American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

by Alan Taylor

The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the nation its democratic framework. Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history. The American Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s colonies, fueled by local conditions and resistant to control. Emerging from the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, the revolution pivoted on western expansion as well as seaboard resistance to British taxes. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. The war exploded in set battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and spread through continuing frontier violence.

The discord smoldering within the fragile new nation called forth a movement to concentrate power through a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But it was Jefferson’s expansive “empire of liberty” that carried the revolution forward, propelling white settlement and slavery west, preparing the ground for a new conflagration.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, American Revolution, War, The United States Of America, Politics

736 pages, Hardcover

First published September 6, 2016

About the author

Alan Shaw Taylor is a historian specializing in early American history. He is the author of a number of books about colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic. He has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for his work.

Taylor graduated from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine, in 1977 and earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1986. Currently a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, he will join the faculty of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia in 2014.

Reviews

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taylor gives us a unique perspective on the forces that led to the American Revolution and shaped the new republic. He details the many relationships and competing interests of the participants placing the Revolution in a broad context. He delves into colonial culture explaining its impact on the Revolution and its aftermath. Taylor shows how the Patriot’s policies grew out of the politics of colonial society and how British policy was made by the need to balance its domestic and imperial priorities. America, while very important to Britain, was but one of many concerns in its global empire.

As the American colonies grew before the Revolution, three constituencies developed. The Loyalists came from well to do families, many with pedigree blood lines. They were close to the governors who were appointed by the British Parliament. The Patriots were also men of property, but had less influence with the British than the Loyalists. Many were successful business men such as landlords, merchants, and lawyers who had built their own wealth rather than inherited it. Then there were the common people with little property who had to work hard just to make ends meet. Those with very little or no property were not allowed to vote. The Loyalists and the Patriots competed for the huge profits to be made from land speculation. In the decades before the revolution the population grew rapidly. New land was valuable. Speculators secured government land grants and subdivided them into small parcels for farmers, a very profitable business. Since the Loyalists were closest to the governors they had the inside track. The Patriots coalesced in opposition to this cozy relationship. The Patriots were entrepreneurial men who wanted a piece of the action. The Patriots controlled the colonial assemblies. In a dysfunctional administrative system, the governors were under the direction of the British Parliament but paid by the locally elected assemblies which set taxes and appropriations for their colonies. Parliament set tariffs and customs regulations and prevailed if laws passed by assemblies conflicted with those of Parliament. Caught in the middle the governors didn’t last long and used their time to maximize their own profit by playing one side against the other.

The British were in a difficult position following what was known as the French and Indian War in America and the Seven Years War in Europe which ended in 1763. The British took Canada, America from the Appalachians to the Mississippi, and valuable Caribbean islands from France. Ostensibly a great victory, but the British incurred an enormous debt that left them cash strapped forcing heavy taxation in the homeland. Before the war the British stationed few troops in the colonies. Now redcoats would become a fixture in the colonies. The British had much more territory to protect from the French and the Spanish. They were also expected to protect colonists from the Indians. The British found themselves at odds with the colonists over Indian policy. Trying to avoid expensive Indian wars the British tried to restrict colonists from settling west of the Appalachians. The colonists saw the British as favoring the Indians and in Britain, people increasingly saw the colonists as deviant and not British. Colonial settlers would not be denied. They attacked the Indians and squatted on land they took. The settlers formed groups known as “regulators” to take on those that threatened their interests including governor appointed militias and the redcoats. The British could not control the frontier. A rapidly expanding population was desperate for affordable land. British Indian policy also upset the Patriots who wanted profitable land deals. Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were among those angered at being denied lucrative land deals by British policy. They were already competing with people like Ben Franklin who was recruiting British investors in England.

To fund their presence in the colonies the British tried a variety of customs duties and taxes that angered the Patriots and helped them gain support from common men. British taxes hit the seaport merchants the hardest and united their interests with the settlers and farmers already upset over Indian and land policy. The British did not anticipate how effective the Patriots would be in propagandizing the general public casting the British as evil. Conspiracy theories thrived. The fight was portrayed as not just over money and power but liberty. Thomas Payne’s Common Sense was very effective at bolstering the Patriot cause and its ranks. Of course liberty did not include the huge population of African American slaves, Indians who the colonists considered animals and women who were essentially a husband’s property. Mobs increasingly imposed their rule, enforced boycotts, and punished British sympathizers. Tensions erupted in incidents such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Patriot leaders organized the First Continental Congress in 1774 to coordinate a response to Britain. The core issue was control. The Patriots demanded that their assemblies rule, while the British recognized Parliament as the final arbiter. To cede ultimate power to the assemblies was to give up America. The battle lines were drawn. The war began in 1775 when Britain tried to enforce its rule first at Concord, Massachusetts soon followed by the attack on Bunker Hill.

The colonists divided into three camps that cut across class lines. Loyalists feared the mobs. As one put it “Which is better – to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away.” The Loyalists comprised one fifth of the colonists including common men who feared Patriot rule. Ethnic and religious minorities favored the Loyalists. The Loyalists were particularly strong in the religiously and culturally diverse states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. Pockets of minorities in the South were Loyalists. Patriot leaders also feared the mobs but felt they could control them by appointing common men to positions of intermediate authority. Patriots comprised two fifths of the colonists including many common men. They were particularly strong in New England. The remaining two fifths of the colonists were neutral, wanting to get on with their lives and not get involved in the fighting, which was easier said than done. Taylor presents the Revolution as a civil war, one in which as much fighting went on between colonists as between the British and the Patriots. The British had Loyalist regiments. Patriot and Loyalist vigilante groups frequently attacked each other. Those neutral were caught in the middle and suffered as their farms were plundered and homes destroyed by ravaging armies and vigilantes. Complications abounded. The British formed alliances with the Indians to fight the Patriots, but the Loyalists hated the Indians as much as the Patriots. The British offered slaves freedom to fight with them. Many Loyalists were ardent slave owners. The British looked down on all the colonists, even Loyalists. Patriot and Loyalist affiliation could be fluid. One quarter of those captured in fighting switched sides to avoid remaining a prisoner.

The British sent a fleet and 20,000 troops to New York in 1776 thinking they could quickly overwhelm the Patriots. While they easily took New York and later Philadelphia they could not control the countryside where local Patriot groups engaged in guerilla warfare. In 1778 France entered the American war and Spain allied with France against Britain. The British immediately sent 10,000 troops and ships from America to protect their valuable sugar interests in the West Indies, to protect Florida, Canada, India, enclaves in the Mediterranean, and of course the homeland. It was now a world war. The British navy, essential to the prosecution of the war in America, was now stretched thin parrying the threat of French and Spanish attacks across the empire. Both France and Britain maintained fleets in the Caribbean to secure their lucrative sugar trades. But it was wise to leave during hurricane season. As fortune would have it, the hurricane season of 1781 would find Cornwallis and 7,000 British troops holed up on the Yorktown peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay. The French fleet left the Caribbean to block the British fleet from supporting Cornwallis. He was trapped. Washington’s army and a matching number of French troops surrounded Cornwallis and laid siege leading to his surrender. The British now realized they could not afford the American war given the size of the empire they had to protect. This was just in time for the Americans who were on the brink of collapse, running out of money, troops mutinying, and Washington’s army dwindling. A peace agreement was finalized in 1783.

Loyalists from New York resettled primarily in Canada. Those from Savannah and Charleston were first resettled in Florida, but Britain gave it to the Spanish as part of the 1783 peace agreement and the southern Loyalists had to be resettled again, mostly to the Bahamas. Britain expected the new American union to fall apart and did everything to make Canada as attractive as possible. The Spanish who now controlled Florida and the gulf coast to Louisiana strived to settle their lands afraid of the persistent westward expansion of American settlers. The Indians felt betrayed by Britain. Some in the Ohio valley formed their own confederation to fight the settlers. The new American union was dysfunctional. It couldn’t control settlement west of the Appalachians, enforce Indian policy, set trade policy or any other basic function. The war left the economy in shambles and pitted farmers and others deeply in debt against the creditors and the rich. Farmers and settlers rebelled. The “regulators” became new rebels. Inflation raged and was soon met by austerity measures from state legislatures controlled by the rich. The latter wanted hard currency to repay what they were owed. The farmers wanted paper currency that depreciated reducing their debt. The currency theme would be a recurring one in American politics.

Realizing the weakness of Congress and fearing wars between the states and mob rule by the common people, the Federalist movement formed. Educated and wealthy leaders from the various colonies led by James Madison decided to meet to form a more powerful central government. The Patriot leaders had convinced the common people to fight for the revolution, now they needed the common people to put them firmly in control. The Federalist’s pushed for a new constitution to create a strong central government. As Taylor notes “”Contrary to modern belief, the founders did not intend to create a national democracy. Instead, they designed a national republic to restrain state democracies…” As founder Eldridge Gerry said ”The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.” The new constitution had one chamber, the House, elected by men allowed to vote, a second, the Senate, elected by state legislators, and a powerful chief executive, the President, elected indirectly by appointed electors. Fortunately for the Federalists, George Washington, by far the most admired man in the country, accepted the presidency in 1789 legitimizing the new government in the minds of most people. Washington’s imprimatur was essential to get the new constitution and new government accepted by the public. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton was Washington’s key man. To give the new government financial strength he proposed a new national bank and taxing powers to support a stable strong currency and capital investment. Southerners were afraid of a strong federal government and Thomas Jefferson brokered a compromise. In return for accepting Hamilton’s plan, the capital would be moved south to a new city to be called Washington. The country was off to a good financial start. The 1790s would be prosperous.

