A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution

by Theodore Draper

From one of the great political journalists of our time comes a boldly argued reinterpretation of the central event in our collective past--a book that portrays the American Revolution not as a clash of ideologies but as a Machiavellian struggle for power.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, American Revolution, American History, American, United States

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair. Draper was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 1990 recipient of the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians from the American Historical Association.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

So how did the relationship between Great Britain and the British American colonies deteriorate into war in a little over a decade after securing a huge victory over France that secured them everything east of the Mississippi and all of Canada? The Struggle for Power: The American Revolution by Theodore Draper details how ideological factors were the main cause of the American Revolution.

While Draper begins the book the debate occurring in Britain about whether to keep Canada or Guadeloupe after the end of the Seven Years’ War—aka French and Indian War—using the arguments that had begun during the Stuart restoration nearly a century before about how to keep the American colonies dependent on Britain. However, Draper showed that those old arguments had since been surpassed by the economic prowess of the American colonies and did not consider the political attitudes and realities of those colonies until it was too late. Throughout the book Draper illustrates that the American Revolution came down not to paying taxes, but who had the power to pass tax legislation and collect the money. Over the course of a little over 500 pages, Draper developed his case by not only American sources but those of the British as well, showing the ideological arguments over 12 years that eventually could only be settled in blood.

The Struggle for Power as a great look into the cause of the American Revolution by Theodore Draper, not only seeing it from the western side of the Atlantic but in the mother country too.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is no doubt one of the most thorough examinations of the prerevolutionary period and the ACTUAL factors which led to war and eventually American independence (not the stuff of American myth that informs our annual 4th of July celebrations). Draper draws from a wealth of original documents - pamphlets, newspaper articles, speeches, political treatises, and correspondence between revolutionary figures - to show that the struggle between the colonies and Great Britain wasn't a sudden uprising in response to a tyrannical British Parliament, but rather a gradual shift in the power dynamic between the Mother Country and her increasingly self-sufficient and profitable North American colonies.

My only criticism: Draper is precise in his interpretation of colonial discontent over parliamentary taxation as essentially a protest against the confiscation of their legally-acquired "property," but he largely ignores the extent to which the colonists used this language in political and legal arguments in preparation for their eventual defense of the abhorrent institution of chattel slavery.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book done in Club Book with Chris, Jared, Drew and Jack. Loved it throughout. Was certainly the target of our jokes at many times due to its tendency to repeat itself and drag through the boring bits but overall I loved it

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book #2 in book club was a blast with my friends. Wrote my research paper on the revolution and this lowkey blew my mind. Feel like I was the only one who didn’t mind the repetition.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure. I didn't finish this book. Had to put it down. Here it is, in the good, the bad, the ugly.

The Good. Well documented account of how the American Revolution was likely inevitable in one way or another. Based on the independent spirit of British colonists in America, British laws being naturally "loose", economic policies that allowed colonies very rich in resources to have the potential to eclipse their mother country (eventually), and a British governing system that allowed the colonists to maintain their own independence from the King even while being subservient to him. Great information here and even after only 80 pages, it's quite clear. Draper's right. It was bound to happen.

The Bad. Very dense account. This is a very document heavy book, showing various accounts of various people of the time with painstakingly researched evidence that supports the thesis I stated above. This book is not the summer page turner. And even for a history teacher (me) I found myself a bit bored at times. I knew it very good educational stuff. But I wasn't ready for a 544 page account of this stuff. Especially when I already got in 80 pages (see above) the gist of this book. Very teachable information here, but in a high school setting, I'm not going to be going into the depth that Draper brings us. MUCH better for a collegiate or graduate level study of the forming of the Early Republic.

The Ugly. No ugly. My boss recommended I give this book a read. I tried it. I got some stuff from it. That's going to have to be good enough.

[Scott Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The American Revolution as inevitability. Viewing the development of conflict from the perspective that the British had been predicting the conflict for nearly a century opens new perspectives on familiar history.

[CKQ Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelf for a while and finally decided to start reading about the American Revolution. Draper's book is incredibly thorough, more or less split into 2 overarching sections. The first 8 or so chapters examine British and colonial attitudes before the 7 Years' War in the mid-18th century, starting with the Pamphlet wars in 1759-61 and then dipping back into the 17th-century when needed to examine foreign (British and French) and domestic perceptions of the colonies with a growing population and increasingly chaotic trade and economic arrangement. At times Draper provides original text when he can, letting 17h/18th-century opinions describe the foresight some had in imagining the idea of an eventual split of the colonies from its mother country.

