired altruism. But the book is out there. And the fight goes on.
July 12, 2022
Absolute masterpiece. The Horne Trilogy, as I call it, needs to be read by everyone living in the US. It places the secession of the settlers from the Crown into crucial context that is otherwise completely omitted when we learn and talk about the founding of this country. The onset of a synthetic whiteness, the emergence of capitalism driven by chattel slavery, the residual religious conflict with Spain and France, the incipient abolitionism arising in London, and the westward expansion and extirpation of indigenes are interwoven in this story of just how 1776 happened and why it’s appropriately termed a counter-revolution to Africans and indigenes.
May 7, 2014
History or polemic?
In a simplified nutshell, Gerald Horne’s argument in this book is that the Revolution was in large measure a response to the colonists’ fear of London’s drive towards abolition of slavery.
Horne argues that slavery underpinned every aspect of the pre-1776 economy and as such was seen as crucial by the colonists, even while slave resistance was growing and slave revolts were becoming more common. The Royal African Company’s loss of monopoly over the slave trade in the late 17th century meant that free-traders had entered the slave markets, and the consequent uncontrolled rise in slave numbers led to fears that the slave owners did not have the capacity to stifle such resistance. While London was showing signs of beginning to think that the solution might lie in abolition, (with the added benefit that Africans could then be armed to assist in the ongoing turf wars with Spain and France on the American continent), the colonists feared a situation where Africans could be given some kind of equality or even superiority within the armed forces or, still worse, in civilian life. So, Horne argues, the Revolution was as much about maintaining the institution of the enslavement of Africans as achieving ‘liberty’ for ‘white’ colonists.
Horne makes two further assertions, both leading from this central argument. Firstly, he shows that Africans largely sided with Britain or one of the other European powers in the Revolution and prior to that had often looked to both Spain and France as possible liberators. From this, Horne argues that some Africans saw the war as not just a possible route to freedom but hoped that a victory could lead to some kind of league between themselves, the indigenous people of America and one of the European powers to form a government in place of the white colonists. Secondly, and leading on from that, much of the subsequent ill-treatment of Africans, as slaves or free citizens, can be attributed to them having picked the wrong side…
Horne concludes therefore that the general view of the creation of the republic as a great leap forward for humanity is erroneous – an example of history being written by the winners, in this case the white colonists and their descendants.
On the whole, I found Horne’s arguments partially but not wholly convincing. The book is a strange mix of history and polemic, written by someone who frequently lets his anger show through in the language he chooses to use – ‘…profit-hungry settlers were willing to sell the rope that might be used to encircle their pasty necks’, ‘the supposed trailblazing republic and its allegedly wondrous constitution’ etc; while his desire to avoid the use of the words ‘slaves’ and ‘black’ leads him at points into rather fanciful terminology, my favourites being ‘men of ebony’ and ‘the melanin rich’.
When reading a history of a period of which one has very little existing knowledge, written by a historian unknown to one, the challenge is to decide how much confidence to have in the author’s interpretation of the facts. Really the only way I can ever think to do this is to see what the author says about a subject I do know a little about. Very early on in the book, Horne talks about the influx of Scots to the colonies, and his description of the causes and effects of the Jacobite rebellions was so over-simplified and frankly misleading that it left me gasping and gaping. I was left feeling, therefore, that I would have to take many of Horne’s interpretations with a large dose of scepticism. I also felt strongly that, while obviously Horne was speaking specifically about the impact of slavery, he failed to give enough emphasis to the other causes that combined to bring about the Revolution; and I felt this tunnel-vision approach weakened his argument rather than strengthening it.
The style of writing is somewhat clumsy at times and Horne repeats the same information again and again throughout. He constantly jumps backwards and forwards in time rather than taking a linear approach. And he often refers to places or incidents without clarifying them, which can be problematic for a reader without an existing familiarity with the period and locations. All of these factors combined to make this a book that I somewhat struggled through rather than enjoyed.
However, despite all of these problems, I still felt that there was a basic validity in much of what Horne was saying, in particular with regards to his main argument. Certainly worth reading to understand why he has extrapolated the conclusions that he has from that, but should perhaps be treated with the extra caution that applies to polemic rather than history. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
Gerald Horne is the Moores Professor of History & African American Studies at the University of Houston, and has published over thirty books.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, NYU Press.
In a simplified nutshell, Gerald Horne’s argument in this book is that the Revolution was in large measure a response to the colonists’ fear of London’s drive towards abolition of slavery.
Horne argues that slavery underpinned every aspect of the pre-1776 economy and as such was seen as crucial by the colonists, even while slave resistance was growing and slave revolts were becoming more common. The Royal African Company’s loss of monopoly over the slave trade in the late 17th century meant that free-traders had entered the slave markets, and the consequent uncontrolled rise in slave numbers led to fears that the slave owners did not have the capacity to stifle such resistance. While London was showing signs of beginning to think that the solution might lie in abolition, (with the added benefit that Africans could then be armed to assist in the ongoing turf wars with Spain and France on the American continent), the colonists feared a situation where Africans could be given some kind of equality or even superiority within the armed forces or, still worse, in civilian life. So, Horne argues, the Revolution was as much about maintaining the institution of the enslavement of Africans as achieving ‘liberty’ for ‘white’ colonists.
Horne makes two further assertions, both leading from this central argument. Firstly, he shows that Africans largely sided with Britain or one of the other European powers in the Revolution and prior to that had often looked to both Spain and France as possible liberators. From this, Horne argues that some Africans saw the war as not just a possible route to freedom but hoped that a victory could lead to some kind of league between themselves, the indigenous people of America and one of the European powers to form a government in place of the white colonists. Secondly, and leading on from that, much of the subsequent ill-treatment of Africans, as slaves or free citizens, can be attributed to them having picked the wrong side…
‘…the ongoing persecution of descendants of mainland enslaved Africans is – in part – a continuing expression of what tends to befall those who are defeated in bloody warfare: often they are subjected to a heinous collective punishment.’
Horne concludes therefore that the general view of the creation of the republic as a great leap forward for humanity is erroneous – an example of history being written by the winners, in this case the white colonists and their descendants.
On the whole, I found Horne’s arguments partially but not wholly convincing. The book is a strange mix of history and polemic, written by someone who frequently lets his anger show through in the language he chooses to use – ‘…profit-hungry settlers were willing to sell the rope that might be used to encircle their pasty necks’, ‘the supposed trailblazing republic and its allegedly wondrous constitution’ etc; while his desire to avoid the use of the words ‘slaves’ and ‘black’ leads him at points into rather fanciful terminology, my favourites being ‘men of ebony’ and ‘the melanin rich’.
When reading a history of a period of which one has very little existing knowledge, written by a historian unknown to one, the challenge is to decide how much confidence to have in the author’s interpretation of the facts. Really the only way I can ever think to do this is to see what the author says about a subject I do know a little about. Very early on in the book, Horne talks about the influx of Scots to the colonies, and his description of the causes and effects of the Jacobite rebellions was so over-simplified and frankly misleading that it left me gasping and gaping. I was left feeling, therefore, that I would have to take many of Horne’s interpretations with a large dose of scepticism. I also felt strongly that, while obviously Horne was speaking specifically about the impact of slavery, he failed to give enough emphasis to the other causes that combined to bring about the Revolution; and I felt this tunnel-vision approach weakened his argument rather than strengthening it.
The style of writing is somewhat clumsy at times and Horne repeats the same information again and again throughout. He constantly jumps backwards and forwards in time rather than taking a linear approach. And he often refers to places or incidents without clarifying them, which can be problematic for a reader without an existing familiarity with the period and locations. All of these factors combined to make this a book that I somewhat struggled through rather than enjoyed.
However, despite all of these problems, I still felt that there was a basic validity in much of what Horne was saying, in particular with regards to his main argument. Certainly worth reading to understand why he has extrapolated the conclusions that he has from that, but should perhaps be treated with the extra caution that applies to polemic rather than history. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
Gerald Horne is the Moores Professor of History & African American Studies at the University of Houston, and has published over thirty books.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, NYU Press.
June 23, 2023
Filled with academic language but all carrying very fruitful information. This book has completely reordered my understanding of the founding of the USA. For Horne to convincingly reframe a historical moment that’s been told and retold to death is an impressive feat in its own right, let alone in only 250 pages. The text reads like any one of Hornet’s interviews, so if his speaking style works for you you’re in luck. If not, it’s still worth it to push through, because the history here is priceless.