John Adams followed Washington as the second Federalist president in 1797. Jefferson and Madison felt Hamilton and Adams represented northern interests and wanted too much control. They formed a new Republican (not the same as the current one) party ostensibly representing the common man as opposed to the elite, but more accurately southern land owner interests as opposed to northern merchants. They pushed for states’ rights and decentralized government. Jefferson would replace Adams as president in 1801 and Madison would replace Jefferson in 1809. The thorn in their side would be Federalist Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall appointed by Adams before departing the presidency in 1801. Marshall would reign over the court until 1835. The arguments embodied by the Federalists and Republicans would endure through America’s history.

The American Revolution gave impetus to existing trends. Common men felt empowered to challenge the elite. Accelerated westward settlement quickly displaced and marginalized Indian communities. Northern states passed laws that slowly ended slavery, but slavery was now a part of the constitution and it became ever more firmly entrenched in the southern states. With the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton farming exploded in the South. Profit was maximized with large plantations manned by large numbers of slaves. To ensure the continuation of slavery, southern states demanded that new slave states be added to the union. Kentucky was admitted in 1792 and Tennessee in 1796. The fight over the westward expansion of slavery would lead to the Civil War. The revolutionary ideal of liberty was now pitted against slavery. The contradiction in the constitution was self-evident.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read of Alan Taylor (the first being “American Colonies”).

After the U.S. election of 2016 I have been trying to understand the historical differences between my country (Canada) and the United States.

Alan Taylor provides many insights. His history takes a global view. Events – namely the revolution leading to American independence from Great Britain did not take place in isolation.

The French, and then the British in Canada played a role. The various Indian tribes utilized their power and influence. The Spanish in Florida, New Mexico and California influenced the American colonies. The West Indies with their production of sugar and rum – and brutal treatment of slaves - were important and more crucial economically to the British and French rather than their American colonies. All these forces were pushing and pulling at each other.

The thirteen colonies were anything but united. Each state had its own sponsored religion and different modes of living. Slavery was much more prominent in the South. Concepts like liberty and property were intertwined – as in the liberty to own property. Slaves were considered property.

Page 337 John Adams

The Colonies had grown up under Constitutions of Government so different, there was so great Variety of Religion, they were composed of so many different Nations, their customs, Manners, and Habits had so little resemblance, and their Intercourse had been so rare, and their Knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite Them in the Same Principles in Theory and the Same Systems of Actions, was certainly a very difficult enterprise.

The American Revolution was brutal. It was much like a civil war. There was much plunder on both sides – farms were devastated leading to starvation. Anarchic militias roamed the countryside searching for food and arms and often laid waste pillaging as them went. Even though “liberty” was espoused on both sides – woe to him and his family whose views contradicted the other side. One gets the impression of Patriot libertarians clashing with groups of Loyalist throughout the colonies. Often people were afraid to pronounce for either side. Anyone suspected of collaboration would be tar and feathered – or worse – their homes seized or set ablaze. The American Revolution was not a simple struggle against British soldiers – it was guerilla warfare with Indian tribes often siding with the British, freed and rebellious slaves thinking that Loyalists would support them. There were also thousands of Loyalist refugees, many of them eventually fleeing to Canada.


When the “Founding Fathers” met in Philadelphia in 1787 to set up a federal constitution there was a seesaw battle between “States Rights” and federal power. Some, like Alexander Hamilton felt that “States Rights” would lead to anarchy and the dissolution of the “United States”. Other, like Thomas Jefferson wanted to limit federal powers and give more liberty to the individual states. Underlying the proponents of “States Rights” was slavery and the ability to expand Westward – meaning to seize Indian lands by any means necessary.

Page 343

Unable to control settlers or defeat Indians the federal government appeared impotent and irrelevant.

The Founding Fathers, contrary to some myths, were anything but united in their view of the U.S. Constitution. There was an amoral compromise on slavery enabling the Southern States to sign up. This just delayed the inevitable violent confrontation over slavery. The disputes between the ancestors of slavery and white people goes on to this day.

Page 380 Philadelphia, 1787

Saving the union and promoting profits ultimately mattered more than any moral principles against bondage of others.

Page 381

By adopting the three-fifths clause [slaves counted as three fifths of the population that allowed southern states to allocate more members to Congress], prolonging the import slave trade, and providing a fugitive slave clause, the constitutions defended slavery. “We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before” [when the thirteen colonies were part of the British Empire].

The other great evil was the destruction – or more specifically – the genocide of the Indian people. Under “States Rights” settlers had a greater opportunity to move into Indian lands.

The author does not idolize the American Founders Washington and Jefferson – they owned slaves and thought nothing of dispossessing the Indians of their land and killing them.

Ironically, Jefferson thought that by removing state sponsorship of religion, which existed at the time of British rule, he would create a strict separation of church and government. Instead, the opposite happened – the free competition of religion allowed it to flourish and become more closely associated with government.

Page 452 de Tocqueville

“The Americans combine the notion of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive of the one without the other.”


Page 386

An American national identity emerged later, slowly, painfully and partially.

This book is more about the movements of people – Patriots, Loyalists, British, Indians and French than of individuals. The key players are examined as well as lesser-known ones like Thomas Paine and John Marshall of the Supreme Court who favoured a strong federal government during the time of Jefferson’s Presidency. We come away seeing a nation imbued with the spirit of individualism and liberty, which at times leads it into a lack of community responsibility, anarchy and irrationalism.

Page 370 in the 1780s

Dr. Benjamin Rush detested a new pathology in American minds, a disease he named “Anarchia” and described as “the excess of the passion for liberty… which could not be removed by reason, nor restrained by government.”

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apt reading for our time.

There is some coverage of Haiti and some French and Spanish American conflict/history, but the English colonies get the majority of attention.

Taylor explores the deep divisions of the revolutionary period, focusing on the years from about 1750 to 1825 (I listened, so my memory may have the range a bit wrong). He describes clearly the violence that pervaded all parts of the frontier, and anywhere slaves were held. He also spends a fair amount of time describing the violence outside of formal battles that was done by the patriot and loyalist sides before, during and after the ‘official’ American Revolution of 1776. Both patriot and loyalist non-combatants were liable to suffer tar and feathers, property destruction, and even murder.

One comes away with the message that land speculation drove a very great deal of the conflict throughout the period. The English couldn’t afford to defend colonists on the long Indian/white-settler border so they ordered the colonists to stay in the east. That was perceived as tyranny by both those who wanted to work the land, and those who wanted to just make money off of selling it (including George Washington). After it ‘belonged’ to the new country, the US government found it couldn’t affort to defend the vast area either and again tried to restrain settlers (the government also wanted to control the westward movement in order to make money off of selling the land, since squatters jumped ahead of the process). There are plenty of examples and quotes regarding conflict and deception in relations between colonists/settlers and Native Americans throughout.

This process, and the westward movement of slave holders, also resulted in the same geographic political and social divisions we saw in such stark display earlier this month.

Taylor also provides a lot of detail about the roles that blacks played during this period, on both sides of the formal conflict and in the economics of slavery. Certainly most Americans denied or danced around the fundamental contradiction, sometimes pointed out by Europeans, between a revolution purportedly fought for freedom and equality and the resulting government that denied them to a large proportion of the population. There is no shortage of quotes on the subject by our founding fathers in these chapters.

He also does a good job of pointing out how many vigorously held and conflicting opinions had to be cobbled together into the governing documents that were adopted as the states lurched toward their union, constitutions, bills of rights, and early laws. The governance of slavery, property and suffrage they ended up with could be looked at on one hand as revolutionary, and on another, as much like England's. You had to be male, white, and own property to vote. As a male, you controlled your wife’s property. In some ways they were worse; you had to return fugitive slaves.

We know about this constitutional mess from high school history and civics, but a refresher course with more detail is a forceful reminder that there is no ‘original intent’--there were thousands of ‘intents’ that were grudgingly wrapped up together in hopes that sectarian power and time would solve the inherent contradictions. There was also the undercurrent of violence waiting to resurface at any time.

Certainly Taylor has shaped his narrative and chosen his evidence to support these views, but his message that the revolution was less than noble, that greed for land drove much of it, and that anyone who was not a white male didn’t get included in the revolution, can’t be argued with. His big picture is not news, but his perspective in this book, and the details, are well worth your attention.

[Vheissu · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a heroic narrative of the American war of independence, this is not the book for you. There are few if any noble characters in Alan Taylor’s work, not Patriots or Loyalists, English, French, Spanish or American Indians. Everybody involved shared common characteristics of hypocrisy, greed, betrayal, and vicious suppression of their enemies. Not exactly the yarn propagated by school marms over the centuries.

Taylor is strongest in describing the events leading to and conduct of the war, which he convincingly argues was a civil war, not a revolution. It was the bloodiest battle fought among Americans until the Civil War. On the surface, British taxes were an irritant in imperial-colonial relations, but the deeper causes included the disposition of newly acquired western territories and the preservation of slavery. Profiteers, swindlers, competing land developers, and Indians confronted white settlers in the Ohio Valley, who assumed the French and Indian War was all about grabbing land in the first place. Patriot leaders were deeply invested in the new territories and feared royal competition in the assignment of land titles and the revenues derived therefrom. Meanwhile, the English encouraged both African slaves and freedmen to join the loyalist cause, posing a dual threat to southern slavers. Whatever “freedom” and “liberty” meant to the Patriots, they were never intended to include Africans, Catholics, women, or Indians.

Taylor is less original in his description of the failures of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, and the ratification debate. His presentation is conventionally Beardsian (Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States ). The chaos of a loose confederation jeopardized the wealth of traders, slavers, merchants, and land developers, and America’s elite pulled the wool over the eyes of naïve farmers in the west and artisans in the east.

Taylor finishes strong, however, in his conclusions regarding the many consequences of the revolt and federal Constitution. The contradiction between liberty and slavery became acute. The role of women in the war justified greater recognition of their role in civil society, which men resisted with all their might afterward. And more than in any other western nation, the Americans developed an ideology of individual merit and self-sufficiency, notwithstanding the persistence of inherited wealth. As Taylor notes, none of these contradictions were resolved and all inform contemporary political debate.

