The Radicalism of the American Revolution

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Summary: Authorotative
Review: There are no details left unexamined, or unexplained!

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Summary: An Excellent, Occassionally Inspiring, Work
Review: There isn't much else to add, with what has already been commented on here. "Radicalism" is an exceedingly well-written book that counters, for non-specialists, the bloodletting that was high school American History (perhaps the most violent consequence of our Revolution:), while respecting its reader enough to be academically complex.

Wood's main achievement is writing human experience into a subject that is somewhat unavoidably distant; and the truths he focuses on are so startling at some points that they are belied by their own subtlety and the book's overall, otherwise learned, style.

The exclusion on the author's part that perhaps leads to the most confusion is that of the clarification of overlapping social patterns. For the most part, it takes a close and continuous reading to follow Wood's resolution of contradictory practices; connections which he seams brilliantly, but are not terribly overt in themselves.

Following this, Wood's Revolution is very loosely limited to its official dates, and one gets the sense in reading this (and all of his books) that he would be more comfortable defining the Revolution as the hundred year period between the mid-1760's and the Civil War.

At times Wood is pedantic where he could be more straightforward, and poetic where outlining would suffice; but this is the risk of all authors that have a personal investment in their work and, for the most part, Wood succeeds in his greatly.



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Summary: I thought this book was AWESOME!!! The most incredible book
Review: This book kicks a$$. I would strongly recommend buying this book. Yeah baby.

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Summary: Radicalism
Review: This book sets the sociological context in which all other period information must be understood. An absolute must read for fans, scholars and educators.

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Summary: Go Back to the SOURCES
Review: THIS BOOK WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT> It used mostly secondary sources, which were eclectically selected, and ignored all of the secondary literature about women in the Revolution, including Kerber, Norton, and Hoff, among others. To choose The World of John Cleaveland (a great book but about a little town in Massachusetts) as your community study that proves all sorts of economic theses, etc. and ignore Women of the Republic is not only peculiar; it is irresponsible. There was no fresh research and although it was well written, it was no Creation of the American Republic.

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Summary: How the American Nation Was Created
Review: This is essential reading for any student of the revolution. Essentially, it explains the origins of the idea of American exceptionalism--how we came to be a nation radically different from any that had come before. It is scholarship at its best, and is particularly well written. Moreover, it succeeds where other accounts don't by telling the complete story of the revolution. Whereas Bernard Bailyn's Ideologicial Origins of the American Revolution, though excellent, may dwell too much on the intellectual currents at the time, or other studies may seem to be little more than accounts of battles, backcountry revolts, this book incorporates specific facts of social life and shows how they shaped ideas. Two criticisms: First, as a scholarly work, it is hardly evocative. Second, the tendency for Wood to want to draw a clear "before and after" picture of an unmistakable break with the past tend to makes me think that he chooses to ignore "democratic" or Whig forces in America prior to 1760, while over-emphasizing them later to paint a picture of radical change.

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Summary: The "Big Picture" of the American Revolution
Review: When I finished reading this superb thesis, I considered it to be the best synthesis of the issues relating to America's transformation from paternal colonialism to egalitarian democracy I had read to date. Wood argues successfully that the American Revolution is an often neglected event in world (eurocentric) history that deserves a place among the French, Russian, and Industrial Revolutions. Then, after digging through my other colonial history books I discovered something: Wood cheats. Well, not really, but he exaggerates. In order to emphasize his thesis, he needs to offer a "before and after" picture of America that is quite wide. He does this by presenting a somewhat incomplete or "biased" view of the North American colonies before the Revolution. He frequently makes reference to the insignificance of the colonial cities, economy, aristocracy, institutions, etc... when compared to the mother country. While such a comparison may lead to obvious conclusions, it presents an artificially diminished view of the colonial society and institutions when considered independently. True, Philadelphia is not, as was not, comparable to London, but that in no way diminishes its contribution to world history. If the colonies were so insignificant, why assemble an army across an ocean to maintain possession? Hofstadter presents a much more objective portrait of colonial conditions.