August 6, 2018
Some leftist historians still consider the coming into being of the United States as a positive, progressive development. Undeniably, the struggle for American independence from the Crown directly inspired the French Revolution, which in turn served as an inspiration for the revolutions in Russia and China and so on. But Gerald Horne, the Marxist historian of the African-American experience, here persuasively argues that the war for American independence constituted a counter-revolution. Horne charges that independence was intended to further consolidate the power of the oppressor class and further subjugate the oppressed of the thirteen colonies.
Horne argues that slave resistance was a driving force in the colonization of what would become the mainland United States. For many years the sugar colonies of the Caribbean were seen by the Crown as more valuable and stable than those on the mainland, which were hampered by attacks from the indigenous as well as competing colonizers Spain and France. But the African slaves in the Caribbean soon came to outnumber the European oppressors by such numbers that the latter were helpless when the former rebelled. The mainland offered far more room to run in case of revolt, and it could house vastly more Europeans to keep the slaves in chains. An exodus to the mainland began.
Badly in need of Europeans for the colonial project, the English settlers in America began to let go of their prejudices against such groups as the Irish and Scottish and even (to a lesser extent) the Jews. The Crown, being all too ready to rid British soil of such groups, sent them to the American colonies in mass where they were promised the eventual potential of owning property if they, in turn, put asside their hatred for the British. All ethnicities from the British Isles were to become "white". Thus, Horne asserts, skin color came to define identity more than ethnicity or religion.
While slave revolts continued, the settlers were for the most part successful in maintaining power and some grew extremely wealthy by trading both with the British and, surreptitiously, with the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana and Quebec. Both the colonists and the Crown knew that the colonists had become too powerful to keep under the royal thumb if things continued as they were.
The Spanish deviled the colonists by promising escaped slaves freedom and allowing them into the army where they could share in the spoils of attacks on their former oppressors. Looking from afar, the Crown was quietly impressed with Spain's strategy. The African soldiers fought fiercely, and Spain, while controlling far less territory in what would become the United States than the British, often were the victors militarily. There was growing abolitionist sentiment in the Kingdom. Perhaps the English could fight the Spanish with their own fire by freeing the slaves. True, this could prove disastrous for European colonists of the mainland, but they were quickly turning into a danger themselves.
Ultimately, however, the Crown decided to help its unruly subjects in America by launching the French-Indian War, which forced the Spanish from Florida and the French from Quebec. The crown made a pact with the indigenous to limit expansion west. British blood had been spilled for the colonists, and the Crown wanted to be recompensed through taxes to repay it for the war effort. Not seeking such another project, the Crown pressured the colonists not to expand westward. Both of these moves were greatly resented by the European colonists who began to talk more and more openly of independence.
Talk of independence completely outraged the British who began to characterize, not unfairly it seems to me, the Americans as spectacular hypocrites for maintaining racist slavery while chiming about freedom from taxes to pay for a war fought for their benefit. Abolitionism became a major movement in England, and the courts seemed to be moving more and more towards freeing the slaves in the colonies.
It was this, Horne argues, that ultimately drove the colonists into the arms of the Crown's enemies in France, and to independence. This allowed slavery to be maintained for another 80-something years and for the move westward that led to the genocide of the Native Americans. From the standpoint of the majority, then, the coming into being of the United States was a historical catastrophe. It ultimately proved fully beneficial only for those in the Colonies who were already the most powerful. It should thus, Horne convincingly argues, be understood as a counter-revolution.
Horne argues that slave resistance was a driving force in the colonization of what would become the mainland United States. For many years the sugar colonies of the Caribbean were seen by the Crown as more valuable and stable than those on the mainland, which were hampered by attacks from the indigenous as well as competing colonizers Spain and France. But the African slaves in the Caribbean soon came to outnumber the European oppressors by such numbers that the latter were helpless when the former rebelled. The mainland offered far more room to run in case of revolt, and it could house vastly more Europeans to keep the slaves in chains. An exodus to the mainland began.
Badly in need of Europeans for the colonial project, the English settlers in America began to let go of their prejudices against such groups as the Irish and Scottish and even (to a lesser extent) the Jews. The Crown, being all too ready to rid British soil of such groups, sent them to the American colonies in mass where they were promised the eventual potential of owning property if they, in turn, put asside their hatred for the British. All ethnicities from the British Isles were to become "white". Thus, Horne asserts, skin color came to define identity more than ethnicity or religion.
While slave revolts continued, the settlers were for the most part successful in maintaining power and some grew extremely wealthy by trading both with the British and, surreptitiously, with the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana and Quebec. Both the colonists and the Crown knew that the colonists had become too powerful to keep under the royal thumb if things continued as they were.
The Spanish deviled the colonists by promising escaped slaves freedom and allowing them into the army where they could share in the spoils of attacks on their former oppressors. Looking from afar, the Crown was quietly impressed with Spain's strategy. The African soldiers fought fiercely, and Spain, while controlling far less territory in what would become the United States than the British, often were the victors militarily. There was growing abolitionist sentiment in the Kingdom. Perhaps the English could fight the Spanish with their own fire by freeing the slaves. True, this could prove disastrous for European colonists of the mainland, but they were quickly turning into a danger themselves.
Ultimately, however, the Crown decided to help its unruly subjects in America by launching the French-Indian War, which forced the Spanish from Florida and the French from Quebec. The crown made a pact with the indigenous to limit expansion west. British blood had been spilled for the colonists, and the Crown wanted to be recompensed through taxes to repay it for the war effort. Not seeking such another project, the Crown pressured the colonists not to expand westward. Both of these moves were greatly resented by the European colonists who began to talk more and more openly of independence.
Talk of independence completely outraged the British who began to characterize, not unfairly it seems to me, the Americans as spectacular hypocrites for maintaining racist slavery while chiming about freedom from taxes to pay for a war fought for their benefit. Abolitionism became a major movement in England, and the courts seemed to be moving more and more towards freeing the slaves in the colonies.
It was this, Horne argues, that ultimately drove the colonists into the arms of the Crown's enemies in France, and to independence. This allowed slavery to be maintained for another 80-something years and for the move westward that led to the genocide of the Native Americans. From the standpoint of the majority, then, the coming into being of the United States was a historical catastrophe. It ultimately proved fully beneficial only for those in the Colonies who were already the most powerful. It should thus, Horne convincingly argues, be understood as a counter-revolution.
February 19, 2020
Whatever one thinks about Horne's thesis, this book does not do it justice. Horne is a sloppy, careless writer relying on euphemism and the crass generalizations. The Counterrevolution of 1776 reads like the gush of a first-draft.
NYU Press should never have allowed the work published without copy-editing the most embarassing and self-defeating stylistic infelicities. They should have done this to protect their author, if nothing else.
NYU Press should never have allowed the work published without copy-editing the most embarassing and self-defeating stylistic infelicities. They should have done this to protect their author, if nothing else.
October 4, 2015
Generally I don’t review a book till I have read every last word. I make an exception only when I find work so excellent that I am convinced that if the book ended right where I am, right now (about 75 percent through, and of course I checked the sources), it would still be worth the full cover price. I will read the rest, but you need to know about this book RIGHT NOW.
Reading this galley, courtesy of the publisher, New York University, via Net Galley, made me feel as if the American history I studied as an undergraduate and then taught for twenty years in the public school system was so incomplete as to be incorrect. If you care about American history; if you have ever wondered why Black anger still runs so deep, especially in certain parts of the USA; if you scratched your head over parts of American history as it has been presented and the ways it did not make sense, then you must read this book.
The fact is that America’s early Black population, as well as that of Blacks in the Caribbean, behaved with much more courage and savvy than they are given credit for in standard history texts. The role of Spain that Horne explains here, as well as that of the Catholic Church, and of the Cherokee people, is startling news.
And the fact is, what I read here makes me ask questions about all sorts of other events, such as the Louisiana Purchase (the significance of having included Florida in the deal is a monster once this new information is merged with what we knew before), to the Trail of Tears and banishment of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia, to the question I was never able to adequately answer for my own bright students: “Where did the free Blacks come from?” It’s here. It’s all here. America’s students have been robbed, up to this point. If you are a teacher, you have to get this book, even if it means buying it out of your own pocket. You can’t tell the truth without this book!
