The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution

by Gary B. Nash

The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.

Genres: History, American Revolution, American History, Nonfiction, Economics

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Gary B. Nash was a distinguished American historian known for his scholarship on the American Revolutionary era, slavery, and the experiences of marginalized communities in shaping early U.S. history. A graduate of Princeton University, where he earned both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees, Nash also served in the U.S. Navy before embarking on an academic career. He taught at Princeton and then at UCLA, where he became a full professor and later held key administrative roles focused on educational development.
Nash's work highlighted the roles of working-class individuals, African Americans, Native Americans, and women in the nation's founding, challenging traditional narratives centered solely on elite figures. His inclusive approach often sparked debate, notably with historian Edmund Morgan, who questioned the broader impact of the grassroots movements Nash emphasized.
Beyond academia, Nash was instrumental in shaping history education in the United States. He co-directed the development of the National History Standards and led the National Center for History in the Schools. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, he was also a member of numerous esteemed scholarly societies. Throughout his career, Nash authored or contributed to dozens of influential books, articles, and essays that left a lasting mark on the field.

Reviews

[Andee Nero · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoy Nash's books and his writing style in general. However, my major grievance is that he overstates the importance of his research. He argues that the changing social structures of New England seaports were responsible for the climate that allowed the American Revolution to happen. I think that he places too much contingency on this. In doing so, he ignores the fact that the American Revolution involved 10 other colonies besides the three under consideration (MA, NY, PA). When compared to, for example, Woody Holton's Forced Founders, which is more heavily focused on the Southern and Mid-Atlantic colonies, it is apparent that Nash only provides a portion of the picture.