[happy · Rating 4 out of 5]

With narrative, Mr. Taylor gives the reader a fascinating look at the beginning of the “American Experiment.” The author looks at the political and economic underpinnings of the American Revolutions, covering the time from the French Indian War to the end of Jefferson’s first term as president. He paints a convincing picture of how the colonists in 1760 who thought of themselves as loyal Englishmen, came to demand independence 15 yrs later. He looks at the distrust the elites of the colonial society had of the common man and how that shaped both the revolution and the founding documents. He also discusses the white/male supremacy and how that affected the attitudes of every member of colonial society, from the highest to the lowest, women included. Finally he looks a slavery not only in the south, but the north as well and how the economic dependence on slave labor drove the compromises during the drafting of the US constitution.

Almost every US child has been taught that the cause of the Revolution was the unjust taxes the British government imposed on the colonies. In looking at this narrative, Mr. Taylor looks at the reasons they were imposed ( to pay for the troops guarding the frontier and to recoup some of the costs of the French Indian War) the actual tax burden imposed ( much less than on the citizens of England proper). He explains why the colonist were upset and how the English gov’t could have shut down the protest without driving the colonists into revolt.

One aspect of the causes of the Revolution that Mr. Taylor explores is the English Gov’ts attempts to put a check on the Westward expansion of colonists. With the defeat of the French in 1760s, French American colonies came under control of the British. The author looks at the difference between the French and British colonial systems and the effect this had on the 13 colonies when the British took control of the French Colonies in the interior of the continent. The British Gov’t attempted to keep the French system in place, ie limited colonization of Indian lands, a trading relationship with the Natives etc. The citizens in the English colonies fought this decision, they felt it was their God given right to move west of the mountains into the Ohio River Valley and establish their own way of life, ie farms and towns on Native territory. Also for the elite, there was much riches to be gained from selling the newly acquired lands to the westward moving colonists.

In looking a slavery, Mr. Taylor looks at the distribution of slaves and how that came about. Why the plantation economy “needed” chattel labor and why slavery never really caught on in the Northern colonies, even though it was legal in all 13 of the colonies, until after the Constitutional Convention of the late 1780s. In looking at the slave economy he also looks at the sugar colonies of the Caribbean and how the percentage of the population affected the actions of the Plantation/white settlers. The southern states were roughly 40% slave, while the Sugar Colonies had upwards of 90% slave populations. This population meant that even thought the Plantation Owners were sympathetic to the goad/aims of the mainlanders, they couldn't afford to forgo the protections of the British Military, and especially the British Navy.

On the fascinating portions of the book for me, was his take one the motives and personalities of the men who wrote and adopted the constitution. The author brings out the distrust the elites had for the common man. Much of the Constitution is written to control direct democracy. Some more obvious examples is the Electoral College and the state legislatures electing senators. Mr. Taylor does a good job of telling the out-right politicking that had to happen in order to pass a constitution. Some of the compromises are the composition of the senate (each state gets 2 senators not-with-standing the population) the length of term and re-electablity of the president (originally proposed as a single six year term) and probably most infamously the famous 3/5 clause for slaves in determining the number of representatives in the House. The Northern states didn’t want any slaves to count, while the Southern States wanted each slave to count as a “whole” person. Also another slavery compromise was on the importation of slaves. The Northern states wanted importation to end on the adoption of the constitution, while the South didn’t want any limit on the slave trade. The compromise that was reached was that in 20 yrs after the adoption, the importation of slaves would cease. This was more symbolic than anything. There was enough natural increase of the slave population to cover the "needs" of the plantation owners. The author makes clear that without these compromises the southern states would have walked out and the “Noble Experiment” would have ended before it began.

In telling the story of the revolutionary war its self the author is fairly straight forward and accepts the common narrative of the war.

In summary, this is a revisionist and probably much more realistic look the causes of the American Revolution and at the minds behind it and later the minds that created the American Constitution and form of government it created. I would rate this a solid 4 stars, but don’t expect to read what you learned in elementary school.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longer review coming. If you have a "Johnny Tremain" view of the revolutionary era, prepare to have many of your illusions shattered. Taylor does a bang up job looking at the era from all angles. The motivations, and contributions of every class of citizen is reviewed, and much of it is not admirable.

Constitutional originalists really need to read this. Like Bible literalists who cherry pick what to ignore, many on the right today do the same relative to the founding and to the Constitution. There is no original intent ascribable to the "founders." The Constitution was a massive compromise that allowed different factions to delude themselves into thinking it confirmed their view of the role of government.

We are still fighting those battles today. Recognizing the founding for what it was, and what it wasn't, could go a long way to bringing us together. Unfortunately, adhering to the myth of the founding only drives us further apart.

[David Eppenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a long book, 480 pages of text, and to say that it gives the reader a lot to think about is an understatement. First, let's say that this is probably not a book a casual reader of history will enjoy. I have to admit in several places it had me nodding off but it was still fascinating enough to keep me going forward. I have to say of all the books I have read about our revolution this one was unique. While it touches all the major events before, during, and after our revolution it doesn't dwell on them as the focus of discussion. Instead these events are used, dare I say, as a platform for discussing what the author is really interested in and that is the revolutions. By revolutions I believe he means the conflicts that took place between 1750 and 1804 and indeed still exist today in many respects. The conflicts he discusses are more than those of the battlefields of the military. The conflicts that he discusses that are the most illuminating are the conflicts of principles, ideas, economic theory, social order, race, gender, property, morality and so on. In treating these various areas and using the events to illustrate their affect on the attitudes and behavior of both the Patriots and the Loyalists as well as the Neutrals. And in that area alone is this book a wonder to read since the author clearly identifies our revolution as something of a bully boy movement as concerns the civilian population of the time. Neither the Patriots nor the Loyalists ever had anything approaching a majority of the population supporting them. Something like 60% of the American population tried to remain neutral as they had no idea who was going to come out top of this war and backing the wrong side would have serious consequences. The result was that both sides were frequently disgusted by the ever changing loyalties of the population. And both sides showed their frustrations and rage in very violent and destructive ways. I was surprised to learn just how brutal and violent our patriotic forebears were toward Loyalists and those suspected of being Tories. It is a mistake to think that our revolution was more civilized and less violent than that of the French which followed a few years later. There were lynchings, house burnings, tar and feathering, and even the loss of heads. In fact what is especially fascinating about this book for me is that in discussing these conflicting issues the author gives the reader a real sense of what an average person endured living through these events. This book is not about the great battles or great personages of nation's early years. The great events and people certainly figure prominently but this book is about the abstractions of that era and how these people dealt with those abstractions. A very interesting and thought provoking book especially now since current events seem to share more than an echo of these past events.

[Jill Cordry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Taylor has written the best three books on North American History (including the importance of the British and French West Indies). Start with AMERICAN COLONIES: it goes way beyond the 13 and how the rest influenced the history of the US. Then this new volume. Follow with the excellent THE CIVIL WAR OF 1812, and you will have a comprehensive and complete history of the exploration, colonization and settlement of the northern half of the western hemisphere.

[Ted Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting and important book on the American Revolution. Its subtitle calls it a "continental history," and it lives up to that notion, as it moves the "camera" back from a narrow focus on the conflict in the 13 colonies/states to a broader focus that includes the Caribbean, South America, Canada, and the American West. (And to be honest, it moves beyond the Western Hemisphere, as it crosses the Atlantic Ocean to describe the birth of Sierra Leone.) Because of the broader frame through which it views the Revolution (and not simply the "war of the Revolution"), it does not go into as much detail about the military campaigns of the war. But there are other books that do this extremely well, so the reader can take on this book as a complement to other histories of the Revolution rather than as an all-encompassing volume. The book does an excellent job of analyzing the impact of the Revolution on groups like Loyalists and slaves, and it truly does show the broad range of impact of the struggle, most notably on the American Indians of the West (today's Midwest). Perhaps the strongest part of the book was its final chapter, "Legacies," which describes the impact of the Revolution on American life in the immediate postwar era. It addresses very thoroughly the question of "how revolutionary was the American Revolution". I only have two complaints about the book: 1. there are a couple of fairly serious factual errors, most notably the author's statement that the Sedition Act was repealed after Jefferson was inaugurated (the law had actually expired--by design-- the day before); and, 2. the final part of the book (from the ratification of the Constitution to 1804) dealt with that period of history too superficially to be of real value. In my view, the book would have been just as valuable if it had ended its narrative in 1788 and then concluded with its "Legacies" chapter. In any event, "American Revolutions" is a welcome addition to my book shelf.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great history of not only the Revolution in terms of the 13 colonies, but the entire continent of America as well. Mr. Taylor weaves the story of the 13 British colonies that became the United States, Canada, the West Indies, and the Non British colonies of the remainder of North America. Really shines a light that the American Revolution was a world war in a sense, and that the fate of the North American continent is more intertwined than we were taught in School. The other thing about the book that I like is showing all the sides of the attitude during the Revolutionary Period. Mr. Taylor dispels a lot of myths that has been taught about time period in the schools and details a lot more about ordinary American life in the early part of the republic. Fantastic history and great reading material.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of: American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, by Alan Taylor
by Stan Prager (10-30-16)