In reading this outstanding work, knowledge of basic place-name geography is critical. A lot of people these days have no idea, for example, where the Bahamas stand in relationship to North America, which US states are where, or even which European nations are closest to the Caribbean and the USA, and if you are fuzzy in this regard, you may need to pull out a map or grab a globe so that you can see how much that proximity matters. Those miles are important miles, and this information is massively different from what I was taught, and it is well enough documented that I am convinced it is true. And it makes so much sense.
I can’t hold this review until I have finished the book. I want all scholars who have been stuck in the dark through wrongful and errant selection of information in their own educations to know this book is available, and that what it imparts is huge. Black students deserve to know the truth; their history in the US is not one of pure terror and subjugation; their ancestors fought, and they thought, and they behaved politically. This knowledge is a basic right, not only for them, but for anyone who cares about the truth!
Reading this galley, courtesy of the publisher, New York University, via Net Galley, made me feel as if the American history I studied as an undergraduate and then taught for twenty years in the public school system was so incomplete as to be incorrect. If you care about American history; if you have ever wondered why Black anger still runs so deep, especially in certain parts of the USA; if you scratched your head over parts of American history as it has been presented and the ways it did not make sense, then you must read this book.
The fact is that America’s early Black population, as well as that of Blacks in the Caribbean, behaved with much more courage and savvy than they are given credit for in standard history texts. The role of Spain that Horne explains here, as well as that of the Catholic Church, and of the Cherokee people, is startling news.
And the fact is, what I read here makes me ask questions about all sorts of other events, such as the Louisiana Purchase (the significance of having included Florida in the deal is a monster once this new information is merged with what we knew before), to the Trail of Tears and banishment of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia, to the question I was never able to adequately answer for my own bright students: “Where did the free Blacks come from?” It’s here. It’s all here. America’s students have been robbed, up to this point. If you are a teacher, you have to get this book, even if it means buying it out of your own pocket. You can’t tell the truth without this book!
In reading this outstanding work, knowledge of basic place-name geography is critical. A lot of people these days have no idea, for example, where the Bahamas stand in relationship to North America, which US states are where, or even which European nations are closest to the Caribbean and the USA, and if you are fuzzy in this regard, you may need to pull out a map or grab a globe so that you can see how much that proximity matters. Those miles are important miles, and this information is massively different from what I was taught, and it is well enough documented that I am convinced it is true. And it makes so much sense.
I can’t hold this review until I have finished the book. I want all scholars who have been stuck in the dark through wrongful and errant selection of information in their own educations to know this book is available, and that what it imparts is huge. Black students deserve to know the truth; their history in the US is not one of pure terror and subjugation; their ancestors fought, and they thought, and they behaved politically. This knowledge is a basic right, not only for them, but for anyone who cares about the truth!
December 31, 2016
Gerald shows Americans what led the colonists to revolt against England was the Somerset Case of 1772 and Dunmore’s Edict of 1775. The potential of Britain outlawing slavery soon in the colonies became the revolutionary tipping point. English like Samuel Johnson, saw colonists pratting on about ‘liberty’ while happily completely depriving their slaves of it. Even New England was making a killing in profits from the slave trade; it wasn’t just the southern colonies. To unite the country, the future United States faced a public relations problem; it had to create a heroic creation myth for the new nation that wasn’t based on sociopathic capitalist greed: a.k.a. its intended enslavement of one race for profit and its benevolent genocide of another race displaced for their land (settler-colonial). Thus, the American Revolution was not fought for ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’ (and especially not for Blacks, Native Americans, women, and indentured servants), but was fought for “the reassertion of slaveowner control over the enslaved black population in the new republic.” Gerald Horne shows how America in effect created the first apartheid state (Noam Chomsky in his ‘Who Rules the World?’ confirms Gerald’s thesis). Gerald laments how the United States, founded on liberty (in theory) has spent all its history since depriving other countries and peoples of it. This is an important book because this is the one that finally destroys the white supremacist American Creation Myth (liberty and freedom for who?) and offers a fitting cover…
February 26, 2023
Yea this book was pretty incredible. Im left understanding 1776 as a bourgeois counter-Revolution in the name of sustained enslavement of Africans and continued encroachment and genocide of the indigenous. Since I listened to this book instead of reading it, I feel like there are some significant details that I feel as though weren’t as cemented in my mind if where to have read the text version. I’ll absolutely be revisiting this book in text and highly recommend it to any of my comrades who reside in the lands currently known as the US, Canada, and Mexico.
February 20, 2024
Rewriting of history to fit Marxist ideology. No thanks. The view that the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain solely because England wanted to end slavery, has been thoroughly debunked by major historians of the American Revolution. Horne has cherry picked history to suit his beliefs and left out much of the documented truth.
January 11, 2026
3.5/5
The traditional narrative of the [US] republic's founding has emphasized insufficiently the amorality and trans-border ethos that came to define capitalism—which often was at odds with traditional notions of patriotism and even sovereignty.This is in reality a three star book that I don't want to tilt in favor of the ratings from the folks who think every moved car is a drug dealer and every public library is a den of iniquity. This is because the main thesis is of vital importance when it comes to solving the murder mystery of North America: namely, putting chattel slavery back into its properly contextualized place within the event popularly known as the "American Revolution." Horne follows the trajectory of greed, smuggling, and divide & conquer when it comes to a group of folks separated by nationality, religion, and ethnoreligion coming together so as to pursue their commercial interests in the flesh market all the more smoothly.
[T]he perceived need for slave-labor camps was so profound and the profits from them were so mind-boggling that local elites felt they had little choice but to run the risk of mass murder.From Spain ruled Florida to soldier-poor London to the revolutionary Caribbean to the indigenous adjacent French, Horne introduces us to a whole cast of nations alongside Irish, Scottish, and Jewish folks to explore the fears of an economy willing to profit now and worry about the cutthroats embedded in the heartland later. As the conspiracies and the revolts piled up and the Black folks levered any and all enemies of their enemies in their favor, Horne argues that the burgeoning US, or mainland as he refers to it, had to do some re-configuring of their own, taking in (but only just) those folks willing to stomp down on the "Africans" in exchange for some indigenous-wrested land and (piss poor chance that it was) possibility of owning slaves of their own. Alas, this book is exceedingly repetitive when it comes to generic summations of previous arguments, and when the conclusion consisted of Horne trailing off in a vague out of the blue "socialism bad" qualifier, it took me a moment to shake off the daze and realize that, yes, this was the same book that all the other amazing material had proceeded out of.
Ultimately, the mainland model based on "racial" privilege overwhelmed the London model based on "ethnic" privilege.For all that, I've already witnessed my brain putting this info to good use during my time with This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. At its base, I finally have some measure of continiuity between the values that first founded by home country and the ones running it today. It doesn't paint a hopeful picture, but if you're wondering how we arrived at ICE shooting a retreating white woman in the face barely 24 hours ago, this book won't give you a clean answer, but it will show you where we lay our scene.
Repeatedly, Africans in Boston and their backers denounced the anomaly of rebels prattling about "liberty" while endorsing enslavement. Why, said one commentator in 1773, this was sheer "solecism of language." There was "not a Right to bring them from their own country," it was said of the beleaguered Africans, and, thus, "they ought to be returned thereto, at the public Expense, if they chuse [choose] it, which, doubtless, would be the case with many." Appealing directly to the province's governor, the Africans—in a cry that resonated even more insistently after the founding of the republic—seemed desperate enough to throw in their lot with the Crown in return for concessions: "We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!"
July 26, 2022
An excellent corrective to much of the hagiography around the creation of the US. Horne brings out example after example from primary historical documents of how, despite all the flowery rhetoric about freedom and unalienable rights, one of if not the primary motivations for the settler rebellion was fear that Britain would free "their" slaves.
Others have written about the material motivations for the settler wealthy classes to want separation, land speculation, the desire to steal more Indigenous lands, desires for the benefits of empire without having to pay taxes, etc. But Horne's work show just how central the fear of liberated Africans was to the foundation of the US, with long reverberating consequences.
Others have written about the material motivations for the settler wealthy classes to want separation, land speculation, the desire to steal more Indigenous lands, desires for the benefits of empire without having to pay taxes, etc. But Horne's work show just how central the fear of liberated Africans was to the foundation of the US, with long reverberating consequences.
October 3, 2018
A compelling premise, The Counter-Revolution of 1776 turns out to be less focused than one would expect, with the bulk of the book being about 17th century or early 18th century events instead of the lead up to the Revolution. The book also fails to represent any diversity of opinions from the time, opting to depict Britain as unilaterally abolitionist, and failing to analyze the motives of the non-slave owning whites in the colonies.