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution, by Gary Nash, is an in-depth look at the transformations that took place in American seaports from the late 17th century until the American Revolution in 1776. Exploring changing themes in social structure within America’s colonial cities, Nash fleshes out the class conflict that has been present throughout American history. Despite historians’ previous aversion to studying labor sociology amid the supposed economic paradise that defined colonial America, Nash dispels their theories and replaces them with his own by using tax lists, account books, court records, newspapers, and the recorded opinions of Americans to successfully depict everyday life for colonists and prove his central argument. Nash successfully argues that as a direct result of economic development and evolution, class relationships constantly shifted and political consciousness grew throughout the colonial era, leading ultimately to our American Independence. Nash’s work suffers only from an absolutism that is to be expected in any author’s thesis when introducing a new academic viewpoint. Taken not as gospel, but instead as one facet of a complicated series of historical events and influences, Nash’s work is invaluable.
Beginning in 1690, we visit Boston, New York, and Philadelphia in turn. Boston is initially the most developed northern seaport in America, but we quickly learn that New York City and Philadelphia are not far behind. In American history classes, coverage of northern colonial history typically focuses on Indian relations, religion, and the Salem witch trials: we jump from the trials in 1692 to the Great Awakening in the 1740’s, to the French and Indian War in 1754, and we don’t talk much about what’s happening in between those dates. We’re led to believe that,
Land…was abundant and wages were high because labor was always in great demand. Therefore, opportunity was widespread and material well-being attainable by nearly everybody. If being at the bottom or in the middle was only a way station on a heavily traveled road to the top, then the composition of the various ranks and orders must have been [a] constantly shifting and… unimportant phenomenon. Thus, our understanding of the social history of the colonial cities has been mired in the general idea that progress was almost automatic in the commercial centers of a thriving New World society.1
This isn’t true, however, and we realize this when we look at the cities’ responses to the one constant throughout the period: war.
From 1689 until the American Revolution, the colonies were almost continually involved in military conflict. Wars affected trade through wartime booms and postwar depressions. “They also opened up new forms of entrepreneurial activity such as smuggling, piracy, and military contracting, provided the basis for new urban fortunes as well as new urban misery, altered the social structure, and exposed the towns to the vagaries of the market economy to a degree previously unknown.”2 First, King William’s War (1689-1697), then Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), then the Anglo-Spanish War (1739-1748) and finally the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763) alight in the American colonies. The first two wars were fought North of Boston, and how the cities deal with these conflicts is indicative of how they’ll fare throughout the 18th century.
Boston’s labor force and economy both suffered greatly from the wars, and their economic woes provided the backdrop for popular politics to develop and thrive. Mobs often took to the streets of Boston, and intimidated or robbed the rich. Where inequity existed in the Massachusetts capital, the populus often resorted to violence to remedy the situation, and this inflammatory nature defined them. In New York, economic issues revolved around equitable wealth distribution and ethnic rivalries between the Dutch and the English. With their middling artisans much more politically active than in Boston, New Yorkers founded party politics in America and revolutionized popular involvement in the political process. Philadelphia, chronically unaffected by war in the North, was the most prosperous of the three cities. Prosperity doesn’t lend itself to democratic uprising, and Nash succinctly summarizes the three cities’ political climates by saying that “in both Philadelphia and New York, political activism within the lower ranks of society vanished after 1710 in an era of economic prosperity; in Boston, the thermometer rose to new heights as the town wrestled with economic problems.”3 Not until later, first seemingly without provocation, then ultimately while facing backlash against Quaker pacifism amid imminent danger from French armies, did Philadelphians clamor for popular politics. As the idea of free markets replaced the traditional protectionism of 17th century mercantilism, market swings brought new heights of prosperity to the winners, and new depths of depression to the losers. This shift towards impersonal markets and their volatility provided a setting for further conflict, especially in mid-century Boston.
As we get into the 1740’s, Nash discusses the Great Awakening, the Seven Years’ War, and the bombardment of legislation foisted on the American people from London. With the exception of the abhorrent economic effects of the war on several of the Northern cities, Nash’s narrative very closely follows the familiar description of the build up to the war of 1776. The Great Awakening revitalized popular politics across the continent, especially in Boston, with its emphasis on self-determination and criticism of established hierarchies (especially in the church). The Seven Years War provided a wartime economic boom for all three cities, only to leave an economic vacuum with the Treaty of Paris and an end to the hostilities. The legislation that followed the war attempted to wring water from the rock that was the colonial economy mired in post-war depression. Issues began as economic, when English demands could not be met by an impoverished populace, and they ended as political, stoked by fear of political disenfranchisement, an exceedingly obvious (though perhaps necessary) police state, and an infringement on the advances towards democratic ideology that had rooted itself in the colonies throughout the century. Ultimately, these factors, coupled with the lasting legacy of colonial uprising, allowed for all out warfare to erupt, and Nash leaves us off right at the beginning of the Revolution.
Nash divides the book into two sections. The first half, titled Growth and War, covers 1690-1740, and details colonial seaport growth and economic development. The second half, covering 1740-1776, and titled Conflict and Resolution, describes the economic and social atmosphere that sparks calls for self-governance and stokes the flames of rebellion. The book begins with the somewhat intuitive but easily overlooked observation that 18th century America was largely rural and agriculturally based, but that the Northern seaports “were the cutting edge of economic, social, and political change.”4 Cities were where capitalist trends spawned and radiated outward: barter economies becoming commercial, hierarchical and deferential politics becoming participatory, and small-scale artisans giving way to factory workers.
The class conflict between these laboring classes and their socio-economic betters is explored in depth by Nash. Using twenty-three included pages of tax lists, ship production records, municipal inventories, and (what we would now refer to as) consumer price indices, all of his assertions are obvious and easily checked by referring to his appendix. Likewise, 110 pages of citations, most of which are primary sources, provide example and support for his suppositions in each city. An example from Boston is Gershom Bulkeley’s “Will and Doom” (1692) to show the public hostility towards oligarchic conservatives. “There were those in New England who believed that the [extralegislative] overthrow of [the governor] had uncovered a ‘leveling, independent, democratical principle and spirit, with a tang of fifth-monarchy.’ It was said that some deluded New Englanders now wished to form ‘an Oliverian republic.’”5
The illumination of class strife in the colonial era is extremely beneficial. Nash’s exhaustive investigation into the evolution of America’s political experiment is even more necessary now than when the book was written. In the late 70’s, when Crucible was published, there was a lull in the crusade against potentially “Marxist” ideas. The rabid anti-communism of the 50’s had abated, and as The Great Society sought to end poverty in America, studying historical class mobility became both accepted and essential. In the 80’s, dissection of class mobility once again became suspect, as many took up arms against our expanding welfare state, and the Republican Party began its neo-conservative transition. Today, the book is important because half of our country supports a party that unabashedly sounds like Cotton Mather, a politically vocal minister in the 18th century, who announced, “For those that Indulge themselves in Idleness, the Express Command of God unto us, is That you should Let them Starve.”6 Or Samuel Cooper, who in 1751 pronounced, “public out-relief or private charity for widows and their children was money ‘worse than lost.’”7 Reading a history that shows how this callous mentality is fruitless, instead of Ayn Rand novels, may help temper the extremism seen from American conservatives. We need to revisit issues of class mobility as a nation if we are to stop promoting inequality and a volatile socio-economic system designed to subvert economic success for the masses. That being said, studying the social mobility of the working class is a leftist’s task, and Gary Nash has been labeled a “neo-progressive” for his focus on the power of the masses8. Though perhaps not the definitive explanation of what events caused the American Revolution, his leftist perspective demands respect and academic acknowledgement.
The book is organized chronologically, with chapters encompassing a distinct period and then visiting each of the three cities individually within it. This makes information very accessible when readers know what they are looking for in the book, but reading it cover-to-cover requires the patience and interest of a historian. I find it compelling, but I can see how some might find it tiresome. As one previous reviewer says, it “suffers from the blahs that most books that were published from dissertations do.” Historians will be familiar and comfortable pouring through hundreds of names of lesser known political, religious, and professional colonial figures, but the general public may skim past those players for the gist of Nash’s argument. Likewise, 23 pages of economic data are extremely interesting to economic historians, and essential for anyone who wants to check the validity and accuracy of Nash’s claims, but are largely wasted on the average reader.
Nash takes a refreshing view of the causes of social contention in colonial America, and I was very satisfied with the information I gained. I plan to use the book as reference material in the future, but probably won’t recommend it for casual reading to anyone but a history major. I find that Nash successfully shows the connection between the social controversies that flourished in the colonies, and achieves his goal of showing that through these struggles they developed a class-consciousness that allowed and encouraged our modern political identity.
Bibliography

1. Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1979) viii
2. Nash, Urban Crucible, 55
3. Nash, Urban Crucible, 101
4. Nash, Urban Crucible, vii
5. Nash, Urban Crucible, 42
6. Nash, Urban Crucible, 187
7. Nash, Urban Crucible, 196
8. Francis G. Couvares, Interpretations of American History Vol I: Patterns and Perspectives (Free Press, 2000)

Entertainment: 1/2 Star
Education: 1 Star
Thesis: 1 Star
Readability: 1/2 Star
Inspiration 1 Star

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

While many have characterized the American Revolution primarily as struggle for colonial independence, grounded in republican values and led by enlightened leaders, Gary Nash has taken a more complex view of the revolution and its origins. Nash, a long serving professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of numerous works dealing with the American Revolution, colonial history, and other topics, has focused much of his professional work on the broader social aspects of the American Revolution. In his book, The Urban Crucible, he focuses on the drastic social, political, and economic change that took place during the eighteenth century in the port cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and argues that these changes helped bring about the American Revolution. Central to Nash’s argument is the idea that the laboring class of urban society became conscious of itself during the century leading up to the revolution and “upset the equilibrium of an older system of social relations and turned the seaport towns into crucibles of revolutionary agitation.” The struggle between the different levels of urban society not only made revolution possible, but also dictated its development.

Nash’s narrative argues that at the close of the seventeenth century, the small, bustling port towns of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were characterized by personal, face-to-face business dealings that crossed class divisions. This was on older form of society where “the corporate whole, not the individual, was the basic conceptual unit” in port society. Over the course of the eighteenth century, thanks particularly to the periodic wars in which the British Empire was involved and the integration of the ports into a global economic system, the social foundations of the ports began to transform. Each new war, including Queen Anne’s War, King George’s War, and the Seven Years War, brought an initial boost to the commercial fortunes of the cities, which was normally followed by post-war depression and social disorder. The economic stress that followed war traditionally led to “the activation of groups at all levels of society, the elaboration of the apparatus of party politics, the use of shrill rhetoric, and the crystallization of class consciousness.” As the century progressed, the upper class of merchants and professionals began to obtain more wealth, while the laboring class, including artisans and shopkeepers, slipped into poverty. Each conflict pushed these changes forward, and by the end of the Seven Years War, they had reached a breaking point. These changes coupled with the new British imperial policies of the 1760s and led to a growth in factional politics between the classes and a growth of discontent by the laboring class regarding gentry rule. The laboring people became conscious of themselves and “became convinced that they must create power where none had existed before or else watch their position deteriorate.” The American Revolution was not only the result of an external conflict with British imperial policy, but the result of an internal struggle for a new social order. These two merged within the revolution. The American Revolution would not have happened when or how it did without this class struggle.