For some years, I have urged all those seeking a deeper understanding of our national origins to explore American Colonies, by Alan Taylor, an outstanding epic that broadly surveys not only those English colonies that later became the United States, but also the often-overlooked rest of North America and the West Indies, including the French, Spanish and Dutch colonizers, as well as the Amerindians they supplanted and the Africans they forcibly transported and enslaved. Some fourteen years after the publication of American Colonies, Taylor – who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for other fine works of early American history – has written a sequel of sorts: American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804. This too is a must-read for all students of American history.
The plural implication in the title, American Revolutions, is deliberate. We tend to think of the American Revolution as a singular event, but in fact what occurred here in the latter part of the eighteenth century was a series of social, economic and political revolutions, both among its English inhabitants as well as cross-culturally. As in American Colonies, Taylor leans more to the “big history” approach to relationships and interdependencies frequently ignored by a more traditional historical methodology, thus revealing how events, ideas and individuals acting in one arena often produced striking consequences elsewhere.
Especially unintended consequences. The British decision to permit a French and Roman Catholic element to persist and be tolerated in that portion of Canada that was her prize after the French and Indian War generated a frustrating barrier to conquest and annexation for the English colonials in America who had helped prosecute that war, something rarely noted by other historians. Stymied in Quebec, their ambition for domination was far more cruelly successful elsewhere, and after Independence the British no longer served as a brake upon the territorial expansion of Americans hungry for new lands and utterly unsympathetic to its aboriginal inhabitants, whom they wantonly displaced and slaughtered with little reluctance. The other great irony centered upon human chattel slavery, which the British retreated from and gradually abolished throughout the empire, yet which saw great expansion in a newly independent United States, especially in the southern states where it served as a critical component central to the economic model of plantation agriculture. Jefferson and Madison are often credited with the expansion of the rights of white planters and the increase in social and economic mobility that resulted in the abolition of primogeniture and entail that had formerly kept estates intact, but there was also the chilling consequence of suddenly facilitating the breakup of families as African-American human commodities could be sold to other geographies at premium prices.
This is the fourth Alan Taylor history that I have read* and I highly recommend all of them. If there is a weakness it is that some of Taylor’s books get off to a very slow start and are frequently populated with a vast cast of minor characters that add authenticity but can bog down the narrative. That is happily not the case with American Revolutions, which adroitly opens with a discussion of an iconic short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,”** that serves as a metaphor for the dramatic societal shift that was the result of the toppling of British rule over the thirteen colonies. That was one of those revolutions. But there were many more, especially in the after-shocks of this one that sent legions of despised loyalists to Canada, later followed by numbers of disenchanted rebels struggling in the economic morass that was the byproduct of revolution and separation from the empire; these were the building blocks of what came to be a nation north of the Great Lakes. That initial financial disaster begat the revolution of Hamiltonian fiscal policies that forged a new economy. At the same time, hints of early instability and fears of mob rule spawned a new revolution against the original loose federation of states under the Articles of Confederation that saw the propertied elite of those states come together to seize the reins of government and force a more structured and perhaps more conservative Constitution upon the masses. Still, the break with Britain irrevocably loosened social hierarchies and there was truly a revolution in this regard for citizens of the new United States – if they could count themselves as white males, but certainly not if they were women or blacks or Native Americans. The shift, for those white men, was underscored in what has been called the “Revolution of 1800,” as Jeffersonian Republicans came to power and the influence of the Federalists that constructed the new constitutional government first waned and then went extinct. There was indeed a great leveling in the game, if you were qualified by complexion and gender to play the game.
Taylor relates this saga in an extremely well-written and engaging narrative of complexity and nuance that never loses sight of all the action on the periphery, including the dramatic way the American Revolution resounded in monarchical France, upon slave insurrectionists in the West Indies, and even in the uprisings of Spanish Peru, as well as how these events sometimes echoed back on the new nation. He also reminds us not to look back from the union of “those” thirteen colonies and the creation of the United States as if it was destined to be; there were other English colonies to the Canadian north and the West Indian south that could well have been part of that union but are conspicuous in their absence. Most critically, he returns again and again to the horrific consequences that an independent United States had upon Native Americans and enslaved blacks.
A tragic constant was the almost universal disregard for the welfare and very lives of the Amerindians who occupied lands coveted by expansionary white Americans. Already decimated by Old World pathogens that devastated once thriving populations, their traditional lifestyles upended and reshaped by horses, guns and alcohol, and frequently used as proxy pawns by European powers struggling for control of North America, Native Americans found themselves ultimately powerless to avoid displacement and often extermination by shrewd and ruthless citizens of a new nation who justified brutal tactics on the grounds of race and religion and paternalism. Back when philately was my hobby, I recall owning the 1929 commemorative stamp honoring George Rogers Clark, the courageous soldier and adventurer of the Northwest Territories. American Revolutions reveals a far less heroic Clark who zealously executed Amerindians he encountered and declared that “he would never spare Man, woman or child of them on whom he could lay his hands.” [p260] In those days, South Carolina and Pennsylvania offered bounties up to $1000 for Native American scalps, “regardless of the corpse’s age or gender.” [p258] There is much more. “David Williamson, an accomplished Indian killer … [directed his militiamen to attack] … a peaceful Delaware village led by Moravian missionaries … [and] … butchered 96 captives – 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children – by smashing their skulls with wooden mallets before scalping them for trophies. The natives died while singing Christian hymns.” [p262] There were no repercussions for this hardly uncommon kind of white savagery on the frontier.
For African-Americans, the legacy was no less tragic. Despite the wishful thinking of some members of the revolutionary generation that human chattel slavery would wither over time, it instead gained new traction in an America unburdened by growing British guilt over what came to be called the peculiar institution, a sturdily intrinsic economic building block that was only finally dislodged by Civil War nearly a century hence. Meanwhile, few – north or south, or across the Atlantic for that matter – could ignore the paradox of Americans crying out in ringing rhetoric for a universal right to a freedom from tyranny while at the same time reserving the contradictory right to enslave others because of the color of their skin. And that irony was everywhere: “In New York City . . . [in 1776] . . . Patriots toppled the great equestrian statue of George III and melted its lead to make 40,000 bullets to shoot at redcoats. In that blow for liberty, the Patriots employed slaves to tear down the statue.” [p161] African-Americans fought on both the British and American sides in the Revolutionary War, in hopes for freedom and a better life, but were in the end betrayed by each of them, although those that remained in America were by far the worse off. While sadly the United States in 2016 still contains apologists for slavery who sugar-coat its horrific brutality, their mythical revisionism does not bear historical scrutiny. In fact, recalcitrant slaves were routinely beaten, branded, and even killed, something known to others at the time if not advertised, but nevertheless rationalized by planter elites with a new brand of Christian paternalism: “At the first hint of resistance, these paternalists expected their overseers to practice the old brutality but less conspicuously. In barns and secluded spots, they whipped backs and inflicted ‘cat-hauling’: dragging a cat by the tail along the bare back of a trussed-up victim.” [p476]
Heritage historians of the conservative stripe no doubt loathe Taylor’s approach; they want to celebrate the birth of liberty in British North America and ignore what might clash with such righteous notions; massacred Amerindians and enslaved Africans uncomfortably get in the way. There is indeed much to champion in the creation of the American Republic, but sound historical scholarship must include more than self-congratulatory patriotism. The history that was foisted upon me in schoolrooms of the 1960s contained precious little of that. Alan Taylor’s masterful narrative succeeds both in widening the lens and restoring the balance of what it was like for the actual people who lived those events, both the winners and the losers.
The advantage of having a fine home library is that I could randomly reach up on a dusty shelf and pluck down a volume of Hawthorne short stories to read “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” for the first time. American Revolutions is an exceptional volume that I am proud to add to my collection of books on American history, and I highly recommend it to those who appreciate the complexity of historical studies as well as a truly fine analysis of the same by a gifted historian who never disappoints.


[*for the two other Alan Taylor histories that I have reviewed, see https://regarp.com/2015/10/01/review-... and https://regarp.com/2016/02/09/review-...]

[** “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is available online http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/mm.html]

My review of: "American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804," by Alan Taylor is live on my book blog https://regarp.com/2016/10/30/review-...

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Broad View of the American Revolution

Taylor's 2016 "American Revolutions" advertises itself as a "Continental History," but this isn't entirely accurate. It is mainly a robust account of the American Revolution with touches of the other European colonial holdings in the region, such as Spanish Mexico, French Canada, and the British Caribbean.

While Taylor excels at illuminating these different areas and how the American Revolution impacted those colonies (and their European rulers), it is more of an "American Revolution+" than a comprehensive history of North America from 1750-1804.

As a history of the Revolution, the book is excellent, though familiar. A particularly intriguing aspect is Britain's struggle to balance the war in the colonies with maintaining Caribbean sugar production, which led to more reinforcements being sent to the Caribbean than to the American colonies.

One relatively minor critique is Taylor's focus on the Virginia/Southern gentry/slaveholding perspective. Given Taylor's extensive work on Virginia and its history with slavery, this focus makes sense. However, it means that the book predominantly revolves around the question of slavery, leaving the impression that little of interest to the Revolution occurred north of Richmond.

Overall, despite this minor critique, "American Revolutions" is a strong history of the era with some valuable additions.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Taylor is a great writer and historian of colonial, revolutionary, and Early Republic America. In this book, he successfully gives an in-depth version of the blanketed history of the American Revolution that’s typically taught in American schools. At the same time, though, he doesn’t really offer anything new for those who are more familiar with the history. This feels written more for an enthusiastic member of the public rather than an individual who has extensively studied the period. For myself, with an academic history background and revolutionary-era America being one of my particular focuses, it’s a well-written refresher. I had to take a month-long break from reading halfway through because it wasn’t quite enticing me as I’d hope. But once I returned, I was all in. I read American Colonies for a class, so now I need to look into the rest of his work...

[Susan Paxton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A necessary corrective, and very timely.

[Steve Middendorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

With all the talk lately about defending the Constitution and particularly certain Amendments to it, I was motivated to buy a copy of The Federalist Papers, a series of 85 articles commissioned by Alexander Hamilton as to why the States should ratify this proposed system of government. In fairness, I also noticed and bought a copy of The Anti-Federalist Papers. What can I say, I'm a middle child. However, the very first line of The Federalist Papers, “In September 1787...” What? The only date I remembered was 1776 and the signing of The Declaration of Independence. What happened in the intervening 11 years? And, now that I was interested, what was the history of the American Revolution that generated this new Constitution that Hamilton was arguing “For” and certain others were arguing “Against?”