January 15, 2015
Stimulating thesis and lots of good info, even if I suspect the central theme overreaches a bit and, in its maximal form, probably doesn't withstand scrutiny. Those who don't have much patience for historical preliminary context in repetitive detail may want to skip straight to the last chapter or two.
June 28, 2020
As an 18th century history nerd I found Horne's argument to be pretty persuasive. Essentially, he argues that London's move towards the abolition of slavery was a primary cause of the rebellion and independence of its American Colonies.
I was aware of the slave revolts in the Caribbean colonies, and of course knew about the mass importation of slaves into North American in the 18th century. What I didn't know was how the unraveling of the RAC (Royal African Company) in 1688 led to capitalistic opportunism of free traders that flooded the American colonies with slaves to feed a rapidly growing economy.
The mass importation of slaves coupled with the British attempting to preserve the western expansion of the settlers into indigenous lands led directly to a confrontation and eventual break between the two.
The British were caught in a vice. They needed manpower to combat the Catholic realms of the Spanish and French empires. Eventually this turned to arming slaves (as the French and Spanish already did). However, arming blacks to fight other armies containing free black soldiers to preserve a system of white supremacy and black bondage wasn't a workable solution.
Over time the British leaned more towards abolition (including shockingly debating in Parliament granting trial by jury to slaves accused of crimes in the 1770s) and that ran counter to the colonial planter class and other local elites that benefited tremendously from slavery (and its by products).
The colonists greatest fear was a slave uprising which matched what I knew about colonial Jamaica. I had always thought that that fear of white masters being overthrown by their black slaves was contained to the southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolina's and Georgia. Horne does a good job outlining how that fear was prevalent throughout all 13 colonies (and why).
I learned a lot overall (and there MANY citations for further reading and discovery), but I will say there are a couple of detractors to Horne's book that bugged me. One is minor and one is not.
Structurally (Not minor): I would have preferred if the chapters went in a more linear fashion. We jump around a lot in time during each chapter. While I could follow along just fine I did find it a little annoying.
Word choice (minor): This is not a casual read, and there were times where the word choice decided upon caused me to raise my eyebrows a bit. Not that I dislike the use of complicated words in academic writing, but sometimes I thought that a simpler word would have sufficed.
At the end, I really enjoyed this book and think it is critical to understanding the time period. While I think that the causes of the revolution are varied and very complex more credit and attention does need to be given to the issue of slavery. In my studies, I always put Lord Dunmore's proclamation as a "hail mary" move to squash insurrection but Horne lays out a convincing case as why it was less radical than it seemed.
I was aware of the slave revolts in the Caribbean colonies, and of course knew about the mass importation of slaves into North American in the 18th century. What I didn't know was how the unraveling of the RAC (Royal African Company) in 1688 led to capitalistic opportunism of free traders that flooded the American colonies with slaves to feed a rapidly growing economy.
The mass importation of slaves coupled with the British attempting to preserve the western expansion of the settlers into indigenous lands led directly to a confrontation and eventual break between the two.
The British were caught in a vice. They needed manpower to combat the Catholic realms of the Spanish and French empires. Eventually this turned to arming slaves (as the French and Spanish already did). However, arming blacks to fight other armies containing free black soldiers to preserve a system of white supremacy and black bondage wasn't a workable solution.
Over time the British leaned more towards abolition (including shockingly debating in Parliament granting trial by jury to slaves accused of crimes in the 1770s) and that ran counter to the colonial planter class and other local elites that benefited tremendously from slavery (and its by products).
The colonists greatest fear was a slave uprising which matched what I knew about colonial Jamaica. I had always thought that that fear of white masters being overthrown by their black slaves was contained to the southern colonies of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolina's and Georgia. Horne does a good job outlining how that fear was prevalent throughout all 13 colonies (and why).
I learned a lot overall (and there MANY citations for further reading and discovery), but I will say there are a couple of detractors to Horne's book that bugged me. One is minor and one is not.
Structurally (Not minor): I would have preferred if the chapters went in a more linear fashion. We jump around a lot in time during each chapter. While I could follow along just fine I did find it a little annoying.
Word choice (minor): This is not a casual read, and there were times where the word choice decided upon caused me to raise my eyebrows a bit. Not that I dislike the use of complicated words in academic writing, but sometimes I thought that a simpler word would have sufficed.
At the end, I really enjoyed this book and think it is critical to understanding the time period. While I think that the causes of the revolution are varied and very complex more credit and attention does need to be given to the issue of slavery. In my studies, I always put Lord Dunmore's proclamation as a "hail mary" move to squash insurrection but Horne lays out a convincing case as why it was less radical than it seemed.
October 16, 2024
this book led me to rethink the whole entire story of the 1776 revolution as I had learned in school only that America wanted freedom and independence from their nasty nasty father, England. Now that interpretation of the revolution is completely out the window..
This book argues the case that the revolution of 1776 can be thought of as a counter-revolution of 1776, as part of it was due to the fact that the US wanted to expand and protect slavery, which London was on their way to abolishing. WHICH MAKES SENSE ! ! even if you make the argument that US wanted to split from Britain due to economic reasons, slavery was inherently and intrinsically tied to the economic power of the United States such that there is no way slavery is NOT included in this argument.
The book continuously explains this catch-22 that is the settlers needing slavery to be able to produce as much wealth and capital as they do, but still being SO SCARED of the slaves and indigenous people because the slaves were revolting and resisting aggressively to colonial rule. It is actually mind boggling how Britain and the settlers went to extreme lengths to try to find a workaround for this issue while still accommodating their immense greed (because when you think about it, you could have just gotten rid of slavery but no they wanted to keep it ... they even were considering white slaves which really tells you how capitalism is inherently exploitative because no matter what, these settlers need someone under their boot heel to take advantage of) .
The book also does a really good job at introducing all of these complex aspects of identity that continue to be at play with each other as the African slaves, Indigenous people, and European colonists (mainly France, England, Spain) interact with each other and vie for land — for example, race, ethnicity, religion. it is shown to us that the construction of whiteness was created just so that African slaves could be suppressed as a sort of "common enemy." London also felt that they had to look over their shoulder all the time, and they couldn't trust anyone, because of religious, ethnic differences ...
the few critiques I have for this book is that I wish there were pictures... Caliban and the Witch really spoiled me because there was a picture on every page... also sometimes for these nonfiction books I really wish the authors wrote in a less esoteric and advanced-language kind of way because I feel like it kind of makes the book a little less accessible and I had trouble reading it ... though I did try to skim it in two days again because it was a school assignment and it started too late — especially for a topic as foundational in school as this. but maybe thats what books like "how to be an anti racist" and things are for... idk . overall a very strong book that I think needs to be read in school.
This book argues the case that the revolution of 1776 can be thought of as a counter-revolution of 1776, as part of it was due to the fact that the US wanted to expand and protect slavery, which London was on their way to abolishing. WHICH MAKES SENSE ! ! even if you make the argument that US wanted to split from Britain due to economic reasons, slavery was inherently and intrinsically tied to the economic power of the United States such that there is no way slavery is NOT included in this argument.
The book continuously explains this catch-22 that is the settlers needing slavery to be able to produce as much wealth and capital as they do, but still being SO SCARED of the slaves and indigenous people because the slaves were revolting and resisting aggressively to colonial rule. It is actually mind boggling how Britain and the settlers went to extreme lengths to try to find a workaround for this issue while still accommodating their immense greed (because when you think about it, you could have just gotten rid of slavery but no they wanted to keep it ... they even were considering white slaves which really tells you how capitalism is inherently exploitative because no matter what, these settlers need someone under their boot heel to take advantage of) .
The book also does a really good job at introducing all of these complex aspects of identity that continue to be at play with each other as the African slaves, Indigenous people, and European colonists (mainly France, England, Spain) interact with each other and vie for land — for example, race, ethnicity, religion. it is shown to us that the construction of whiteness was created just so that African slaves could be suppressed as a sort of "common enemy." London also felt that they had to look over their shoulder all the time, and they couldn't trust anyone, because of religious, ethnic differences ...
the few critiques I have for this book is that I wish there were pictures... Caliban and the Witch really spoiled me because there was a picture on every page... also sometimes for these nonfiction books I really wish the authors wrote in a less esoteric and advanced-language kind of way because I feel like it kind of makes the book a little less accessible and I had trouble reading it ... though I did try to skim it in two days again because it was a school assignment and it started too late — especially for a topic as foundational in school as this. but maybe thats what books like "how to be an anti racist" and things are for... idk . overall a very strong book that I think needs to be read in school.