Nash’s effort to write a broad social history of urban colonial America is quite admirable and explores some compelling questions; however, his work does suffer from a number of troubling contradictions. Central to his thesis is the idea that urban dwellers developed a sense of class and that the laboring class because aware of its own power. Yet Nash makes clear that “no perfect crystallization of classes or class consciousness” had developed during the eighteenth century; rather, all levels of society had learned “to define their interests and identify the self-interested behavior” of those who were in power. Another central concept is that of ideology and its role in the struggle between the classes. While he is correct in arguing that “ideology is not exclusive to educated people” and that it was among the laboring class, he also notes that no unified ideology had developed among the laboring class because colonial urban society was far too fluid. It is difficult to make the argument that the revolution came about due to a development of class consciousness when, as Nash himself points out, it had neither been fully developed nor was it unified toward a single goal. This is a significant tension that undermines Nash’s argument. The discussion of class in itself is problematic, for, as Nash notes, these port cities never constituted more than one-twentieth of the population of the whole of the colonies and urban dwellers worked in numerous different trades and professions. If a relatively small population was engaged in so many different things in the port cities, it seems improbable that enough of a conception of class or unified purpose could have had as much of an influence on the coming of the revolution as Nash argues it did.

At the same time, Nash’s argument is drawn from the collective experiences of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia; however, he frequently points out how the experiences in each city were different from time to time. For instance, when discussing the public reaction to the Stamp Act in 1765, he explains that each city had a different reaction and that “history is full of exploitation and unpopular decisions by those who wield power, and the reaction of the populace is anything but uniform.” Nevertheless, out of the different reactions to the Stamp Act, he draws broad and general conclusions about port society. By pointing out just how much experiences varied from city to city, which is done in every chapter, Nash again undermines his own argument that there was recognizable and universal change in the ports.

Nevertheless, Nash’s work does have some important qualities. A major element of his work is the development of the laboring class. While numerous studies have been done on the leaders of colonial society and of the American Revolution, far less attention has been given to lower class urban dwellers. To meet this goal, Nash not only draws upon the more traditional sources of historical research, such as diaries, letters, newspapers, and business records, but he also draws upon tax and poor relief records, wills, deeds, mortgages, wage records, and a significant number of other such records to get a glimpse at what life was like for common people. Along with these sources, Nash provides a substantial appendix of graphs, charts, and tables demonstrating urban wages, occupations, tax rates, and other economic factors. The use of such sources does allow for a better understanding of the way of life of ordinary people in urban colonial America. It is quite admirable that his research draws on quantitative data to support his broader qualitative study and this method should be involved in more historical studies. All of this data greatly enhances the understanding of the state of the economy of the colonies during the eighteenth century. However, his use of this data does pose a problem at times. Nash “infers lower-class thought from lower-class action” from many of these quantitative sources and this presents a problem for he is basing so much of his argument of class consciousness on merely inference and not on as solid qualitative evidence as one might expect. Nevertheless, this work does provide great insight into both the lives of ordinary people and into urban society in the American colonies in general. Another positive aspect is Nash’s discussion of internal conflict within the port cities during the colonial period. Whether or not class consciousness was fully developed during the period, it is clear that parties and actors within the colonies themselves were competing against one another, and the melding of this aspect with the struggle against the British government over taxation is revealing and a compelling argument. This broader idea of internal conflict in the development of the revolution deserves more attention not only from historians, but should be extended to the popular memory of the American Revolution.

The Urban Crucible is full of detail and specific information, yet the information is presented in a less than approachable fashion. While Nash makes his argument clear from the beginning of the book and takes the time to carry the argument throughout the work, much of the narrative is itself rather dense and difficult to engage. He follows his study of all three cities in each chapter, and therefore within single chapters the narrative weaves in and out of the different cities. This makes it difficult to stay focused while reading because the reader constantly has to readjust from one city to the next and attempt to recall which public figure was in which city, or which law was passed in which city. This is not helped by the fact that the book focuses on the social, political, and economic development of all three cities over the course of a century. The subject matter is too large in scope. A preferable approach may have been to address each city apart from the others and then tie them together, or even to focus upon only one city. A more readable and approachable style might help readers engage with the more complicated arguments of the book.