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Summary: An essential work for understanding the American Revolution
Review: Wood argues that the American Revolution was essentially a revolution in prosperity. The revolution spurred the penetration of networks of commerce deep among the population. The traditional ties of monarchical patronage and dependence were severed. A new egalitarian society was born

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Summary: not so radical
Review: Wood depicts the changing early colonial setting very precisely; at first the society was structured around hierarchy and personal relationships that grew to an unrestrictive culture based on contact. Wood makes it clear in his chapter on patronage that the early colonies essentially had no other option than to operate on a personal relationship basis. With no paper currency and a small population, everyone kept "book accounts" of the debts they owed each other. "Such credits and debts... worked to tie local people together and to define and stabilize communal relationships" (p. 68). He does not immediately attribute this to the exponential growth of the New World at the time, which was a major cause for the change in the colonies and eventually forced the Revolution to occur.
But of course this was coming apart before the Revolution, simply as a result of population growth. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the colonists had accepted paper money (p. 141); they needed it because they had "expanded their inland trade" (p. 140) -- i.e., they were no longer just dealing with their neighbors. These developments, Wood even notes, "suggest the various ways in which ordinary people ... were becoming more independent and more free of traditional patron-client relationships" (p. 142). What Wood fails to convincingly express is if the American Revolution, the war and the restructuring of the government afterward, was either fought with the intentions of bringing about this societal change or at least a considerable catalyst in accelerating the change.
Wood clearly exaggerates the degree to which the colonies, just prior to the Revolution, were hierarchical and conservative cultures. Some of the evidence he tried to use to back up this point is impractical: the predominance of Christian churches doesn't necessarily indicate a hierarchy regardless of whether they preach Romans 13 (p. 18) neither does the existence of a hierarchical military, vagrancy legislation (p. 20), or the use of titles like "Esq." (p.21). By Wood's standards we would still be a hierarchical culture today since we still partake in these phoneme.
Frequently Wood presents evidence of great freedom and egalitarianism in the colonies, but contradicts his point with an irrelevant conclusion. On page 14, for instance, we read, "Englishmen on both sides of the Atlantic bragged of their independence." Most American farmers "owned their own land" and continentals viewed English farmers as outrageously independent, but in the next breath he writes the opposite in saying, "most colonists, like most Englishmen at home, were never as free as they made themselves out to be."
The Radicalism of the American Revolution also contains many unrelated quotes. George Washington's quote calling ordinary farmers "the grazing multitude" (p. 27) comes out of context and loses meaning without any support as well as the John Adams quote, "Common Persons... have no idea [of] Learning, Eloquence and Genius" (p.27). For that matter, Washington's own career is later described as "incomprehensible except in terms of...new, enlightened standards of gentility" (p. 197) Wood doesn't take the time to explain which of the two points he means, either Washington was an aristocrat or an up-and-comer in an era that did not respect blood, but couldn't have been both.
Some of Wood's stories are contradictory and of little value as evidence to prove his point. For example, Old George Hewes is said to tremble in the presence of Squire John Hancock because "people in lowly stations ... were apt to be filled with consternation and awe when confronted with 'what were called gentle folks... beings of a superior order'" (p. 29). But Hancock was born poor, and became rich by inheriting the mercantile empire of his uncle. On page 37, Wood tells us that merchants, even "prominent merchants dealing in international trade", such as Hancock surely was, were not gentlemen: their "status" was "tainted". So Old George Hewes was no doubt overcome, not because Hancock was an aristocrat, but because he was a rich and famous man. This is an obvious indication that pre-Revolution America was already moving towards its Jacksonian destination, and not, as Wood intended, evidence of the importance of status.
Societal change due to economic growth continued after the Revolution including swarms of westward-moving immigrants (p. 310), increasing urbanization and industrialization (p. 312), banks (p. 316), etc., all having "corrosive effects on what remained of the traditional patronage and hierarchical confidences between men in the society" (p. 340). So it's hard not to conclude that the radical changes chronicles by Wood were the result of simple population growth, and neither the goal nor, principally, the outcome of the Revolution. Wood himself indicates several times that the changes in American society were due to economics and demographics, and to processes which began before the Revolution as he does on page 109 when he says, "The Americans did not have to invent republicanism in 1776; they only had to bring it to the surface. It was there all along."
Finally, Wood notes that the Founders were shocked by the society in which they died. "This democratic society was not the society the revolutionary leaders had wanted or expected. No wonder, then, those those of them who lived on into the early decades of the nineteenth century expressed anxiety over what they had wrought... All the major revolutionary leaders died less than happy..." (p. 365). So even if you accept the thesis that Jacksonian America was the result of the Revolution, it was, on Wood's own evidence, not the objective. But ignoring Wood's arguments and reading his evidence, it looks to me like the radical changes in American society were neither the goal of the Revolution nor its outcome.

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Summary: Great Historiographical Content
Review: Wood in this book set forth a new and fresh view of the American Revolution. He in no unsimple terms challenges American's View of the Founding Fathers. He points out simply that they like all other reloutionary leaders were radical. They were not the ultra conservaties that we imagine today but rebels in the closet. He adds a new level to the understanding of the American Revolution.