October 10, 2021
Horne's book attempts to establish a 'heart of darkness' for the cause of the 'Patriots' of 1776. I was desperate to want to like this book, having come across a review of it a few years ago that whetted my appetite, but my unenthusiastic score reflects some problems of execution. Nonetheless, I found its thesis of considerable interest, and I don't think it can be ignored simply because another part of Horne's argument won't withstand sustained examination.
Horne argues that the preservation of slavery was the driving force for American independence at least as much as the causes of political and economic liberty. He amasses a considerable amount of evidence for this, all drawn from primary sources. In a sense this is a companion to Christopher Leslie Brown's Moral Capital, which sees the roots of the British abolitionist movement in the experience of the British North American empire. Key to Horne's idea is the Somerset case of 1772, in which the judge Lord Mansfield ruled that there could be no slavery in England and freed a man brought from Massachusetts as a slave. The Americans perceived in this ruling a threat to the system of slavery that underpinned their agricultural economy, and was the basis for much of the wealth generated by the colonies. Further, the exigencies of the War of Jenkin's Ear and the Seven Years' War had made attractive to British officers the use of 'Africans' as soldiers, especially in the tropical climes where much of the war against the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean took place. (Here Horne might have profited from a quick scholarly survey of the use of sepoys by the East India Company prior to 1757, if one exists.) Free men of African descent were already serving in the British army and navy by the time of the 'Boston Massacre' in 1770, much to the shock of Americans. (And would serve in notable numbers in the Royal Navy during the wars against Revolutionary France and Napoleon.) This fear of the armed 'African' was a corollary of the reality of a slavery-based economy, in which the workforce was liable to rebel and murder the masters who made such unkind use of their bodies. The crucial crossroads in the war for independence thus came with the proclamation of Virginia's governor Lord Dunmore that invited slaves to join the king's supporters to defeat the rebels in return for their freedom. Horne traces the interaction of slave rebellion, slave alliances with Britain's enemies among the indigenous people of the Americas and the Spanish dons and the mentality of the slaves' masters in Virginia and the Carolinas confronted with the perpetual fear of poisoning or uprising.
However, Horne blunders badly in seeing a parallel between this and the rise of 'whiteness'. Here he wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Whiteness came to exist, but much later than the period under Horne's review. Nonetheless, he projects it backwards yet at the same time his own evidence highlights its nonexistence in this period. For example, he notes on p 59 that 'some of the Dutch there had not been fully assimilated into the developing identity of "whiteness"'; on pp 118-9 'the anti-colonial rebels would elasticise the crucial identity that was "whiteness" to better confront Africans, indigenes, and other presumed foes by welcoming the huddled masses from all of Europe and not just those from the British Isles'; p166 'There was still a kind of religious war at play, and "whiteness" was hardly a hard fact but akin to a fervent projection'. He even cites the notoriously racist Jamaican planter Edwin Long's quote about Portuguese not being entirely white, which demonstrates that white people still had to become white. We don't even need to dredge up some Jamaican to see where Americans' use of 'whiteness' circa 1776 could exclude people now thought of as white. Benjamin Franklin categorised Germans and Swedes(!) as 'swarthy'. This wouldn't be a problem if Horne was throwing some asides around simply to show he is a 'woke' scholar. But it is a key part of his thesis, that the creation of a white identity intensified in order to justify the enslavement of Africans, rather than later on to permit the construction of a racist regime to institutionalise the inferiority of free people of African descent (and indigenous and East Asians and Luso-Hispanics).
There is a real problem with this kind of scholarship of the intertwined history of racism and imperialism, which one never sees engaged in books like this. Had Horne restricted his account to the decades roughly from the 1712 Manhattan fires to the War of Independence, then we could largely ignore the role of Africans in their own subjection. But Horne wants to link the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England to the rise of the African slave trade. He's not wrong as the post-Revolutionary government embarked on some changes to the structure of the administration of the empire that unleashed private enterprise's capacity for rapid mobilisation of economic resources. But that raises the -- unwelcome to scholars like Horne -- question of 'how did so many Africans wind up slaves?' What rarely gets commented on in books like this is the fact that the Europeans worked hand-in-hand with African leaders to find slaves. Indeed, reading Searing's West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce or Thornton's Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Modern World 1400-1680, might suggest that the material conditions of slavery in Africa were reproduced in the New World by an alliance of European investors and African rulers. Africans simply placed their excess slaves in the less-than-tender care of European masters, thereby becoming partially responsible for a system that would eventually make victims of them all come the nineteenth century. Why is this not given a presence in past-time just like Horne's 'whiteness'? The answer is it would undermine his real purpose, which is to associate the inequalities of the twenty-first century with a dominant ideology among white Americans rather than power relations that transcend the invention of race and are similarly enforced by a dominant ideology among Americans of all colours.
Apart from this problem of scholarship, Horne's book might prove hard-going for the general reader given the absence of a driving narrative. Horne attempts to provide one, but it gets swamped under the detail of his citations from primary sources. The chronology is quite hard to follow as we get to 1712, and really it is all about mood rather than events. His worst scholarly solecism fortunately comes near the end, when he proposes the Patriots were waging war on the 'divine right of kings'. This would have been news to George III, who believed himself to be defending parliamentary supremacy in a realm where rotten boroughs offered the same distortion of majority vote as gerrymandering in twenty-first century Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Overall, while I am glad to have read the book, and wish that the connection between slavery and American Independence was more widely known, I can't in honesty recommend it for any but the specialist.
Horne argues that the preservation of slavery was the driving force for American independence at least as much as the causes of political and economic liberty. He amasses a considerable amount of evidence for this, all drawn from primary sources. In a sense this is a companion to Christopher Leslie Brown's Moral Capital, which sees the roots of the British abolitionist movement in the experience of the British North American empire. Key to Horne's idea is the Somerset case of 1772, in which the judge Lord Mansfield ruled that there could be no slavery in England and freed a man brought from Massachusetts as a slave. The Americans perceived in this ruling a threat to the system of slavery that underpinned their agricultural economy, and was the basis for much of the wealth generated by the colonies. Further, the exigencies of the War of Jenkin's Ear and the Seven Years' War had made attractive to British officers the use of 'Africans' as soldiers, especially in the tropical climes where much of the war against the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean took place. (Here Horne might have profited from a quick scholarly survey of the use of sepoys by the East India Company prior to 1757, if one exists.) Free men of African descent were already serving in the British army and navy by the time of the 'Boston Massacre' in 1770, much to the shock of Americans. (And would serve in notable numbers in the Royal Navy during the wars against Revolutionary France and Napoleon.) This fear of the armed 'African' was a corollary of the reality of a slavery-based economy, in which the workforce was liable to rebel and murder the masters who made such unkind use of their bodies. The crucial crossroads in the war for independence thus came with the proclamation of Virginia's governor Lord Dunmore that invited slaves to join the king's supporters to defeat the rebels in return for their freedom. Horne traces the interaction of slave rebellion, slave alliances with Britain's enemies among the indigenous people of the Americas and the Spanish dons and the mentality of the slaves' masters in Virginia and the Carolinas confronted with the perpetual fear of poisoning or uprising.
However, Horne blunders badly in seeing a parallel between this and the rise of 'whiteness'. Here he wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Whiteness came to exist, but much later than the period under Horne's review. Nonetheless, he projects it backwards yet at the same time his own evidence highlights its nonexistence in this period. For example, he notes on p 59 that 'some of the Dutch there had not been fully assimilated into the developing identity of "whiteness"'; on pp 118-9 'the anti-colonial rebels would elasticise the crucial identity that was "whiteness" to better confront Africans, indigenes, and other presumed foes by welcoming the huddled masses from all of Europe and not just those from the British Isles'; p166 'There was still a kind of religious war at play, and "whiteness" was hardly a hard fact but akin to a fervent projection'. He even cites the notoriously racist Jamaican planter Edwin Long's quote about Portuguese not being entirely white, which demonstrates that white people still had to become white. We don't even need to dredge up some Jamaican to see where Americans' use of 'whiteness' circa 1776 could exclude people now thought of as white. Benjamin Franklin categorised Germans and Swedes(!) as 'swarthy'. This wouldn't be a problem if Horne was throwing some asides around simply to show he is a 'woke' scholar. But it is a key part of his thesis, that the creation of a white identity intensified in order to justify the enslavement of Africans, rather than later on to permit the construction of a racist regime to institutionalise the inferiority of free people of African descent (and indigenous and East Asians and Luso-Hispanics).