As a study on the economic, political, and social developments of port cities in colonial America, this book is quite useful, especially when it comes to discussion of the laboring class. The economic analysis alone, drawn from quantitative research, is excellent in itself. Although it was written over thirty years ago, much of Nash’s research is still relevant and useful today. Nevertheless, because so much focus is given to the development of class consciousness and struggle, and because Nash argues that this struggle was a major source of the American Revolution, this work comes up short. Nash’s arguments dealing with class just have too many contradictions. This book, however, would be an excellent source to consult for anyone studying the economics of the colonial America during the eighteenth century, as well as on studies of the lower classes of colonial society. It is his insistence on trying to establish class conflict and ideology at a time when, as he argues himself, such notions had not been developed that detracts from the book. Beyond these broader contradictions and flaws, The Urban Crucible is a quality work on an important topic that deserves more attention from historians.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapters include "The Web of Seaport Life," "The Port Towns in and Era of War," "Urban Change in an Era of Peace," "War, Religious Revival, and Politics," "The Seven Years' War and Its Aftermath," "The Stamp Act" and "The Onset of Revolution"

The following notes are from the collection "Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America" by Gary B. Nash in Stanley N. Katz and John M. Murrin, eds., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, 4th ed. (New York, 1991).

"Historians of the national period have generally portrayed the colonial era as a time of peace and plenty, a golden age against which the conflict and competition of the nineteenth century could be measured. In part, of course, this assumes an American Revolution that was a war of independence from Great Britain, rather than a domestic social conflict. Indeed, one might argue that a comparable notion of declension from consensual, communitarian behavior to conflictual, individualist behavior has ~ been used to describe every transition in American history; seventeenth to eighteenth, eighteenth to nineteenth, nineteenth to twentieth. It is predictable that historians of the mid-twenty-first century will describe our own era in comparatively idealistic terms. But was it ever so?

This is the question raised by Gary Nash in his study of the distribution of wealth in eighteenth-century American cities. Nash finds a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth over the course of the century and a corresponding increase in indices of poverty. Cities like Boston, New York, and hiladelphia are transformed from communities in which economic opportunity was widely available and economic mobility quite general to communities in which the rich (though fewer) grew richer and the poor (though more numerous) grew poorer, in a context of declining opportl;Jnity for the impoverished. By the end of the colonial period, a startling contrast characterizes urban life - an existence of ostentatious luxury for the few and of abject want for quite a few.

Why should this have been so in an age where it is arguable that general levels of economic prosperity were slowly on the rise? Nash believes that the dislocating effects of economic development in the Atlantic economy has a highly differentiated impact upon disparate sectors of the urban population. For one thing, decreasing availability of nearby arable land forced laborers into the city rather than into nearby rural communities; for another, the
cycle of wartime boom and peacetime recession contorted "normal" economic behavior. The eighteenth-century cycle of war and peace (a phenomenon ignored by too many colonial historians) thus had a particularly transforming impact upon urban life and created conditions under which the underclasses might well have nourished resentment against an elite that had fattened itself on imperial trading privileges.

Nash thus describes the era following the Seven Years' War as one of radically diminished expectations for much of urban America. If he is correct in his analysis of urban poverty (and he admits that his conclusions are necessarily speculative), what can we conclude about the large majority of colonial Americans who lived farms, plantations, in villages and on the frontier? What meaning did urban poverty have for them? Where they relatively insulated from the cyclical effects of the Atlantic economy? Or, to put the matter in a very different way, did colonials have egalitarian aspirations; were they less deferential in their expectations than in their behavior? What, in other words, can we infer from demonstrations of economic inequality? Is this the point at which the historian must return to the literary sources Nash rejects at the beginning of his article?"

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engrossing comparative history of colonial America's three great seaports, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, detailing their experiences during war and peace from 1690 to 1776. The information Gary Nash provides is sometimes overwhelming, but he does an impressive job of showing (or, in cases without thorough documentation, suggesting) how economics affected politics and religion. Instead of arguing, like Bernard Bailyn, that radical English political theory created a climate of rebellion, Nash posits that class concerns created a culture in which colonists were willing to take matters into their own hands to improve their lives. Nash does describe the gradual creation of a politics ripe for the American Revolution, but his narrative lacks the inevitability of Bailyn's (or Gordon Wood's in "The Radicalism of the American Revolution"), and that is an admirable innovation. This book pairs well with Edward Countryman's "The American Revolution," another book detailing interest group politics and class disputes in the Thirteen Colonies.

