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A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > American Revolution > Item 43
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A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence
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by Ray Raphael
Sales Rank: 65114
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List Price: $13.95
$11.16
At Amazon
on 9-11-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 528 pages
Published by: Harper Perennial June 18, 2002
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0060004401
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060004408
Book Dimensions:
7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 15.2 ounces
Reader Reviews
This review is from: A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence (New Press People's History Series) (Hardcover)
This is the first in a series of a books guided by renowned left-wing historian Howard Zinn which seek to tell the people's history of the various eras of American History. And there is a real need for a synthesis of left-wing scholarship on the American Revolution to contrast with the excessively military focus of Robert Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause, and Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution. This book, unfortunately, is not it. It has little original research, largely consisting of a few contemporary newspapers, and it is heavily reliant on a few works of scholarship. More important, the focus is limited. That Raphael did not feel the need to provide a narrative of the American Revolution from the Stamp Act Crisis to the ratification of the American Constitution is his privilege. Instead, he has separate chapters on rebels, soldiers, women, loyalists and pacifists, Native Americans and African Americans. We have many anecdotes of the difficult struggles these people had, and it is noteworthy that Raphael emphasizes female passivity and unenthusiasm and provides a sympathetic picture of the loyalist and pacifist minority. I think the one useful thing I learned from this book was that John Adams' oft-cited quotation that a third of Americans were pro-revolution, a third were against it and a third were neutral was not made about the American Revolution, but the French one. But there is a lack of real analysis. Many of the anecdotes go on and on, giving the book a cut and paste feel. Moreover there is the rather bland populism of the conclusion ("The people of the Revolution had become players." The rather bland and pompous liturgy on p. 301 starting "People make history, complex human beings from varying circumstances who pull together, drive apart, and interact in countless ways.") It reminds of what is missing in this account. There is no real discussion of the Revolution's origins, nor is there much on the economy. There is no engagement with Michael Merrill's argument that the American colonies were not really capitalist at all, nor with Timothy Breen's theory that the revolution marked the triumph of a consumerist revolution. What were the living standards of the people before the revolution, or after it? How did they live? What was the economic impact of the Revolution? There is little or nothing on ideology. The whole question of republicanism and the sprouting of democratic theory, the concurrent rise of abolitionism and an explicitly racist logic to slavery, there is no clear discussion of these issues. There is scandalously little on religion. The largest discussion deals with the pacifist sects whose opposition to war put them in conflict with the revolutionary authorities. But once again there is nothing on popular religiosity and popular indifference. While there is much on struggle and conflict, there is little on politics, on political organization or such political questions as civil liberties. Finally, there is not enough on the consequences of the revolution. Was the revolution ultimately conservative? Was the revolution sui generis, or part of an unfolding modernity? Was it comparable to the French Revolution or was it fundamentally dissimilar? Again, Raphael provides no answers and we have to ask ourselves whether this series of People's History is going to collapse into a sentimental populism.
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A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence
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