There is a real problem with this kind of scholarship of the intertwined history of racism and imperialism, which one never sees engaged in books like this. Had Horne restricted his account to the decades roughly from the 1712 Manhattan fires to the War of Independence, then we could largely ignore the role of Africans in their own subjection. But Horne wants to link the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England to the rise of the African slave trade. He's not wrong as the post-Revolutionary government embarked on some changes to the structure of the administration of the empire that unleashed private enterprise's capacity for rapid mobilisation of economic resources. But that raises the -- unwelcome to scholars like Horne -- question of 'how did so many Africans wind up slaves?' What rarely gets commented on in books like this is the fact that the Europeans worked hand-in-hand with African leaders to find slaves. Indeed, reading Searing's West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce or Thornton's Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Modern World 1400-1680, might suggest that the material conditions of slavery in Africa were reproduced in the New World by an alliance of European investors and African rulers. Africans simply placed their excess slaves in the less-than-tender care of European masters, thereby becoming partially responsible for a system that would eventually make victims of them all come the nineteenth century. Why is this not given a presence in past-time just like Horne's 'whiteness'? The answer is it would undermine his real purpose, which is to associate the inequalities of the twenty-first century with a dominant ideology among white Americans rather than power relations that transcend the invention of race and are similarly enforced by a dominant ideology among Americans of all colours.
Apart from this problem of scholarship, Horne's book might prove hard-going for the general reader given the absence of a driving narrative. Horne attempts to provide one, but it gets swamped under the detail of his citations from primary sources. The chronology is quite hard to follow as we get to 1712, and really it is all about mood rather than events. His worst scholarly solecism fortunately comes near the end, when he proposes the Patriots were waging war on the 'divine right of kings'. This would have been news to George III, who believed himself to be defending parliamentary supremacy in a realm where rotten boroughs offered the same distortion of majority vote as gerrymandering in twenty-first century Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Overall, while I am glad to have read the book, and wish that the connection between slavery and American Independence was more widely known, I can't in honesty recommend it for any but the specialist.
Read
January 15, 2023Incredible information in this book, it was a mistake to try to take it in as an audiobook. I need to read it again on paper.
March 11, 2023
Horne’s reconsideration of the circumstances surrounding the “Revolution” of 1776 prove to be absolutely necessary in revealing the grave contradictions at the heart of the American project. Contra Conservative, Liberal, and even Marxian schools of thought, Horne argues that the what occurred in the colonies was in fact, a step backwards for the human race, rather than the heralding in of a new era of happy democratic rights. Part of his argumentation means analyzing the contradictions of the British Colonial project in the Western Hemisphere, which can often prove to be an overly repetitive endeavor, though in a work such as this, which has a more historiographical and theoretical focus, repetition is to be forgiven. While I will doubtlessly omit some of the contradictions discussed by Horne, they all are essential in a true reevaluation of the events leading up to and during the American “revolution.” The most notable contraction is that between settler and slave- something which rocks all of England’s imperial holdings with revolts. Rather than limiting the influx of new bonded persons to perhaps decrease the amount of violence to themselves, the settlers continue to increase the numbers of forcefully imported people, whilst harshly complaining of any possibility of that amount lowering, or any sort of restriction. The other major contradiction is between metropole and colony, as even well before the founding of the United States, the colonies were rather independent, trading (especially in slaves) with the Papist powers, often ignoring the decrees issued by London, and being absolutely horrendous troops compared to African and other counterparts. Horne argues another aspect of this is the rivalry post-1688 between the Royal African Company (dethroned in its monopoly over trade in enslaved people) and Private traders, who often up-charged for their horrific inventory. Part of this was the RAC’s ability to limit trade in Africans, and also because private industry was so profitable. And so the RAC became less able to maintain its position on the African continent, whilst American traders were willing to go to other, more secure Catholic partners (all while still being ostensibly under the British crown!) The Catholic powers are of particular interest in this work, as they often (especially Spain) incite revolt by offering enslaved persons liberty if they cross over, and by being willing to use Africans as soldiers, something London was not, for fear of it being to dear for the Settlers. Another contradiction is one which deserves(and possibly has?) a book of its own- the “Great Trek” of Caribbean anglos to the American mainland (Horne being coy by making a parity between the reviled South African project and the saintly American project). The defection of whites away from these settlements due to their racial ratios in turn exacerbated exactly that. Another issue addressed by Horne is the irony of whiteness as a construct. As while the settlers demanded more Whites while also demanding more Africans, they were often picky as to who, and so was the monarchy, and for understandable reasons- Catholics could be a fifth column for papal influence, in the form of the French or Spanish. Regardless, an absolute must read for anyone interested in reevaluating the settler colonial project of the United States from a more truly Materialist lens. As mentioned, it can prove monotonous at points, but this monotony only helps to hammer home the points Horne is making. His prose is hyper-literate and dense, he is truly one of the most prolific writers around, and this work truly proves his reputation.
January 15, 2018
A bold rethinking of the Revolution of 1776
This is a fantastic book. Gerald Horne has gone a long way toward undermining the supposed avant guard and progressive nature of the Revolution of 1776; pointing out, in extreme detail, that the real flaw of the founding fathers was that “they objected to a government that sought to protect peaceful Indians from the theft of their land and feared a court system that had started to have some grave doubts about enforcing slavery.”
One of the things I particularly enjoyed was the way in which Horne illustrates how instrumental the enslaved were in instigating all of this. Of particular note was the rebellious slaves throughout the Caribbean that forced London to focus more on the mainland. But throughout the book slaves are portrayed as the intelligent, thoughtful and resourceful people they clearly were.
Despite all the praise of our supposed glorious and progressive Revolution of 1776, Horne correctly points out that the victors “went on from there to crush indigenous polities, then moved overseas to do something similar in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines, then unleashed its counter-revolutionary force in 20th-century Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Angola, South Africa, Iran, Grenada, Nicaragua, and other tortured sites too numerous to mention.” As James Madison so perfectly pointed out during the Constitutional Convention, “The primary aim of this government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” That guiding principle is still with us.
It’s not hard to heap scorn on the Founding Fathers hypocrisy in yammering on about freedom and liberty as they actively denied these things to their slaves; but Horne goes further than that. He shows, for instance, that that same counter revolutionary spirit was alive and well during the Civil War and that those fighting to uphold slavery believed they were upholding the spirit of the Founding Fathers. In fact, it’s that deranged obsessive need to loot, plunder and exploit the world that has been a hallmark of our elite from the beginning.
This is a fantastic book. Gerald Horne has gone a long way toward undermining the supposed avant guard and progressive nature of the Revolution of 1776; pointing out, in extreme detail, that the real flaw of the founding fathers was that “they objected to a government that sought to protect peaceful Indians from the theft of their land and feared a court system that had started to have some grave doubts about enforcing slavery.”
One of the things I particularly enjoyed was the way in which Horne illustrates how instrumental the enslaved were in instigating all of this. Of particular note was the rebellious slaves throughout the Caribbean that forced London to focus more on the mainland. But throughout the book slaves are portrayed as the intelligent, thoughtful and resourceful people they clearly were.
Despite all the praise of our supposed glorious and progressive Revolution of 1776, Horne correctly points out that the victors “went on from there to crush indigenous polities, then moved overseas to do something similar in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines, then unleashed its counter-revolutionary force in 20th-century Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Angola, South Africa, Iran, Grenada, Nicaragua, and other tortured sites too numerous to mention.” As James Madison so perfectly pointed out during the Constitutional Convention, “The primary aim of this government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” That guiding principle is still with us.
It’s not hard to heap scorn on the Founding Fathers hypocrisy in yammering on about freedom and liberty as they actively denied these things to their slaves; but Horne goes further than that. He shows, for instance, that that same counter revolutionary spirit was alive and well during the Civil War and that those fighting to uphold slavery believed they were upholding the spirit of the Founding Fathers. In fact, it’s that deranged obsessive need to loot, plunder and exploit the world that has been a hallmark of our elite from the beginning.