[Lyle Probert · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounding up for good reads. It’s difficult today to appreciate the impact on historiography this must have had m, looking at the lead up to the revolution (starting in the 1690s) and the development of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and the economic and social changes that occurred and how this impacted the revolution. I particularly liked the chapter on the Great Awakening, something I was not familiar with, and its impact on these cities. My only real criticism is that by taking the comparative approach it can occasionally read a little choppy and it was sometimes hard to appreciate the changes over time in individual cities over multiple periods. Additionally it lacked some of the personal touches and accounts which could have brought the participants to life. However on the whole it was an enjoyable and thorough examination into a neglected aspect of American history and I feel I now have a greater knowledge of this period.

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a 1979 edition of this book that was titled: The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution.

This is densely researched and fully explored comparative history of the economic, social, and political environments in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Hint: there was more well-informed “mob” action than you have read about in other histories.

The early colonial experiences of the three principal seaport towns are vividly contrasted and authoritatively explained. Nash digs deep and deeper into a wide range of primary sources. The sins and the heroics of the leadership elite and the “leather apron” artisans and the anonymous working poor are examined in profoundly realistic historical context.

You can’t read The Urban Crucible and not learn a lot.

[Izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeah I'll give it three stars. I didn't read the whole thing, only chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6, and the the last few paragraphs. Give me a break school is hard. It felt repetitive by the end. Nash basically articulates and re articulates that people's political leanings are shaped by both their position in society and broad economic factors. He did a good job at research, and I did like that for every event discussed, much attention was paid to the differences and similarities between NY, Boston, and Philly. I'm curious to see what other people have to say about this book. What is there to say? Is this not, kind of, an obvious analysis?

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was useful, and I certainly learned a bunch, but I found it rather dry, and I thought he was sometimes drawing unjustified conclusions to fit complicated events into a rather simplistic analytical framework. I read the abridged version, and wish I had read the unabridged as I would have appreciated the historiographical elements which were apparently cut.

[John Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book on Boston, NYC, Philadelphia from 1689-1776. Could have cut 40 pages, made it a clean 200 and not lost anything. Read for a CUNY class.

[Andrew Fischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as an economic, social, and political history of pre-revolutionary colonial seaports go, this wasn’t half bad

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing look at how economic conditions in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia deteriorated in the decades leading up to the revolution, and how lower-class anger at the situation was directed away from local merchants and towards the British, eventually leading to the conflagration.

There are lots of worthwhile revelations here, but two particulars aspects of colonial urban life surprised me: the importance of paper money and the debate over welfare.

Paper money was issued periodically by all colonial governments in this era, usually to pay for one of the numberless 18th century colonial wars, such as King William's War, Queen Anne's War, and King George's War. Boston in particular was inundated with thousands of pounds of paper money, because it, more than any other city, was fired with a Puritan spirit of "anti-popery," directed against the hated Catholic Canadians, and so Bostonians enlisted, fought, and died in unprecedented numbers (their deaths sometimes reached over 5% of the male population, even the casualties in the American Civil War wouldn't reach this level). Supporting all these troops (and their widows) required reams of cash money. At one particularly desperate point in 1714 a public bank under management of the Mass. General Court was even set up to print money and give loans (a kind of mini-Federal Reserve, almost exactly 200 years early!).

This paper money later became a way to make up for the lack of specie in the colonies and to reward the poor by allowing them to pay back debts in depreciated currency. Of course inflation became rampant, and the rich consistently blamed the poor for indulging in British luxuries, which caused hard currency to flee back to the homeland, therefore facilitating more dependence on paper and more inflation. The UK, listening to the pleas of the rich loaners, even tried to retire all Massachusetts paper money by 1741, and soon Boston became torn asunder by debates over creating a private Land Bank or a private Silver Bank to loan out cash on these respective collaterals (Samuel Adams's dad was ruined in the land bank scheme, leading to his hatred of the rich and his eventual involvement in politics). The Currency Act in 1764 banned Pennsylvania and New York from using paper money, causing much hardship and resentment among the poor there as well. Throughout the 18th century the debate on paper money was central to American politics, and to the colonial relationship.

