The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought by Barry Alan Shain (review)

288 BOOK REVIEWS Indians to large-scale commercial agriculture. Jackson and Castillo argue that both acculturation and the production of agricultural surpluses were present throughout the mission period. Indeed this was part of the original plan for the extension of Spanish control to Alta California: The missionaries were obligated to provide surplus agricultural products to the supporting military garrisons to help defray the costs of colonization. The chapter on"Resistance and Social Control in theAlta California Missions" is a hard-hitting blow to mission apologists. In wrenching detail, the authors trace the evolution of resistance by the California Indians to missionization. Early resistance was led by traditional village chiefs and shamans; later resistance leaders came from the ranks of mission neophytes. Active resistance included the poisoning and murdering of priests; passive resistance included flight, work slow-downs, and maintaining a "wall of silence" to protect traditional beliefs. Floggings, stocks, shackles, and other forms of public humiliation were used by the Spanish missionaries to break the resistance and prepare the Indians for their place in the new colonial order. The account of the California missions offered here stands in stark contrast to what is found in the works ofsuch historians as Harry Kelsey and Doyce Nunis, historians damned by Castillo and Jackson as representing "an older, eurocentric and triumphal view of the experience of California Indians in the missions" (p. 85). It remains for the reader to find the truth. James J. Rawls Diablo Valley College Pleasant Hill, California The Myth ofAmerican Individualism: The Protestant Origins ofAmerican Political Thought. By Barry Alan Shain. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994. Pp. xix, 394. $39.50.) With this tightly organized, carefully argued study, Barry Alan Shain makes a major contribution to the contemporary debate over the political ideology of the American Revolutionary era. In recent decades, the hitherto accepted perspective that the revolutionary generation was committed to liberal individualism has come under assault from revisionists who insist that the concept of republicanism better explains the political theory of late eighteenth-century Americans. Shain, a political scientist teaching at Colgate, offers an alternative interpretation. Basing his work on an extensive reading of primary materials, particularly New England election sermons, as well as virtually all the important secondary sources, he argues that reformed Protestant thought and a strong communitarian thrust defined the Revolutionary generation's values and ideas. While finding his thesis congruent with the presence of both republicanism and early modern rationalism, Shain systematically demolishes the argument for BOOK REVIEWS 289 individualism by exploring in depth two concepts central to the Revolution. The first of these, the public or common good, was privileged by republicanism , rationalism, and reformed Protestantism over any appeal to the private needs of individuals. In fact, the autonomous self was viewed as sinful and hence to be distrusted. Autonomy belonged not to individuals, but to communities and families; and communal concerns and values drove the politics of the Revolutionary era. Staunchly majoritarian, localism then and afterwards could be abusive of minorities and intolerant of what was regarded as deviant behavior . Those like the Loyalists who balked at the community consensus had few alternatives to leaving. The second portion of the book examines the various meanings of liberty. Shain locates eight, only one of which was related to individualism. The most basic was spiritual liberty, the capacity to respond voluntarily to "a life of righteousness " (p. 193) within a situation heavily influenced by original sin. What a person might consider liberty today—the freedom to do whatever one wishes—the Revolutionary generation regarded as license. True liberty meant possessing sufficient control over oneself to choose the virtuous course of action ,"the freedom to act in rationally or religiously responsible ways" (p. 201). Personal liberty was not individual autonomy but what Shain calls "familial independence " f. 179), the ownership of sufficient property to avoid social, political , or economic subservience to others. Even ownership of private property, however, was not an absolute value, but was meant to serve society and the public good. The revolutionary generation regarded only two rights as inalienable: freedom of conscience and political liberty , the ability of a community to self-government. The final chapter illustrates the communal character of...