One of the unheralded benefits of old age is the ability to get distracted and the freedom to follow up on it. So: I set aside The Federalist Papers and The Anti Federalist Papers. Back to the booksellers I went for a book on the American Revolution. From the many books on the subject, I chose this book: American Revolutions: A Continental History, by Alan Taylor. Taylor specialises in the subject, has written 10 books on it and has won the Pulitzer Prize for his writing. I particularly liked this line from the book jacket. “This magisterial history reveals the American Revolution in its time, free of wishful hindsight.” “Perfect context” I thought, for my refresher on 'American' history.

From my school boy days, I remembered the American Revolution as a heroic battle of good against evil in the name of freedom, justice and liberty for all. It was not nearly that. One third of the colonists (Loyalists) received patronage and remained loyal to England throughout the war. Another one third (Merchants and Slave Owners) saw the “republican” revolution as a threat to their economy and their fortunes. In addition to owning plantations, this group became the first shoddy American Real Estate Developers. They (including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin) got million acre grants from the Crown and sold 160 acre blocks to the last group on dodgy financing schemes. The remaining one third were historical Donald Trump supporters: they fought the wars; they paid the taxes; they couldn't get any respect. All the players in this except the slaves, women and the Indians shared the common characteristics of hypocrisy, greed, and the vicious control and betrayal of those with less power.

Now I am ready to read the Federalist Papers. But here are some quotes from the book which include reference to or quotes from all of our whitewashed heroes of the American Revolution.

In 1775, Benjamin Franklin recalled, “I never had heard in any Conversation from any Person drunk or sober, the least Expression of a Wish for a Separation, or Hint that such a Thing would be advantageous to America.”

Instead of resolving the union’s problems, the Federal Constitution postponed the day of reckoning until 1861, when the union plunged into a bigger civil war that nearly destroyed the nation. That later civil war erupted over western expansion: whether territorial growth would commit the nation to free labor or, instead, extend slave society and its political power.

Thanks to the swelling volume of trade, the colonial economy grew faster than did Britain’s. From just 4 percent of England’s gross domestic product in 1700, the colonial economy blossomed to 40 percent by 1770, assuming greater importance to the empire.

Per the law of coverture, a British colonial woman passed by marriage from legal dependence on her father to reliance on a husband, losing her last name and gaining no civil rights. The influential jurist William Blackstone explained, “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or . . . consolidated into that of the husband.” (note: liberty attained in the revolution did not change this.)

Colonial politics lacked formal parties, but there was an unstable polarity pitting a faction that supported the governor against his more numerous opponents, who resented exclusion from his patronage. Posing as “Patriots,” the opponents claimed to defend colonial liberty and property against the greed of a grasping governor and his corrupt minions. In Pennsylvania, a governor lamented that “the people” were “always fondest of those that opposed the Gov’t.” Another governor noted the conviction of Virginians “that he is the best Patriot that most violently opposes all Overtures for raising money.”

Yet on a per capita basis, the colonists paid only 1 shilling in tax directly to the empire compared to 26 shillings per capita paid in England.

We might have been a free and a great people together.” But that imagined empire of freedom depended on a shared superiority over natives and the enslaved.

The colonial land system favored speculators and governors at the expense of Indians, who lost the land, and settlers, who had to rent or buy their new farms.

In the North Carolina back country, settlers faced similar demands for payments from speculators who claimed millions of acres. If settlers balked, they faced expensive lawsuits, which they almost always lost because the county sheriffs and justices were appointed by a royal governor in cahoots with the speculators.

Imperial officers also could not control the speculators who defied the Proclamation Line to stake illicit claims to vast tracts. The speculators feared that common squatters were taking the best lands while the Proclamation deprived gentlemen of the legal standing to prosecute and evict intruders. In 1767, George Washington directed his land agent “to secure some of the most valuable Lands in the King’s part . . . notwithstanding the Proclamation that restrains it at present & prohibits the Settling of them at all, for I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light (but this I may say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of the Indians & must fall of course in a few years.” His agent dutifully marked and claimed 25,000 acres. Washington urged him “to keep this whole matter a profound Secret” and “leave the rest to time & my own Assiduity to Accomplish.

By offering just £10,000 (and ultimately paying much less), Henderson and (Daniel) Boone acquired a shaky Cherokee title to 20 million acres in Kentucky.

During the mid-1760s, competing elites divided Boston and other seaports. By winning royal favor, some prestigious families had secured the most lucrative and powerful offices. Gentlemen with less clout posed as Patriots to champion the rights of common people.

In Boston in October 1769, a defiant conservative printer, John Mein, revealed that some Sons of Liberty, including John Hancock, covertly imported goods while exploiting the boycott to drive smaller competitors out of business.

As poor men filled the ranks, politicians became more indifferent to supplying the army with pay, clothing, and food. Congress also mismanaged the commissary and quartermaster departments, which were supposed to supply the troops. Confusion, corruption, and incompetence brought rancid meat, spoiled flour, or nothing at all to the encampments. For want of proper uniforms, soldiers often looked like ragged beggars.
The post-1776 Continental Army belied the myth of heroic citizen-soldiers putting down the plow to pick up their muskets and win the war. In fact, a small regular army of poor men sustained the Patriot cause by enduring years of hard duty and public neglect. Although often initially conscripted, soldiers developed a commitment to the cause greater than their more fortunate neighbors who stayed home

A popular myth casts the revolution as waged by a united American people against British rule. That myth derives from Patriot claims to speak for all true Americans, dismissing Loyalists as a deluded few corrupted by the British. A Patriot declared, “A Tory is a thing whose head is in England and its body in America, and its neck ought to be stretched” by hanging. After the revolution triumphed, nationalist historians endorsed the Patriot view, marginalizing or ignoring Loyalists to concoct a unifying American identity. In fact, the revolution divided families and neighborhoods. Benjamin Franklin hated his son William for clinging to loyalty.

Political choices were often unstable and temporary. The ebb and flow of victory and defeat in a long war flipped many people from one side to another and sometimes back again with sojourns along the way in the broad ranks of the wavering. Many profited by selling their produce or services to the likely victors: a probability which changed as one force surged at the expense of the other. More often, people acted defensively, switching sides to save farms and lives from the power of the ascendant party. Paine complained of the many Pennsylvanians “who are changing to whig and tory with the circumstances of every day.”

In 1775, the New England states enlisted 200 blacks, but Washington forbade recruiting any more. He subscribed to the prevailing, although contradictory, conviction that black people were too cowardly to fight and, yet, that training them as soldiers menaced white domination.

While waging war in the east against British rule, Patriots fought west of the Appalachians to suppress the independence of native peoples. Patriots meant to create an “empire of liberty” premised on the ability of common whites to obtain private property by taking land from Indians. Noting that frontier folk “will settle the lands in spite of every body,” Jefferson reminded Congress that all “endeavours to discourage and prevent the settling [of] our Western Country” had failed, so it was “necessary to give way to the torrent.”

In 1784, Robert Morris resigned as superintendent of finance for want of any money to superintend. A year later, much of the foreign debt owed to France and Dutch investors came due, but Congress had nothing to pay. Spain’s ambassador reported that the United States was “almost without Government, without a Treasury, or means of obtaining money, and torn between hope and fear of whether or not their Confederation can be consolidated.” The American foreign secretary, John Jay, agreed, “Our federal Government is incompetent to its Objects.”97 Weak and diffuse, the American union had become a diplomatic joke in Europe. “To be more exposed in the eyes of the world & more contemptible than we already are, is hardly possible,” Washington lamented. He expected “the worst consequences from a half-starved, limping Government, that appears to be always moving upon crutches, & tottering at every step.” Lord Sheffield declared that the United States “should not be, for a long time, either to be feared or regarded as a nation.” Britons felt contempt for the weak republican union, which seemed doomed to collapse: “Their Fate seems to be—A DISUNITED PEOPLE, till the End of Time.” Posted as a diplomat in Paris, Jefferson reported that Europeans “supposed everything in America was anarchy, tumult, and civil war.” Without a truly national government, Americans could not secure reciprocity in foreign trade.

Austerity policies coupled with high taxes redistributed income from common people to pay wealthy public creditors. In 1786, just sixty-seven creditors received almost all of Pennsylvania’s annual interest payments. In Rhode Island, sixteen men owned half of the public debt. That debt became consolidated in fewer hands because common men rarely could afford to keep their paper certificates issued by government officials during the war. Under subsequent austerity policies, they needed specie to pay taxes and private creditors, so they sold certificates to speculators for hard pennies on the paper dollar. Then the hard-pressed former holders of the debt had to pay higher taxes to fund the full face value of the certificates to the speculators. A Massachusetts newspaper writer blamed the “great possessors” of the public debt for the “abominable system of enormous taxation, which is crushing the poor to death.”

In March 1787, Washington conceded the potential “utility” and perhaps “necessity” of a switch to monarchy but worried that such a counterrevolution would shake “the Peace of this Country to its foundation.”55 Like Washington, most gentlemen still hoped to find, in Madison’s words, a “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” They wanted to redesign republican governments to weaken the many and empower the few. Rejecting equality, Benjamin Lincoln insisted, “Men possessed of property are entitled to a greater share in political authority than those who are destitute of it.”

Foiled at the state level, conservatives turned to an alternative: concentrating power in a national government. By ditching the weak Articles of Confederation and writing a new constitution, conservatives hoped to kill two political birds with one stone. While rescuing the federal government from impotence and irrelevance, they would also subordinate the state governments. Hamilton attributed revived nationalism to “most men of property in the several states who wish [for] a government of the union able to protect them against domestic violence and the depredations which the democratic spirit is apt to make on property.” Conservative worries about the weak union merged with a growing dread of state governments as too strong and democratic. To achieve both goals, nationalists drew on the ideas of James Madison. From a close study of state politics, Madison concluded that a popular majority could act as tyrannically as any king. During the 1770s, Patriots had sought to free the people from the tyranny of executive power. A decade later, Madison decided that in a republic “it is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.” He insisted that a truly just republic had to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.

