Post by robeiae on May 8, 2017 9:55:04 GMT -5
Witness this piece at The New Yorker (long, sorry): WE COULD HAVE BEEN CANADA
It opens with this:
And from a bit farther on:
Reading the piece, one might get the idea that "national myth" of the American Revolution has only recently been challenged. True enough, the author pays lip service to Gordon Wood at one moment (I'll try not to go all Good Will Hunting in this thread), but beyond that he seems to imagine a consensus view of the Revolution among historians which simple does not exist, has never existed (well, maybe for a brief moment in the 1800's).
Much of the piece is pulling from two new books (alluded to in the opening): Revolution Against Empire by Justin du Rivage and Scars of Independence by Holger Hoock.
The summary of the first:
The summary of the second:
You know, I'm reading these summaries and thinking "there's nothing new here; who didn't know this stuff?" The history of the revolution hasn't been whitewashed to this extent, apart from in grade schools. I learned of the brutality therein in middle school, high school, and college. And as to the Revolution having geo-political linkages, again that's pretty common stuff, by my recollection. Ultimately, it's why it succeeded, because England was limited by other concerns. Everyone knows that, right?
And I'm not saying these two books are no good. They look very good, in fact. Rather, I'm suggesting that the author of the New Yorker piece is imagining shit, is using two scholarly treatises to create a deeply flawed and ultimately silly thought experiment: "we could have been Canada."
No we couldn't.
Moreover, this line in his intro bugs the shit out of me:
It would seem he thinks that he is capturing du Rivage's point of view here, but from what I've read about du Rivage's book, he's completely wrong. And from what I know about this period, he's completely clueless. The impetus for the Revolution was not "slaveholders' panic" in the least. The slaveholders were dependent on the Crown, by and large. They didn't really want independence and they certainly didn't want war (with the obvious exceptions). The Revolutionary War was conceived in the North. Again, don't we all know this?
There are many other blatant errors in the piece, apart from this. Like here:
As written, the above is simply not true. It may be true if "the makers of the Revolution" is carefully defined as--for instance--the signatories to the DoI. But that's a pretty limited group. Key figures--in the moment--died fighting, starting as early as Bunker Hill. Really, the above is an inexcusable error, imo.
Moreover, the reality is that many of those "who made the Civil War" never picked up a gun or put on a uniform. Some did, to be sure, but many didn't, especially in the South. Instead, they had others conscripted to do the fighting (which is why there were so many Southern casualties from NC and VA, few of whom had ever owned slaves).
God, I hate bad history.
But beyond that, does it make any sense?
It opens with this:
And what if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them? The Revolution, this argument might run, was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders’ panic mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and demagogy. Look north to Canada, or south to Australia, and you will see different possibilities of peaceful evolution away from Britain, toward sane and whole, more equitable and less sanguinary countries. No revolution, and slavery might have ended, as it did elsewhere in the British Empire, more peacefully and sooner. No “peculiar institution,” no hideous Civil War and appalling aftermath. Instead, an orderly development of the interior—less violent, and less inclined to celebrate the desperado over the peaceful peasant. We could have ended with a social-democratic commonwealth that stretched from north to south, a near-continent-wide Canada.
Academic histories of the Revolution, though, have been peeping over the parapets, joining scholarly scruples to contemporary polemic. One new take insists that we misunderstand the Revolution if we make what was an intramural and fratricidal battle of ideas in the English-speaking Empire look like a modern colonial rebellion. Another insists that the Revolution was a piece of great-power politics, fought in unimaginably brutal terms, and no more connected to ideas or principles than any other piece of great-power politics: America was essentially a Third World country that became the battlefield for two First World powers. Stirred into the larger pot of recent revisionism, these arguments leave us with a big question: was it really worth it, and are we better off for its having happened? In plain American, is Donald Trump a bug or a feature of the American heritage?
Much of the piece is pulling from two new books (alluded to in the opening): Revolution Against Empire by Justin du Rivage and Scars of Independence by Holger Hoock.