July 29, 2015
This is a powerful, scholarly, well-informed overview of how the pervasive spread not just of slavery, but of slavery of Africans, was importantly connected to the American Revolution.
As part of this, Home shows that, decades before the Somerset decision of 1772 that freed a slave brought from Virginia to England, Americans (or proto-Americans, or mainlanders) feared just such a ruling.
Home leads up to this by showing that both the colonies and London, before 1700 in the Caribbean and by soon after on mainland North America, the English feared that France and Spain would encourage English slaves, in both locations, to either revolt or run away. Next came struggles on wanting to control slaves vs. having ever more of them brought into slavery.
Other subcurrents run through this. Until 1689, the British Crown had a monopoly on slave trading. After that, private traders gradually began taking more of the trade. That, in turn, connected to relations between the British sugar islands in the Caribbean and the mainland.
Meanwhile, the 1700s have three major wars between Britain and the two Catholic powers, who also generally seemed to view Africans with not quite as much disfavor and given them a few more chances at emancipation.
All of this ties together after 1763, when France and Spain no longer threaten the American colonies. Nine years later, Somerset squares the circle ... even as slave owners north, like John Hancock and James Otis, as well as those south, talk about rights and hint at revolution.
As part of this, Home shows that, decades before the Somerset decision of 1772 that freed a slave brought from Virginia to England, Americans (or proto-Americans, or mainlanders) feared just such a ruling.
Home leads up to this by showing that both the colonies and London, before 1700 in the Caribbean and by soon after on mainland North America, the English feared that France and Spain would encourage English slaves, in both locations, to either revolt or run away. Next came struggles on wanting to control slaves vs. having ever more of them brought into slavery.
Other subcurrents run through this. Until 1689, the British Crown had a monopoly on slave trading. After that, private traders gradually began taking more of the trade. That, in turn, connected to relations between the British sugar islands in the Caribbean and the mainland.
Meanwhile, the 1700s have three major wars between Britain and the two Catholic powers, who also generally seemed to view Africans with not quite as much disfavor and given them a few more chances at emancipation.
All of this ties together after 1763, when France and Spain no longer threaten the American colonies. Nine years later, Somerset squares the circle ... even as slave owners north, like John Hancock and James Otis, as well as those south, talk about rights and hint at revolution.
December 18, 2017
Horne traces the deliberate creation and cultivation of anti-black racism and an artificial white identity in the British American colonies, and makes the case that the American revolution was significantly inspired by a perception that London was on the brink of abolishing of slavery.
I'm only giving this book five stars because it's such an important topic and Horne does manage to communicate his points; the way in which he does so is so tedious that I'd probably subtract two stars for it in any other book. At least three quarters of this book should be replaced with a schematic time-line and a table of population figures; instead, Horne laboriously goes over the same handful of types of events repeating dozens of times (skirmishes with neighbouring European colonies or natives/escaped slaves being harboured by neighbouring European colonies or natives/slave revolts and the fear thereof) in the purplest prose possible, pushing his thesaurus well beyond where it will actually go ("Madrid was denuded of about 20% of its entire navy...").
Still, it is an important book, and it pairs well with one like There Are No Slaves in France to demonstrate the important differences in anti-black racism in the US versus Europe itself, as well as the artificialness of white identity and why it's much more of a fringe belief in Europe than in the US today. The bit of the that gets the most press—that the founding myth of the US is just that—is almost the least important aspect of it.
I'm only giving this book five stars because it's such an important topic and Horne does manage to communicate his points; the way in which he does so is so tedious that I'd probably subtract two stars for it in any other book. At least three quarters of this book should be replaced with a schematic time-line and a table of population figures; instead, Horne laboriously goes over the same handful of types of events repeating dozens of times (skirmishes with neighbouring European colonies or natives/escaped slaves being harboured by neighbouring European colonies or natives/slave revolts and the fear thereof) in the purplest prose possible, pushing his thesaurus well beyond where it will actually go ("Madrid was denuded of about 20% of its entire navy...").
Still, it is an important book, and it pairs well with one like There Are No Slaves in France to demonstrate the important differences in anti-black racism in the US versus Europe itself, as well as the artificialness of white identity and why it's much more of a fringe belief in Europe than in the US today. The bit of the that gets the most press—that the founding myth of the US is just that—is almost the least important aspect of it.
May 18, 2016
Excellent. So much in here even I did not know. This book explains many things which have transpired since what was obviously a counter revolution of white supremacist settlers and which established a white settler republic. I wish I were in high school again and stepped forward in my American History class with a "book report" on this book. What fun that would be. For anyone who reads this book, 1776 will never be the same.
Outstanding work, well documented, and somewhat horrifying to boot.
But for a small pox outbreak amongst the African troops of the troops of Lord Dunmore, history might have been writ in a different manner.
Outstanding work, well documented, and somewhat horrifying to boot.
But for a small pox outbreak amongst the African troops of the troops of Lord Dunmore, history might have been writ in a different manner.
July 19, 2018
I did not know about the British use of armed Africans in colonial conflicts, and the problems that caused with pre-US colonists.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that "settler-colonialist" is the correct way to understand the US, and it is apparent why we really don't learn much about the pre-1776 history of North America.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that "settler-colonialist" is the correct way to understand the US, and it is apparent why we really don't learn much about the pre-1776 history of North America.
July 18, 2014
Very interesting book, but it did tend to repeat itself a lot.
January 23, 2021
Wasn't worth finishing. If I could give it minus 100 stars, I would.
July 29, 2021
This book transforms my thinking on the causes of the American Revolution. Horne makes a convincing case for attitudes to slavery being a dominant factor with excruciating detail. (Although it gets repetitious, all that detail is necessary when one is challenging a dominant reading of history.) Some colonists in the Caribbean and on the mainland were getting rich on the slave trade and on the products grown using slave labor as were merchants in England. After 1688 when among other things the "Glorious Revolution" freed up trade so that the Royal African Company no longer had exclusive rights to the British slave trade those riches leapt ahead.
The colonies were getting African slaves way out of proportion to European indentured workers and other European settlers creating fear among slave owners. The government also had concerns that slaves would side with other European powers if their freedom were promised. Those making the profits won the day when attempts were made to control the number imported. London wanted to add free blacks to their military as were France and Spain, but the colonists refused fearing it would give he slaves ideas and blur the hierarchy. Taxes on importing slaves also angered the merchants. This argument covered much of the 1700s culminating when London actually used black troops in the Caribbean during the Seven Years War. Colonist troops were angered that blacks got equal booty after victories and also feared further use. A pivotal moment came when Va and NC governors actually called for slaves to fight with them for the king.
In addition to the main point there is the listing of many slave rebellions which gives a different picture of slavery than that which is traditionally held of passive, fearful slaves. Also new to me was how active northern cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and a Rhode Island city) were in the slave trade and in owning slaves. Horne asserts that northern documents suspending slavery were prompted more by fear of slave uprising (given the numerical disadvantage of the European settlers) than humanitarian concerns. According to Horne, the revolution was fought to preserve the slave trade.
The irony of a declaration of independence emphasizing human freedom while enslaving others is not a new awareness; it was mentioned by at least one contemporary, Samuel Johnson.
The colonies were getting African slaves way out of proportion to European indentured workers and other European settlers creating fear among slave owners. The government also had concerns that slaves would side with other European powers if their freedom were promised. Those making the profits won the day when attempts were made to control the number imported. London wanted to add free blacks to their military as were France and Spain, but the colonists refused fearing it would give he slaves ideas and blur the hierarchy. Taxes on importing slaves also angered the merchants. This argument covered much of the 1700s culminating when London actually used black troops in the Caribbean during the Seven Years War. Colonist troops were angered that blacks got equal booty after victories and also feared further use. A pivotal moment came when Va and NC governors actually called for slaves to fight with them for the king.
In addition to the main point there is the listing of many slave rebellions which gives a different picture of slavery than that which is traditionally held of passive, fearful slaves. Also new to me was how active northern cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and a Rhode Island city) were in the slave trade and in owning slaves. Horne asserts that northern documents suspending slavery were prompted more by fear of slave uprising (given the numerical disadvantage of the European settlers) than humanitarian concerns. According to Horne, the revolution was fought to preserve the slave trade.
The irony of a declaration of independence emphasizing human freedom while enslaving others is not a new awareness; it was mentioned by at least one contemporary, Samuel Johnson.