In August, another heated debate erupted over continuing the import slave trade. On this issue, southern delegates divided. Seeking to expand their operations, planters in the Lower South demanded continued imports from Africa. The Upper South’s leaders, however, believed that they had a surplus and could profit by sales to the Lower South. Banning import competition would enhance those profits, but principle also played a role with some delegates, particularly Madison, who insisted that importing more slaves would “dishonor” the nation.

Americans often romanticize the founders of the nation as united and resolute and then present them as a rebuke to our current political divisions. Pundits insist that Americans should return to the ideal vision set by the founders. That begs the question, however, which founders and what vision? Far from being united, they fought over what the revolution meant. Should Americans follow Jefferson’s vision of a decentralized country with a weak federal government? Or do we prefer Hamilton’s and Marshall’s push for a powerful, centralized nation that promotes economic development and global power? Conservatives today embrace Jefferson’s stances against taxes and for states’ rights, but skip over his opposition to a military establishment, his unease with inequality of wealth, and his push to separate church and state. They like a Hamiltonian military but not Hamiltonian taxes to pay for it. Instead of offering a single, cohesive, and enduring plan, the diverse founders generated contradictions that continue to divide Americans.

Northern racism intensified as the free black population grew. Tocqueville noted, “The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists.” Few blacks could vote or serve on juries, and none held political office. In 1821, New York State abolished the property requirement for white voters but kept it for African Americans, so that only sixteen qualified. Denied access to education and better-paying jobs, most blacks had to labor as sailors, menial workers, domestic servants, and laundresses. A young black man despaired, “Shall I be a mechanic? No one will employ me; white boys won’t work with me. Shall I be a merchant? No one will have me in his office; white clerks won’t associate with me. Drudgery and servitude, then, are my prospective portion.” Kept at the bottom of society, most free blacks lived from day to day on pittances and without real estate or long-term security.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of many Patriots, slavery did not wither away after the revolution. Instead, it became more powerfully entrenched in the southern states. From 700,000 in 1790, the number of enslaved doubled to 1.5 million in 1820. As foreign imports faded after 1807, natural increase accounted for most of the population growth. Between 1790 and 1860, slave traders and migrants herded over a million slaves south and west from the Chesapeake to expand southern society to the Mississippi and beyond. Highly profitable, plantation slavery helped drive the capitalist development of the nation. No aberration from the national norm of liberty, the South was an especially vibrant half of the nation, and, in politics, the more powerful half. Masters would never part with so much valuable human property without a fight.

In his celebrated Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson denounced slavery as brutalizing for both master and slave, but he also argued that blacks were innately inferior to whites in their bodies and minds. Opposed to retaining black people if freed in America, Jefferson urged their deportation back to Africa. The great Patriot champion of equality drew racial limits in the name of a supposed science that grew more popular in the nineteenth century. Racism developed to protect inequality from the implications of revolution.

But abolitionists and feminists persisted in seeking broader liberties as a better legacy for our ever-contested revolution. Later in the nineteenth century, Americans reworked the legacy of the revolution to seek different ends, including abolishing slavery and extending political rights to women and African Americans. More inclusive versions of the revolution’s promise lingered in American minds until circumstances allowed them to pursue, in Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, “the better angels of our nature.” But no generation will ever settle the revolution once and for all. In a constant ebb and flow, we will debate and advance competing and partial versions of our contradictory revolutionary legacy

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

While many histories of the American Revolution take an anachronistic approach, framing the period as a confrontation between “The Thirteen Colonies” on one side and the British Crown and Parliament on the other, Alan Taylor uses a more expansive “continental” perspective that allows him to incorporate a greater temporal, geographical, and political context into his narrative. American Revolutions is not exactly a history of the American struggle for independence, but is instead an imperial history of North America from the Seven Years’ War to the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson. The American founding happened within this space, but it was shaped by a much broader web of contingencies.

There were not thirteen British colonies on mainland North America in 1776; there were twenty-three, plus several others in the West Indies. The thirteen colonies now known to history were simply the ones who declared independence from the British Empire and (sometimes) sent delegations to the rather pretentiously-named Continental Congress. The Congress took its pretentions seriously, however, as leading Patriots had ambitious designs: not only on the vast interior territory stretching from the Great Lakes to present-day Mississippi—which Britain had acquired from France and Spain in 1763 and into which it had prohibited the encroachment of the seaboard colonies—but also on Canada, the Floridas, and the British Caribbean. The outbreak of hostilities in 1775 saw an audacious Continental invasion of Quebec in an effort to detach the presumably-disaffected French population from the Empire and incorporate it into the Union, as well as a seaborne invasion of the Bahamas by the Continental Marines, who managed to briefly capture and occupy Nassau.

But as broad as their geographical claims were, the Patriots struggled to secure the depth of support needed to accomplish them. The Revolution was not only an inter-imperial war between the British Empire and the fledgling United States, but also a civil war between relatively small factions of Patriots and Loyalists who used violence and intimidation to corral a cautiously indifferent majority into their respective camps. The Patriots prevailed in the struggle—at least in the present-day United States—largely because they were better organized, more ferocious and brutal in their hostility towards Britons and Indians, more capable and severe at punishing defectors, and because they enjoyed almost total control over the flow of information.

In the decade after the Seven Years’ War, as the British Parliament attempted to tax the American colonies directly for the first time and insurrectionary sentiments began to simmer, Patriot organizations like the Sons of Liberty led a remarkably well-coordinated resistance movement that transcended local allegiances and class ties. The regressive nature of the taxes—which applied to stamps, newspapers, almanacs, playing cards, glass, tea, paper, lead, and paint, among other things—bolstered the Patriot ranks with disaffected merchants and tradesmen all along the eastern seaboard, and especially in Massachusetts.

In Boston and other port cities, Patriots led boycotts of British goods and delivered frightening punishments to both their colonial adversaries and the Loyalists who supported them. Patriots seized and muzzled Loyalist printers and disseminated their own revolutionary polemics, assaulted and humiliated British customs officials, published the names of boycott-breakers who were then intimidated into recanting their Loyalism—or, failing that, were beaten by Patriot mobs or had their homes and businesses ransacked—and staged public spectacles in which hated officials were burned in effigy or tarred and feathered in the flesh.

In the west, Patriotic fervor was kindled by opposition to the Proclamation Line of 1763, which angered land speculators and aspiring freeholders who sought to purchase or settle the newly-acquired territories and to displace the indigenous peoples who inhabited them. Much of the land east of the Line had already been claimed by wealthy speculators, who then rented the land at a premium to tenant farmers. Resenting the emerging neo-feudalism of the east, colonists of more modest means hoped to stake their own claims on the expanding frontier. The inexorability of westward expansion in the face of governmental efforts to control and consolidate the frontiers was thus a major factor in America’s first civil war, just as it would later be in the leadup to the second civil war, when the free or slaveholding status of newly-incorporated states and territories became a critical issue.

The vanguard classes of the American Revolution were not libertarians, but republican nationalists. Far from the Lockean individualists imagined by today’s liberal right, Patriots extolled the ideals of mutual solidarity and supreme loyalty to the nation. Whereas Parliament claimed the right to tax the colonies without giving them political representation on the grounds that America was a collection of corporate or proprietary entities, Patriots claimed the right to self-determination on the grounds that America was a country. The freedom they demanded was freedom for America; not necessarily for the civil liberties of all its people. The more genteel among them fashioned themselves after the heroes of the early Roman Republic and viewed individual licentiousness and libertinism as indicators of moral decay, especially when these threatened the liberty of the state.

As the British aligned themselves with frontier natives and enticed slaves to defect from the cause of their masters with promises of emancipation, this budding American nationalism also took on a racialized element, with white Patriots banding together against nonwhite adversaries. While the British offered emancipation to slaves, the southern states offered slaves and land to faithful Continental soldiers: major slaveowners feared the distribution of their slaves to other white masters far less than they feared emancipation.

Taylor also uses a wider lens when examining the military conduct of the war. Rather than retroactively focusing on Washington, he places the war in a broader continental and global context. Washington was certainly important for keeping the tattered Continental Army together, singlehandedly reviving Patriot morale with successive victories at Trenton and Princeton, and dealing the final major blow to British efforts to recover their colonies with the Siege of Yorktown (wherein half of the men under his command were French); but the war would not likely have been won without French and Spanish assistance. The French navy menaced the British in the West Indies, threatening their most valuable ports and forcing them to shift their military priorities from the mainland to the Caribbean. From 1778 onwards, the British sent more reinforcements to the West Indies than they did to the revolting colonies. France provided the manpower and naval support that made the Yorktown campaign possible, and the combined threat of France and Spain posed a hypothetical threat to the English Channel that the British couldn’t afford to ignore. The Spanish smuggled military supplies to the Patriots from 1776, extended private loans to the United States, and invaded West Florida, besieging Pensacola in 1781.

In my estimation, this is the best general survey of the Revolutionary period out there. Neither hagiography nor exposé, it presents the birth pangs of America in all of its ghastly, glorious, convoluted, paradoxical splendor.

[LeastTorque · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent work of history that broadens and deepens the reader’s understanding. This author not only demythologizes, but also replaces the myths with comprehensive coverage of how those myths came to pass.

When I picked this up, I wasn’t sure why revolutions was plural in the title. Now I am.

Sadly, this book, published in 2016, contains many bits relevant to the insanity of today. Reading it at this point in the country’s history is especially tough.

“‘Their Fate seems to be—A DISUNITED PEOPLE, till the End of Time.’”

“The executive power,” a Delaware patriot noted, “is ever restless, ambitious, and ever grasping at increase of power.”