The summary of the first:
Revolution Against Empire sets the story of American independence within a long and fierce clash over the political and economic future of the British Empire. Justin du Rivage traces this decades-long debate, which pitted neighbors and countrymen against one another, from the War of Austrian Succession to the end of the American Revolution.
As people from Boston to Bengal grappled with the growing burdens of imperial rivalry and fantastically expensive warfare, some argued that austerity and new colonial revenue were urgently needed to rescue Britain from unsustainable taxes and debts. Others insisted that Britain ought to treat its colonies as relative equals and promote their prosperity. Drawing from archival research in the United States, Britain, and France, this book shows how disputes over taxation, public debt, and inequality sparked the American Revolution—and reshaped the British Empire.
As people from Boston to Bengal grappled with the growing burdens of imperial rivalry and fantastically expensive warfare, some argued that austerity and new colonial revenue were urgently needed to rescue Britain from unsustainable taxes and debts. Others insisted that Britain ought to treat its colonies as relative equals and promote their prosperity. Drawing from archival research in the United States, Britain, and France, this book shows how disputes over taxation, public debt, and inequality sparked the American Revolution—and reshaped the British Empire.
The summary of the second:
The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It’s a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’s founding, the Revolution was not only a high-minded battle over principles, but also a profoundly violent civil war—one that shaped the nation, and the British Empire, in ways we have only begun to understand.
In Scars of Independence, Hoock writes the violence back into the story of the Revolution. American Patriots persecuted and tortured Loyalists. British troops massacred enemy soldiers and raped colonial women. Prisoners were starved on disease-ridden ships and in subterranean cells. African-Americans fighting for or against independence suffered disproportionately, and Washington’s army waged a genocidal campaign against the Iroquois. In vivid, authoritative prose, Hoock’s new reckoning also examines the moral dilemmas posed by this all-pervasive violence, as the British found themselves torn between unlimited war and restraint toward fellow subjects, while the Patriots documented war crimes in an ingenious effort to unify the fledgling nation.
For two centuries we have whitewashed this history of the Revolution. Scars of Independence forces a more honest appraisal, revealing the inherent tensions between moral purpose and violent tendencies in America’s past. In so doing, it offers a new origins story that is both relevant and necessary—an important reminder that forging a nation is rarely bloodless.
In Scars of Independence, Hoock writes the violence back into the story of the Revolution. American Patriots persecuted and tortured Loyalists. British troops massacred enemy soldiers and raped colonial women. Prisoners were starved on disease-ridden ships and in subterranean cells. African-Americans fighting for or against independence suffered disproportionately, and Washington’s army waged a genocidal campaign against the Iroquois. In vivid, authoritative prose, Hoock’s new reckoning also examines the moral dilemmas posed by this all-pervasive violence, as the British found themselves torn between unlimited war and restraint toward fellow subjects, while the Patriots documented war crimes in an ingenious effort to unify the fledgling nation.
For two centuries we have whitewashed this history of the Revolution. Scars of Independence forces a more honest appraisal, revealing the inherent tensions between moral purpose and violent tendencies in America’s past. In so doing, it offers a new origins story that is both relevant and necessary—an important reminder that forging a nation is rarely bloodless.
And I'm not saying these two books are no good. They look very good, in fact. Rather, I'm suggesting that the author of the New Yorker piece is imagining shit, is using two scholarly treatises to create a deeply flawed and ultimately silly thought experiment: "we could have been Canada."
No we couldn't.
Moreover, this line in his intro bugs the shit out of me:
The Revolution, this argument might run, was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders’ panic mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and demagogy.
There are many other blatant errors in the piece, apart from this. Like here:
One reason, too easily overlooked, is that, while many of those who made the Civil War were killed during it, including the Union Commander-in-Chief, none of the makers of the Revolution died fighting in it.
Moreover, the reality is that many of those "who made the Civil War" never picked up a gun or put on a uniform. Some did, to be sure, but many didn't, especially in the South. Instead, they had others conscripted to do the fighting (which is why there were so many Southern casualties from NC and VA, few of whom had ever owned slaves).
God, I hate bad history.
But beyond that, does it make any sense?
It's yummy but a little goes a long way if you're not used to eating heavy.