The Americas in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1850 by Lester D. Langley (review)

Book Reviews 151 gations and underestimates the opposition and individuality which routinely manifested itself in the good old Calvinist tradition of church schism. The final chapter of the book, entitled "The Moral Context of Migration," attempts to put the moral and religious issues in a larger perspective. The discussion is far ranging, comprehensive, and insightful. However, I was struck by Knowles's tendency to argue that the ideal had a much greater influence on Welsh Calvinist immigrant decisions than the reality which surrounded them. Rather, her evidence suggests that decisions were more often pragmatic than not. Given the conservative peasant background of the immigrants, which above all stresses "survival," some workable solution was usually found to justify activities which might initially be regarded as beyond the religious pale. After all, members excommunicated for engaging in Sunday labour in London eventually found themselves back in the church, and the community which had, in part, fled from the "mammon" of industry in Wales, eventually embraced it in the United States. Concerns about the cultural consequences of prosperity, while a matter of earnest discussion and soul searching, did not seem to greatly inhibit the immigrants from seeking to achieve it. The Welsh Calvinist immigrant's experience with capitalism in Ohio was not dissimilar to that of the Dutch Calvinist immigrants in Michigan in the 1850s or the neo-Calvinist immigrants in Canada in the 1950s. Like it or not, the "saints" were forced to deal with the real, not the ideal world and survival often dictated a path that was not always straight and narrow. That being said, Calvinism Incorporated, is an informative and stimulating examination of the connections between economy and culture in an American immigrant community and well worth a careful study. Herman Ganzevoort University of Calgary Lester D. Langley. The Americas in the Age of Revolution, .1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi+ 374, maps, notes, and index. The bicentennials of the American (1976) and Haitian (1991) revolutions are now well behind us and there is just over a decade before the SpanishAmerican republics commence bicentennial celebrations (2010) of revolutionary struggles that in some cases endured for over fifteen years. Having credited a veritable army of scholars who provided the detailed raw materials 152 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue canadienne d etudesamericames for the present study, Lester Langley has attempted an analytical synthesis of the three revolutions and then reflected upon the outcome from the vantage point of the mid-nineteenth century. What appears is a very American (referring to the United States) view of the revolutions of the Americas. Indeed, Langley's introductory comments about a Spanish-American lack of faith in democratic institutions and efforts to overturn democratic achievements of the revolutionary era miss the mark entirely. In the section on the American Revolution, comparisons with Latin America simply reinforce stereotypes of the Anglo-American struggle to establish civilian superiority versus the image of a veritable plague of Spanish-American militarists who toppled corrupt ineffective civilian regimes. Even in comparing the ability of the founders to reconstitute the political order as opposed to the SpanishAmerican Creoles who "dismembered" the Spanish Empire and then carved the pieces into "little fiefdoms," the author fails to explain Mexico which developed its own vibrant federalism. Without an aggressively ambitious neighbour lusting to absorb half or more of the nation, Mexico's struggles might have been more successful. Although the United States may have avoided some aspects of the military traditions of Latin America, in the 1860s the Civil War most likely killed off more people than all of the revolts, uprisings, and separatist conflicts to the south. The section on the American Revolution serves to underscore the similarities and the differences with other parts of the Americas. Langley examines the emergence of self-reliance and maturity in the Anglo-American colonies that compared with a quite similar conception of American identity among the Spanish-American Creoles. Equally, the resistance to taxation and willingness of Britain to employ troops to enforce its policies, parallelled the regalism of King Carlos III (1759-1788) whose reforms were designed to restore effective control for the metropolis and to drain much more wealth...