November 10, 2024
Main takeaway is in the title: 1776 was a slaveholder revolt (counterrevolution) against British governance of American colonies for their right to maintain slavery. Due to the struggle to maintain stability in its colonies which was constantly undermined by the French and Spanish that granted slaves freedom if they killed and fled their masters. This explains distrust of black slaves by their white masters in the US that persists today, despite abolition, as well as anti-Catholic sentiments. I grew up Catholic and was vaguely aware of anti-Catholic views of white supremacist groups which is logically tied to the Protestant English settlers fighting with Spanish and French catholic settlers in Florida and Quebec. One remark of a British nobleman’s wife in the final chapter stayed with me (paraphrasing): the way the colonial rebels talk about British oppression you would think we were worse to colonists than the colonists were to their slaves. The fragility of white settlers and their assurance of victimhood definitely resonates today.
Explained the decades that led to British governance choosing to limit settler expansion into native territories and their attempts at limiting the slave trade and eventually abolition of slavery in the British empire which outraged colonists to revolt. Not quite the taxation without representation we were taught in school.
I listened to a few of Horne’s interviews and was half surprised he writes exactly the way that he speaks, down to the same verbose, flowery language that had me looking up definitions throughout to make sure I got the material. This is half a criticism, but the specificity of the language does help drive his points home.
Would recommend this to anyone wanting clarity and an unwhitewashed view of American history.
Explained the decades that led to British governance choosing to limit settler expansion into native territories and their attempts at limiting the slave trade and eventually abolition of slavery in the British empire which outraged colonists to revolt. Not quite the taxation without representation we were taught in school.
I listened to a few of Horne’s interviews and was half surprised he writes exactly the way that he speaks, down to the same verbose, flowery language that had me looking up definitions throughout to make sure I got the material. This is half a criticism, but the specificity of the language does help drive his points home.
Would recommend this to anyone wanting clarity and an unwhitewashed view of American history.
April 6, 2025
The intro was so underwhelming that it left me without much desire to read the book. I skipped ahead to the last chapter to see if a compelling argument would emerge, but it didn't. So please know that the following review is my impression based on a very cursory reading/skimming.
I don't understand why this book exists. The argument seems to be that we should consider 1776 a counter-revolution because it occurred mostly in response to London's "revolutionary" proposal to abolish slavery, but there are a few problems with this argument:
1) It's not convincing in that London's official position on abolition was obviously and purely cynical. Horne also ignores that English abolitionists were only a faction of public and official opinion on the matter... it was far from as settled and unified a front as Horne tries to portray.
2) Even if England was unanimous in wanting to abolish slavery, they never did, they just talked about it. Even if you think that would have constituted a "revolution" (still arguable from a Marxist perspective at least), it didn't happen. Therefore there was no revolution to counter, therefore calling 1776 a "counter-revolution" is just sensationalist and factually incorrect.
3) Granting the far-fetched premise that England's actions actually constitute a "revolution," Horne doesn't convince that this is the principal reason for the U.S. Revolution... he cherry-picks a lot of documents and quotes showing how upset people were by this London move, yet he artificially neglects a plethora of other well-documented reasons for the Declaration of Independence. Using the Horne methodology I could write a book saying "Actually the U.S. Revolution was all about tea taxes!" and then write 300 pages of firsthand sources complaining about the tea taxes and reacting to the Boston Tea Party, while only offhandedly mentioning any other issue. Case closed!
4) Even if we grant that the argument is correct, it's not clear what difference it makes today. We already know the Revolution was about wealthy, racist whites wanting to make more money. Nothing about this thesis alters that fact in the slightest. In the last chapter Horne quotes two other historians who called 1776 a "white settler revolt" and the "white American War of Independence." Both of those descriptions seem appropriate to me, but at no point does Horne explain why "counter-revolution" is a better way to describe it.
Basically, the whole book feels like a stretch. I'm not sure why it needs to exist in addition to American Slavery, American Freedom, or A People's History of the United States, or The Half Has Never Been Told, or probably several other books that I either can't remember or am not aware of. I'm not sure why he doesn't refer more to Britain's cynical role fomenting rebellion in Haiti as described in The Black Jacobins -- but I guess it's because it would undercut his incredible argument that England genuinely wanted to free slaves so much that it constituted a "revolution."
Honestly, this feels like a book-length version of a twitter thread dunking on America's founders for being hypocrites. "They said they wanted freedom, yet they were pro-slavery!" he nods as he strokes his beard. I mean, I know they're hypocrites, I think most intelligent people do, but we don't need another whole book about it unless you have something novel to add. There's nothing novel here... it just strikes me as a very facile argument. It also strikes me as pretentious to try to pass it off as something momentous.
Anyway I'll stop there except to corroborate what others said about the writing. It's really bad. These are the 5th and 6th sentences of the book (see if you can guess which word was the first red flag for me):
I wanted to like this a lot. And honestly I feel like a lot of these positive reviews are expressing similar feelings to mine, they're just kinda going easy on him, maybe cause they feel like they should like it anyway. I feel like I should like it too. But I don't, and I'm getting okay in my old age with being honest about those things. Very disappointing.
I don't understand why this book exists. The argument seems to be that we should consider 1776 a counter-revolution because it occurred mostly in response to London's "revolutionary" proposal to abolish slavery, but there are a few problems with this argument:
1) It's not convincing in that London's official position on abolition was obviously and purely cynical. Horne also ignores that English abolitionists were only a faction of public and official opinion on the matter... it was far from as settled and unified a front as Horne tries to portray.
2) Even if England was unanimous in wanting to abolish slavery, they never did, they just talked about it. Even if you think that would have constituted a "revolution" (still arguable from a Marxist perspective at least), it didn't happen. Therefore there was no revolution to counter, therefore calling 1776 a "counter-revolution" is just sensationalist and factually incorrect.
3) Granting the far-fetched premise that England's actions actually constitute a "revolution," Horne doesn't convince that this is the principal reason for the U.S. Revolution... he cherry-picks a lot of documents and quotes showing how upset people were by this London move, yet he artificially neglects a plethora of other well-documented reasons for the Declaration of Independence. Using the Horne methodology I could write a book saying "Actually the U.S. Revolution was all about tea taxes!" and then write 300 pages of firsthand sources complaining about the tea taxes and reacting to the Boston Tea Party, while only offhandedly mentioning any other issue. Case closed!
4) Even if we grant that the argument is correct, it's not clear what difference it makes today. We already know the Revolution was about wealthy, racist whites wanting to make more money. Nothing about this thesis alters that fact in the slightest. In the last chapter Horne quotes two other historians who called 1776 a "white settler revolt" and the "white American War of Independence." Both of those descriptions seem appropriate to me, but at no point does Horne explain why "counter-revolution" is a better way to describe it.
Basically, the whole book feels like a stretch. I'm not sure why it needs to exist in addition to American Slavery, American Freedom, or A People's History of the United States, or The Half Has Never Been Told, or probably several other books that I either can't remember or am not aware of. I'm not sure why he doesn't refer more to Britain's cynical role fomenting rebellion in Haiti as described in The Black Jacobins -- but I guess it's because it would undercut his incredible argument that England genuinely wanted to free slaves so much that it constituted a "revolution."
Honestly, this feels like a book-length version of a twitter thread dunking on America's founders for being hypocrites. "They said they wanted freedom, yet they were pro-slavery!" he nods as he strokes his beard. I mean, I know they're hypocrites, I think most intelligent people do, but we don't need another whole book about it unless you have something novel to add. There's nothing novel here... it just strikes me as a very facile argument. It also strikes me as pretentious to try to pass it off as something momentous.
Anyway I'll stop there except to corroborate what others said about the writing. It's really bad. These are the 5th and 6th sentences of the book (see if you can guess which word was the first red flag for me):
Unfortunately, this treasure trove is not organized adroitly, which may account for its relative absence in the footnotes of scholars -- and also sheds light on the nature of my references to it. Still, my research peregrination has convinced me that this collection should be better known to scholars seeking to unravel the complexities of the 1776 revolt against British rule.Half a paragraph in and it already feels like he's trying too hard. The whole book feels like he's trying really hard to impress us. But the only thing I'm impressed with is his research (hence the 2nd star).
I wanted to like this a lot. And honestly I feel like a lot of these positive reviews are expressing similar feelings to mine, they're just kinda going easy on him, maybe cause they feel like they should like it anyway. I feel like I should like it too. But I don't, and I'm getting okay in my old age with being honest about those things. Very disappointing.
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