The back half covers the time between the 7 Years' War right up to the initial battle at Concord and Lexington, taking great care to look into the argument between British sovereignty vs American autonomy. These chapters provide the step-by-step analysis of colony disillusionment over what they saw as increasing encroachment from Parliament 3000 miles across the pond that more or less started with the Stamp Act and continued through the Townshend Acts, Molasses/Sugar Act, Declaratory Act, Tea Act, and Coercive (Intolerable) Acts. Each piece of legislation viewed through a lens as a sort of tug-of-war, a power struggle eventually culminating in tenuous colony unification via the Continental Congress and the inevitable war of independence that followed when neither colony nor crown would back down.

Draper's writing style is decidedly more academic than I'm used to, and it'll take some work to settle in if it feels unfamiliar, though I wouldn't necessarily call it dry, either - as a side note I'm currently reading Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause and the difference in styles is somewhat noticeable, RM's book proving to be more readable, though I'd also say it's more an overview text given the 26 years its covering. However, if you're at all interested in the American Revolution it's definitely worth a look.

One other point I’ll make: given the wide swath of original text Draper quotes from, it seems WILDLY ironic that a good deal of reactions to Great Britain’s enacted acts invoked slavery as a condition to accepting Parliament legislature. Take for example a popular pamphlet from John Dickinson of PA:

“…Those who are taxed without their own consent, expressed by themselves or their representatives, are slaves. We are taxed without our own consent, expressed by ourselves or our representatives. We are therefore—SLAVES.”

Draper quotes from colony folk who often shared similar sentiments concerning fears of becoming slaves to Great Britain should they accept increasing intrusions on their supposed freedom. And yet, some of these people were LITERAL slaveholders, Dickinson included. Perhaps none of the colonists had any feelings about it one way or the other - there's a quick mention of it toward the end of the book from Samuel Johnson: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” - but I was kind of hoping Draper would have at least addressed the irony of it all in greater detail because I’m deeply curious how the colonies felt about the double standard of the times. Despite the lack of such analysis, Draper's book still offers a lot to consider about the lives of 18th century Americans.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The New York Times
January 31, 1996
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
BOOKS OF THE TIMES;A Revolution More About Power Than Principle
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

A STRUGGLE FOR POWER The American Revolution By Theodore Draper 544 pages. Times Books. $35.

The French and Indian War, as any schoolchild knows, saw the British fighting alongside their American colonists to conquer Canada for the Mother Country. What fewer of us know, as Theodore Draper reminds us in his lengthy and learned new interpretation of the origins of the American Revolution, is that the British-American alliance was a difficult and contentious one. Colonial assemblies, for example, balked at providing money to pay for British troops. New England traders continued to trade briskly with the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, even though those sugar-rich islands belonged to the enemy French. The Massachusetts Legislature refused even to quarter British troops in Boston, arguing that the order to do so, issued by Parliament back in Britain, "did not extend to America."

The continual bickering between the colonists and the representatives of the King and Parliament was, Mr. Draper writes, "simply and solely" over the power to make decisions: "Where was it -- in London or in Boston?"

The answer is that in practice, it was in Boston, and that this was true nearly from the beginning of American colonial history. That in turn suggests Mr. Draper's main theme: the American break with England, which became irrevocable with the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, was the culmination of a nearly ceaseless struggle over just that decision-making power, and whether it would be in the colonies themselves or in England.

The American Revolution, to put it differently, was not so much over libertarian ideas or principles, as many have argued, or over the various British impositions that Americans learn about in elementary school: the Stamp Acts, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Duty or the Intolerable Acts. From the beginning, the relationship between England and America involved a struggle for power, a struggle that, given the size and the rapid growth of the colonies, the British were bound to lose.

"Whatever they did," Mr. Draper writes of the colonies, "they were determined to do it on their own terms. When their interests conflicted with what the British wanted, they held out tenaciously, by passive resistance as well as by outright opposition."

Mr. Draper, who has written a dozen or so notable books on history and current events, does not pr'sent this interpretation as incompatible with other factors, like economic interest or notions of political principle, which, as he shows, also played their role. By putting the contest for power in the forefront, he provides a new and very interesting vision of the revolution. That this vision is drawn from a comprehensive, exhaustive study of the documents is at the heart of the book's considerable merit and of a largely forgivable flaw.