“Federalists countered that a nation’s larger districts would elect more prestigious men, who could best defend a public against petty demagogues.”

“Both parties believed that the fate of their Republic hung in the balance, which gave an edge of desperation to their struggle.”

“…Federalists in Congress adopted new alien laws. One permitted the president primarily to expel any alien deemed ‘dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.’”

“Republicans denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts as further proof that the federalists were crypto-aristocrats, subverting free speech and republicanism.”

“Both parties instead hoped to crush the other in the national election of 1800. The campaign rhetoric became especially dire and bloody. Depicting Jefferson as a dangerous atheist, a Federalist warned that, under a Republican administration, “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, the nation black with crimes.””

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sequel of sorts to "American Colonies" by the same author, this book chronicles the turbulent times in which the United States was born, going from a colony chafing against British rule into a vast republic by way of armed revolution. I admit, I was not exactly pumped to dig into this, having read "American Colonies" immediately before it, which, while very well-researched and written, was very academic in tone and difficult to get through.

This one, for the most part, was also pretty high-handed in its tone, but I found it to be more conversational than its prequel. For once, a fairly significant portion of the book was actually pulling me along, and I even saw a sense of humor pop out at some points.

So while the prose was overall a bit better, I still found it to be rather judgmental, and sometimes in an unfair way. Taylor does a very good job of highlighting the contradictions and, indeed, hypocrisy in the American Revolution, namely the fact that the Patriots claimed to fight for liberty and against "enslavement" by the tyranny of King George, meanwhile holding an entire race of human beings in bondage and doing no small amount of mental gymnastics to justify it. This is a major theme of the book. However, Taylor not only lingers on this, but he paints a picture of colonial and post-revolution America as basically invariably pro-slavery, and the main actors and framers of the Constitution as invariably supporters of it. There is no small amount of truth to this, and Taylor notes how slavery was inextricably woven into the fabric of American society both before and after nationhood. But I feel like he did a disservice to the not-insignificant abolitionist movement that existed in America. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote an entire article inveighing against slavery; not once was this mentioned. The state of Massachusetts, in 1783, abolished slavery and even claimed in court that blacks were people entitled to liberty; this was merely skirted on and not addressed directly. What of John Adams, who never owned a slave, and even fought legal battles on behalf of slaves in his days as a lawyer? These are just a few omitted facts that jumped out at me. I felt like more time needed to be spent on the abolitionist movement in this book. It was not insignificant, and deserved to be addressed more than it was.

I have one more gripe with this book before I conclude, and that is with the treatment of George Washington. I am not the sort of person who thinks the founders of America should have accolades heaped on them by every author, or be worshiped unconditionally as republican deities. But I DO hope that authors will highlight exactly why these people were important, not shying away from reporting their moral failures as individuals, but showing their contributions to the overall historical picture. Washington, in this book, seems kind of like...well, just another rich planter. Taylor does document his military exploits in both the Seven Years' War and the Revolution pretty well, but in the formation of the country and as the first president, he looks like just another rich dude who owned slaves. Taylor doesn't hesitate to scorn Washington the slave owner, nor should he. But I was puzzled as to why I saw no sort of analysis as to why Washington is the figure that he is, or why he was important. For all his moral failures, it was his consummate leadership that held the Revolution together on the battlefield, and his example that set the precedent for all presidents to come. Perhaps most importantly, he refused to turn himself into a monarch when he easily held the influence and popularity to do so. This was a glaring omission. The very idea that Washington voluntarily relinquished power and peaceably transferred it to the next president was all but unheard of, and was a truly revolutionary idea that Taylor's narrative suffered from omitting.

That's all I have to say. It was certainly not a bad book by any means; the level of research and the organization are excellent. It ends on the very accurate and profound note that the Revolution is not over by any means, and has, indeed, been a work in progress since it began. But it had so much potential for conversation that I feel was squandered. It's a book I am glad to have on my shelf, since it doesn't at all shy away from looking at the Revolution in a critical way, examining its often hypocritical nature and how that nature impacted all corners of society. But I feel it needed more balance; a look at the way the Revolution shaped society should include what it got wrong as well as what it got right.

[Hunter McCleary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Case made. Our American Revolution really was the FIRST Civil War. Taylor reviews the run-up and post War years and, of course, the little appreciated internecine warfare that devastated the countryside and civilian populations during the war itself. The more I read about the founding of our country the more I am amazed we exist at all. The horrible things Loyalists and Patriots did to each other; the intolerance of opposing views. Sort of reminds me of what's going on today. This book just reinforces how little Americans know about their own history. Decisions are emotion not fact-driven.

Notes
2 America's first civil war.
25 The myth of self-sufficiency.
51 Winning the French and Indian War burdened Great Britain with debt and huge swaths of unprotected territory.
94 In pre-war Britain British citizens were the most heavily taxed in Europe.
101 Patriots perceived unfairness of any tax.
105 Class tensions persisted within the Patriot coaltion.
109 Patriots believed only in the liberty of their press.
137 Patriot gentlemen felt they could manage the common folk.
191 The Am Revolution became a world war when the Spanish, French, and Dutch joined with the Americans.
199 The post-1776 Continental Army belied the myth of heroic citizen soldiers.
273 Contrary to modern belief the founding fathers wanted a strong central government to restrain state governments.
384 Concern that new constitution centralized power with an aloof aristocracy.
399 There were originally 12 Bill of Rights.
Today's GOP cherry picked ideals of the founding fathers.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Taylor's American Revolutions is similar both in positives and flaws to his earlier work, American Revolutions, though having a more compact time frame and subject matter may help the reader navigate it more easily. Taylor eschews a narrative history by focusing on thematic aspects of the Revolution: the rise of colonial liberalism and the heavy-handed British response, the tension with Native Americans which, in part, drove the colonists to rebel, the difficulties of wielding a nation from a diverse set of colonies and peoples into a country able to stand on its own. While Taylor does fine work showing all of these difficulties, he's a bit scanty probing actual colonial ideology, especially in his later chapters discussing the Constitution and the development of Early America. There is enough worthy material and interesting analysis to merit reading, but I'd recommend, say, Joseph Ellis or Gordon S. Wood's work for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the early American period.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very comprehensive and detailed book covering the American revolution in the U.S. and also in Latin America, which is why the plural "Revolution's."
I have read many, many books on our revolution and there was still a lot of material in this book which I had not read about before.
There was a good deal of information on how the slaves and the native Americans were treated which was very sad reading. Human beings really are overwhelmingly not decent and moral creatures. We are still trying to make progress on this issue today around the world.

[Kantemir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I find most books on history to be tough reads due to their characteristic 'density' but the way Taylor goes about presenting historic events and their context makes it much more interesting and manageable.

[Constantine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally changed what I thought I knew about how we got started. Cannot reccomend highly enough.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Taylor is a must read

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really good book. Even though I already knew a lot about this period, and even though this book is just meant as a general overview for an average reader without too much assumed background knowledge, I still got a lot out of it. Taylor takes the broad view, looking at the Revolution, it's build-up, and after effects - from a national and international perspective.

The main problems I'd have is that the beginning/ending dates are arbitrary. I still don't quite know what 1804 was picked as an end date. 1750 just seemed like a big round number to start with.

Early on, Taylor notes that the American Revolution caused more people to flee into exile (60,000+ loyalists) than even the French Revolution. Yes, it was brutal in the South - but it also was in the areas around NYC, Philadelphia, and the frontier.

After 1700, British America imported 1.5 million slaves, four times the number of whites that came; though a tenth of the slaves came on the way over. Transatlantic shipping was up three-fold in the 18th century. People here weren't just yeomen farmers growing for themselves. There was a consumer revolution going on. George Whitfield used advance men, handbills, and newspaper adverts to help promote and advertise his revivals. A 2nd round of revivals came in the 1760s and 1770s. British citizens felt superior to the Spanish and French. Colonists were thrilled by the British win in 1763. The UK debt vaulted from 74 million pounds to 133 million. By the mid-1760s debt service was most of the UK's national budget.

Population in the colonies was doubling every 25 years. Neolin was the prophet of Pontiac's Rebellion, which was really more than an uprising that could be ascribed to just Pontiac. Raiders killed or captured 2,000 colonists. The British attempted to settle the newly one Florida. The UK lost all credibility and influence on people in the Ohio River Valley. The Quebec Act was the placate the 70,000 residents there, but the 13 colonies to the south hated it.

In Massachusetts, ambitious young lawyers like John Adams felt blockaded by Hutchinson's cabal. Massachusetts's colonial Gov. Bernard thought the UK did it backwards and should've created structural changes to colonial government first and taxes'n'stuff second. The Sons of Liberty isolated and shamed those who didn't support the boycott. Patriots suppressed their opponents, terrorizing them and breaking into their private mail. Colonial women supported the boycott, which was necessary. Colonists felt enslaved, and formed the Continental Association to enforce the 1774-75 boycott.

Gen. Gage requested 20,000 troops but was denied. Loyalists supported England for various reasons. The UK demanded less of them than the new pushy mobs of patriots. Loyalism appealed to traditionalists. They saw the Sons of Liberty as the true threat to their liberty. They saw patriot leaders as demagogues. They believed in social order, not the tyranny of the majority. Elite loyalists also resented the social mobility patriots called for. Radicals in the Continental Congress strove for unity, and so let moderates take the fore early on. 14 other British colonies in North America stayed loyal, including East Florida, West Florida, Nova Scotia, Barbados, Jamaica. Dunmore's Proclamation began as a bluff. It only applied to young men who could bare arms, but they weren't innoculated from smallpox and many died of it as a result. The UK passed the Prohibitory Act to seize all colonial ships on the seas. NYC had many loyalist. By late 1776, the British felt the war was nearly won. Washington had 6,000 men, but 75% of their enlistments were nearly up before Trenton/Princeton.

There was fear that a foreign ally would make the US dependent on them. Loyalists were plundered and horsewhipped after Saratoga. Conway and other critics of Washington were marginalzied in the army. The British failed to find allies, and by 1778 gave concessions that would've solved things in 1774 - but too late. States started drafting men into their militias in 1777. Wives and daughters ran shops and farms and provided food/clothing. Relations shift with men.

Contrary to what John Adams guesstimated, Taylor figures that 1/5 were loyalist and 2/5 patriot, with the others wanting to be left alone - and more likely to be bothered by the patriots. Loyalists were more common in the more ethnically diverse colonies - the minorities were usually loyalist. From 1774-6, patriots seized the printing presses and militias. Patriots often control courts, sheriffs, jails - and they used them. The war was more small raids than big battles. Civilians in the areas between the armies had it the worst. The British didn't like using loyalist troops. The patriots armed some slaves in Georgia after the UK took it, but other southern colonies refused to do likewise. The Carolinas turned into a nasty fight, with the British in clear control only of the coastal centers.

Kentucky's population went from 1,000 to 8,000 from 1778 to 1782. War in the west became racialized with moderates (like Daniel Boone) marginalized. Spain attacked British forts on the Mississippi River and took West Florida. Spain was preoccupied by South American rebels in 1781-3. Indians west of the Mississippi gained guns. Comanche expansion occurred, which had a domino effect on the region. More natives were on the Plains, and then came smallpox.

The Royal Navy was stretched then and the French had more military forces in the Caribbean, so the UK prioritized that region. In 1780, the UK declared war on the Dutch. Cornwallis and Clinton had petty squabbling. Yorktown gave harsh terms to loyalists, as Cornwallis wasn't interested in defending them - and that hurts loyalist morale elsewhere. The British lost naval battles in 1781-82, but then captured France's Adm. DeGrasse in April 1782. The UK improved their situation in India. They gave concessions to the Irish, in part to entice North America to return - but that was a no-go. France and Spain didn't gain much despite their loss of life/money. The US got nice terms. The UK centralized their power in the Caribbean.

The UK often abandoned their loyalists. They were often captured and killed in the Carolinas and Georgia. There was a counter-revolution vs. the area's enslaved down there in 1783-84. NYC was the last haven for the British army. Blacks went to Nova Scotia or the Freetown in Sierra Leone or elsewhere. Land in Canada was virtually free, much cheaper than in the US. Canada ended up with lower taxes than the US. UK gave concessions to the Caribbean. The overall goals were to avoid political discontent and calls for popular political participation. The empire was more hierarchicial and also more authoritarian and paternalistic. The new US wanted a weak national government. The Articles of Confederation were ratified. There was fear of western states seceding. What's now Tennessee tried to leave North Carolina as the state of Franklin - but only 7 of the 13 states supported it, and they needed 9 to do so. Spain encouraged settlement in Florida and Louisiana. 20,000 (including Daniel Boone) went to the latter in the early 19th century. The UK kept their border forts, armed Indians,and wooed settlers. The UK also put trade restrictions on the US. Pirates were a problem. The US was a joke in Europe. Jay's negotiations with Spain caused some in the south to threaten secession.

Gentlemen had needed commoners to fight the British/Indians/loyalists. A new breed of politician emerged, playing to the masses. State constitutions were written, but still contained property requirements on voting. Conservatives disguised their elitism with the language of republicanism. Inflation happened, and some local committees tried to create price controls. Two-thirds of state money went to creditors and austerity programs kicked in. Massachusetts had the most regressive fiscal policies. Shays Rebellion happened and sparked an overreaction. Only 15 delegates at the Constitutional Convention spoke with any regularity. Hamilton's plan there was in response to the New Jersey Plan. Anti-Federalists were a diverse lot and lacked ties across state boundaries. The biggest problem for Federalists was the lack of a Bill of Rights. Federalists were a minority in most states but stronger in population centers (where newspapers were). They pressed for a speedy ratification, which helped.

Washington's general bearing made him appear as a republican monarch, which helped. A backlash to the Federalist Party's government set in. Hamilton had his economic plan. Federalists wanted carefully managed western settlement. Tennessee did some flirting with Spain. Opposition to Hamilton organized. A belief in being non-partisan led to extreme partisanship (the other guy opposes not just my group, but America!). Republicans celebrate the French Revolution, even as it goes off the rails. Jefferson won in 1800, but then governed as a moderate. The Federalists kept power in the courts, as John Marshall worked to build as strong a concensus as possible. Folks, the founders were NOT united in their ideas.

The Revolution opened up the existing hierarchy by promising equal rights in an unequal society. Education expanded, including public education. Evangelicals were up, and they allied with secularists to disestablish state churches. No single denomination dominated the religious culture. There was a belief in public manhood and feminine domesticity. A third of all brides were pregnant. An emerging belief in gradual emancipation began. Indentured servitude rapidly declined. The North had less than 1,000 free blacks in 1775, but over 50,000 in 1810 (alongside 27,000 slaves). Racism increased with a rising free black population. Inheritance laws changed, with the decline of entail and primogeniture (which let a big landowner bind his heirs to never divide the land). Cotton rose up. Historians still debate how revolutionary the Revolution ultimately was.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, thoughtful and very readable history of the American Revolution.

A lot of the book deals with ironies, contradictions and hypocrisies. Taylor does a good job illuminating the role of slavery and land speculation in the war’s origins. He ably conveys the brutality of the war and the atrocities committed on both sides, and the consequences of the Revolution on Indian communities, and the colonists’ general disregard for them. Needless to say, the Revolution was particularly savage on the frontier. He stresses that the Revolution was a civil war that often pitted families and friends against each other. Taylor notes that historians often gloss over the violence of the Revolution and assert that it wasn’t as destructive as the French or Russian ones. “Only by the especially destructive standards of other revolutions was the American more restrained.” Violence and brutality were widespread in the colonies, rather than restricted to the South or the frontier. Taylor’s coverage of American loyalists is pretty good. Loyalists are often portrayed as a stubborn minority of elitists, but Taylor ably shows how diverse a group they were, how many commoners made it up, and how complex their motives could be. Many loyalists switched sides repeatedly depending on which side seemed to be winning, or profited by selling their services to whichever side that was.

Taylor demonstrates how the Revolution was, in many ways, a triumph for wealthy white elites, who ended up dominating national, state and local politics. He also ably describes the role played by European powers and their rivalries and how they impacted events on the continent. His coverage of the Continental Army is interesting, showing how heavily it was made up of outcasts and criminals, and how many colonists bought substitutes to stay out of the fighting (some of them slaves) He also describes the viciousness of postwar American politics, and emphasizes the competing visions of the various Founders. He also notes how post-Revolutionary War America was so chaotic and violent that some people wondered whether returning to some sort of monarchy would bring peace. He observes that, to pay off the war debt, America’s new government had no choice but to raise taxes.

The narrative is strong and clear, if a little choppy at times, and some readers might find the book a bit overstuffed. The coverage of the Revolutionary War’s origins could have been a little clearer, and some readers may find the people covered to be a little lifeless, although Taylor does do a good job humanizing the Founders and explaining their hopes, agendas, ambitions and shortcomings (such as their shady financial dealings) Some readers might wish Taylor covered more of the leading Founders, though.

A broad, comprehensive and well-written work.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The revolutionary period as taught in American schools is pure fiction, in which the entire population of ‘the colonies’ (only 13 are worth mentioning) was unified in rebellion, based on fully formed republican ideals, against a tyrannical British establishment; Indians were either mindless savages or tragic figures with no political agency or agenda of their own; and the many other parties involved - the numerous colonies north and south of the rebellious 13, for example, and the Spanish empire to the west - were non-existent.

American historians, as well as others, have tried with varying degrees of success and various levels of bias to paint a fuller picture, but Taylor has outdone them all, in my view. Evaluating this period from a continental perspective allows him to consider a far more complex - and more interesting - tale, which he tells with a refreshing lack of American presupposition and in an animated style that makes a lengthy academic work read like a storybook. Probably the best book I’ve ever read on this topic.

[Chrisorc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t recommend this book enough. Concise and clearly the arguments are laid out that the roots of the revolution is not necessarily as we have been told. Land speculating, American fears of being deprived of their slaves and xenophobia against French catholic’s and Indians were equally as large causes for the war as a want for representation before taxation.

The only reason this book is rated 4/5 and not higher is that some parts seem to directly talk to an American audience. The author is a bit fast and loose with his use of geography. A European such as myself had a bit of an issue figuring out where all of the landmarks were. What is the Ohio valley, is it Ohio? Is Tennessee a state yet or a region?
I also missed an explanation of certain words that apparently mean more to somebody of American origin. Quakers are mentioned frequently but never explained.

It might seem like I’m nitpicking and I am. If I was going to recommend a book on the American revolution to somebody this would be the book I’d recommend.

[Adrian Hussey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking at America today one is tempted to ask: how did we get here? Perhaps this book helps to answer that question. The account given of the circumstances surrounding the revolutionary war, and the subsequent formation of the republic makes both an eye opening and exciting read. The uncertain and unclear objectives and various aspirations on both sides of the European opponents, the important and ultimately tragic participation of Native Americans, the international influences, and the mendacity, confusion and sheer viciousness will surprise newcomers to the subject like me. Goodbye to “mother and apple pie”.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magisterial synthesis of the Revolution that incorporates the 50 years of research from new social historians, as well as the work of scholars on race and gender. If you look at Taylor's career, this book in many ways represents his life's work. My favorite part of this book is that it is chock full of quotes from people who lived through these events. It's important to realize the American Revolutions takes a continental approach, so it highlights events in Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Canada that may not be as important as events in Boston or Philadelphia. Nonetheless, these perspectives provide new insights on the meaning of the Revolution that will get people thinking about the event as one of greater global importance than previously considered.