The other central urban political issue of the age was how to deal with urban poverty. From the beginning, these cities elected or appointed overseers of the poor who established "poor rates" to both give food and clothing "out-relief" to the deserving poor, and to create centralized "almhouses" for the homeless poor (the first almshouse was built in Boston as early as 1685, but it was filled by 1730). At first the tax rates were minimal (New York spent as little as 20 pounds a year for the whole city on the poor), but continual wars led to mass widowhood, (especially in militant Boston), and supporting these widows became one of the main functions of urban government. Numberless schemes to reduce this burden were attempted. In 1735 a workhouse was created on Boston common to employ the widows in picking oakum, weaving cloth, and making shoes to defer some of the cost of their support (it never made money). Benjamin Franklin helped establish the "Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor" with the hope that these could be returned to work and kept of the public dole (he understood the politics: those released were required to sign statements celebrating the "the benefit they have received in this hospital to be either published or otherwise disposed of.") Non-profit groups like the wonderfully-named "Society for Encouraging Industry and the Employment of the Poor" and the "Bettering House" were designed to take poor women away from their families and employ them making (usually unsalable) linen. In 1750 Boston even appealed to the General Court for tax relief, explaining that it had to deal with more of the poor than the rest of the colony (sound familiar? Its modern tin-cup urbanism!).

As usual Boston was the worse hit by this poverty, and its high poor rate tax led more and more people to flee to low tax Philly and New York, so that the population of the once biggest city in the colonies peaked at only 17,000 in 1740, and declined slightly thereafter. This economic decline helps explain why Boston was so receptive to the preaching of that first evangelical George Whitfield in 1740, and why they also were most adamant about attacking the British in the 1770s. This economic and political background to the revolution has been previously understudied, but this book does a good job of bringing it to light.

[Mark Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. Summary: This book examines the changes in three urban, Colonial cities; Boston, Philadelphia, and New York from 1690 to 1776. The great changes during this period include;
1. Barter to commercial economy
2. Cooperative to competitive social order
3. Deferential to participatory political life
4. Artesianal to factory production
5. Sidereal to clock time
6. This book argues that America in this period of historical change a class consciousness developed. It came to mean an economic grouping or ordering.
7. The Marxist dictum that the mode of production determined the nature of class relations has little value here
B. Growth and War (1690-1740)
1. Seaport life: Water dominated the towns as they became the crossroads of maritime transport and a point of entry for immigrants. Social classes were ordered from slaves-indentured servants-unskilled laborers-artisans-professionals
2. Urban polity: This existed to keep order, promote harmony, and protect citizens of their rights. Many were excluded from political participation (slaves, women, propertyless)
3. Seaport economies in war: King William and Queen Anne’s War (1689-1713) transformed the character of urban life
4. Popular politics rises: In Philadelphia this occurs due to opposition to the Proprietor William Penn. In Boston due to disillusionment with royal authority. In NY due to the increase in Whig Republicanism
5. Urban economies at peace (1720-40): Peace disrupted the economies as much as war. Population increase, disease, immigration.
C. Conflict and Revolution (1740-1776)
1. Renewal of war and the decline of Boston: Caused by war and the problems of production
2. Great Awakening: Each town at mid-century had a religious revival. This helped give rise to individualism and democratic beliefs
3. Seven Years War: Prosperity and poverty was the result of driving the French out of N. America. American colonies became convinced of their own strength but were left debt ridden and weakened.
4. Factional politics intensify: 1760 depression. Laboring poor enter politics
5. Stamp Act, brief respite, Townshend Acts, and then the Revolution

[David Bates · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary B. Nash’s 1979 book argues that cities are a society’s leading edge in meeting the future, and examines colonial Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Covering the crowds of thousands and tens of thousands drawn in Boston by George Whitefield’s 1740 arrival, he interpreted the ensuing religious enthusiasm as giving vent to lower class anger during hard economic times. When Gilbert Tennent replaced Whitefield as the center of the Boston Awakening the preaching became even more intensely “infused with a radical egalitarianism. “ As the social content of the evangelists’ message became more explicit with passing months, “support from the upper and middle levels of Boston society fell away” but in the breakdown of hierarchy within the public sphere the city’s financially hard pressed artisans and underclass laborers gained some understanding of the democratic potential of their own will as a force for the public good.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

He made a really good argument, but then he made it again, and again, and again... so, it got tiresome. HOWEVER those first 3 or 4 chapters are really worth reading.

[Justin Salisbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

This gives you a clearer look into one aspect of the Origins of the Revolution, but still suffers from the Blahs that most books that were published from dissertations