On its merits, "A Struggle for Power" is a work of enormous scholarship, of clarity and great intelligence. Mr. Draper seems to have read everything about the American Revolution, from numerous secondary works to the collections of essays and the letters written by statesmen and ordinary citizens in both America and Britain. It is mainly out of these numerous "speeches, pamphlets and resolutions" that Mr. Draper draws out his themes, tracing the way the possibility of independence (or, from the British point of view, the fear of it) was inherent almost from the first English settlements in the New World.

Among the most fascinating stories that Mr. Draper extracts from the documentary record is the first one he tells, about a battle of pamphlets that broke out in both America and Britain after the French and Indian War. The pamphlets discussed whether the British, as a result of victory over the French, should take possession of Canada or of Guadeloupe, which at the time was richer than Canada because of its sugar. Some in Britain foresaw that if Canada were returned to the French, "the American colonies would be forced to remain British." That was because the Americans would be dependent on British protection against the French. Conversely, by keeping Canada and thus eliminating the French threat, there would be no real obstacle blocking the colonies' impulse toward what was already being called "independency."

Mr. Draper's argument here is that well before the Stamp Acts, and before any Jeffersonian ideas about inalienable rights appeared in the American discourse, the British were worried "about the progress made by the American colonies and where it was going to lead."

Reading the documents, Mr. Draper finds numerous illustrations of the prickly American insistence that the colonies govern their own affairs, an insistence that grew as America's wealth and population grew. It was not easy, for example, as Mr. Draper shows in what are nearly comic passages, to be a British colonial governor dealing with stingy colonial assemblies.

The flaw in Mr. Draper's book is that he overdoes it. The detailed studies of those "speeches, pamphlets and resolutions," which are frequently quoted at length, are, frankly, tiring. The reader, his attention flagging, begins wishing for some spice, some color, some action in what is largely a story of the evolution of ideas. And when, as he does from time to time, Mr. Draper stops to describe some event like the Boston Massacre or Paul Revere's ride, his narrative adds little if anything to the work of others.

Still, the reader who is interested in understanding the founding of the American Republic will forgive Mr. Draper for his stylistic sobriety and his piling up of citations. "A Struggle for Power" may run aground at times, but it also reaches very high. Mr. Draper's descriptions of the way each side saw the growing conflict are models of clarity, and his conclusion that American "independency" followed a logic of power, rather than principle or economic interest, adds a valuable perspective to one of the most important events in the history of the globe.

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company

[Luke Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The general consensus on the US war of independence is that it was a war against tyranny and unfair taxes imposed by the British Crown. Theodore Draper argues brilliantly that like all conflicts the truth was a little more complicated. Using the words of the men who lived through it, Draper examines the origins of the colonies itself (which were little more than a collection of business claims) then moves into the relationship between the two countries as they grew. What emerges is a conflict that grew steadily over time as the relationship deteriorated and inflated by a war of words. Arguments raged over self-rule, who held executive power and how had the power to impose the rule of law. The only criticism I have is that the original spelling of the pamphlets that whipped up the masses is retained. Just because a historian has to struggle through horrible spelling doesn't mean we should too! But otherwise its a gripping tale of a tragedy that feels reversible in some places and inevitable in others.

[Green&Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Who would make the ultimate decisions?"

"A Struggle for Power" by Theodor Draper was a fascinating read that looks at the years leading up to the American Revolution. Draper focuses heavily on the actual politics of the people and powers of the time.

He presents a large number of correspondents and pamphlets from the time exactly as they were, strange spelling and all. The amount of letters to and from friends in the colonies and London as well as the various pamphlets published under now known aliases allows Draper to show almost exactly what was in the minds of these men.

This book looks at the build up to the revolution in an honest way. There is no idealistic praising of historical figures that I grew up hearing about. These men were fighting for something before they even knew what it was.

[Stephen Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in 1997, and have just finished it a second time. Excellent take on the causes of the American revolution, which wasn't fought strictly over taxes, or British autocracy, but rather over power . . . who had the power to set taxes or otherwise determine the fate of Britain's American colonies?

The book isn't about the revolution; it's about what led to it. When Great Britain sought to implement Parliament-ruled taxes on the Americans to help pay off the debt incurred by the Seven Years' War, it triggered the beginning of the end. Americans had previously controlled their own fate via the colonial assemblies - and they took to heart the phrase "no taxation without representation." Parliament, without representation from the colonies, had no right to tax the colonists. The British, if you haven't read ahead, did not agree.

