american revolutions a continental history

This picture-of a divided American society, of continuous and widespread violence, and of fierce disagreements over policies-does not break new interpretive ground. He gives Natives, blacks, women, and the lower classes of white men appropriate and sustained attention, and in the process highlights the hypocrisy of revolutionary elites who professed equal rights but denied them to many. Lawrence, shaped the policies of Great Britain, France, Spain, and the United States.

He also shows how those living in the interior regions, from the watersheds of the Mississippi River to the Ohio and St. He sharpens his analysis by comparing the mainland American colonies to other British possessions in Canada and the Caribbean. Taylor does not just concentrate, as other works do, on 'the national story of the United States, particularly the political development of republican institutions,' but effectively, imaginatively, consistently, and convincingly incorporates other issues, peoples, and places. It also takes issue with popular works that depict 'a united and heroic American people rise up against unnatural foreign domination by Britons, cast as snooty villains' (4). He claims that his approach 'breaks with an older view of colonial America as limited to the Atlantic coast and almost entirely British in culture' (7) and differs from interpretations that see the American Revolution as 'good, orderly, restrained, and successful when contrasted against the excesses of the French and Russian revolutions' (3). Taylor uses the plural 'Revolutions' in his title because his book 'emphasizes the multiple and clashing visions of revolution pursued by the diverse American peoples of the continent,' in contrast with other books that 'suggest a singular purpose and vision to the conflict and its legacy' (8). Any PHA member-public historians, researchers, writers, teachers, and students-will gain much from reading this book. This wide-ranging synthesis draws upon a vast number of secondary sources (both recent and time-honored), mixes in plenty of primary sources, and explains cogently and engagingly how the United States attained its independence and struggled during its initial decades.

More broadly, Taylor places Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region within the larger contexts of the eighteenth century, North America, and the empires of Britain, France, and Spain. Members of the PHA will find Taylor's analysis of Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region intelligent and balanced, albeit spotty (as one might expect from a book that provides a 'continental' perspective).

Alan Taylor, distinguished historian of colonial North America, the American Revolution, and the Early Republic, whose books have won the Bancroft Prize, two Pulitzer Prizes, and best book prizes from the AHA, OAH, and SHEAR, has now given us American Revolutions.

American revolutions a continental history