Very good book.

[David Abernethy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition reviewed was published by Times Books in 1996 on acid-free paper under this ISBN. The argument is that the difficulties which led to revolution can be explained as a struggle for power between the London government and the colonies; but the work is longer than necessary to defend the author's thesis. The author shows in great detail that a move toward independence by the American colonies had been foreseen in British publications long prior to the 1759 victory at Quebec. The author explains that the British insistence from mid-1763 on for more revenue from the colonies was driven by the government's enlargement of the army in North America to 7,500 troops to enforce the Proclamation of 1763, which increased the annual expense of army maintenance to 320,000 pounds.

[Radu Marin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forced myself to finish this. Started reading it after the late great Christopher Hitchens recommended it. Overall Mr. Draper does a good job of explaining the events leading up to the war and it is interesting to read the original pamphlets and letters from the individuals during that time. However, there is a lot of information. The way the book flows feels like you are being taught to learn the details as you go over the main aspects of the book multiple times.

There were many times that I almost gave up on this book but overall it was relatively easy to read and that helped me push through. I feel like I learned a lot about how and why the revolutionary war broke out in the way that it did.

[John Hunt]

Draper is an excellent -- not brilliant -- literary artist, far excelling 95% of other journalists. He is lucid and readable. The new interpretation of the Revolution which he presents -- the Revolution as predominately "A Struggle for Power" -- is plausible and consistent. I have no authority to judge it's historical validity, but whether or not the "Struggle..." was the dominant factor in precipitating the Revolution, it was surely of some weight. Of the many dozens of books about the Revolution which I have read (most of them what I call "popademic": Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, Joseph Ellis, et. al.), this book was one of the most enjoyable.

[Will Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book uses a ton of direct sources, including a lot of personal letters, to describe the evolution of both American and British thinking in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War. It's definitely aimed at history buffs, but I enjoyed learning about a lot of the events from the mouths of the people involved. One Brit nailed it when he said that American leaders had figured out what they were against before they figured out what they were for.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brought in to focus the “No taxation without representation” saying from pre-revolutionary days. Brought in what the central figures were thinking and the issues involved that led to the outbreak of war. From the French and Indian War to Lexington and Concord the book lays out the why’s for what the British and Americans chose to do from the early days of the colonies to 1775.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I had my head wrapped around why we fought for our Independence from the England. This book helped me see that there was much more to the story. At the end of it, I realized how little I really knew about our struggle for independence. Very good read.

[pablo felgueres · Rating 5 out of 5]

The seminal events that led to the revolution in the states.

This was my first read on American history and it opened up my curiosity to learn about foundational ideas on liberty that would influence the incredible future we see today.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I went into this book with different expectations but it was too repetitive and moved at a pretty slow pace for 500 pages when most of the book is focused on 10 years. The small anecdotes really were the highlights for me

[Paul Basile · Rating 5 out of 5]

What caused the American Revolution? The answer is in the title and this book exhaustively examines the events leading up to the outbreak of war.

[Jacob Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. Not a dry read, nor pop-pompous.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Heard it was well regarded by historian peers.

[Charles Jameson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's fantastic. My head hurts. I need to read some fiction now.

[Charles Kristofek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read. Great insights to the lead up to the revolution. Surprised how young Hamilton and Jefferson were when they started publishing their thoughts (mid 20s). The revolution was unavoidable and recognized as so by the British much earlier (early 1700s) that it would eventually come about due to America's incredible growth in population and wealth. Credit to the British for allowing America the freedom of the press regardless of how revolutionary.

[Matt Champagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thick and well-researched. Big points I remember: The colonists did not think they were apart from England--they very much thought they were of it; British politicians were quite divided on what the fate of the colonies should be; and fast rises in population made the colonies quite prosperous quite quickly. Dry, but informative.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was slow going for me. I prefer micro-histories, focusing more on the individual. This is a great summary of the forces leading to the revolution and in particular has lots of primary sources, letters diaries and pamphlets which give both an insight into the mindsets on both sides of the conflict and a flavor of the times.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more than perhaps you ever wanted to know about how the British government viewed and administered their colonies.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absorbing, informative, and well-documented. Makes one re-evaluate his or her position on the American revolution.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A through and insightful treatise on the causes and motivations of the American Revolution.

[Kiel Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable.