The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (review)

Book Reviews71 The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire. By Francis Jennings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xii + 340 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $54.95; paper, $19.95. Those familiar with Francis Jennings' work will recognize his sweeping style and polemical disapproval ofEuropean activities in early America in this, his last book written before his death in 2000. This work, however, is difficult to categorize. It is neither a scholarly work for peers in academia, nor a popularhistory for laypeople. Jennings acknowledges that, because of advancedage, he didnotuseprimary sources forthiswork, butinsteadrelied on secondary source material, much ofwhichwas apparently his own earlier work. Among other problems, it contains far too many details to be accessible to non-academics without the risk of their being misled by his idiosyncratic interpretation ofthem. The book is dominated by a single purpose. According to Jennings, most histories of the founding period have been "fairy tales" (4). Jennings' America was created entirely from a consciously and systematically hegemonic policy of Euro-American imperialism. He argues that everything colonists did, whether as subjects of the Crown or as rebels, was to secure a bigger and stronger empire, always at the expense of Native Americans and other disenfranchised groups. While this interpretation is not entirely without merit, and it made a significant contribution to early American historiography whenhe publishedhis first book in 1975, it can no longer stand alone. Jennings ignores or discounts most ofthe other social, religious, cultural, and political forces at work in the colonies. Much has been done in the last thirty years to put things in a more accurate light; the "mythology" ofthe unsullied heroism ofthe founding generation that Jennings seeks to debunk has long since been laid to rest. Indeed, there has been so much bad press in the last two decades about "dead white males" that the pendulum is swinging back. Jennings is also seemingly oblivious to recent scholarship in his own field dealing with race and white-Indian relations. These newer analyses complicate the issue of race in early America and show that relationships between white settlers and Indians were much more nuanced than older historiography has suggestedby painting Indians as either "savages" or merely helpless victims of racist imperialism. One truly new revision Jennings attempts is to go further than most historians in including Friends in his narrative. Unfortunately, Jennings' goodintentions donot outweighhisbasicunfarniliaritywiththe subject. The most obvious shortcoming ofhis account of colonial Quakerism is that he portrays Friends as passive victims ("beaten down by indefensibly crooked 72Quaker History politics," 42) ofpolitical forces in Pennsylvania that denied them participation in government, when in fact it was a conscious and thoroughly voluntary decision on the part ofFriends to remove themselves from office. He reveals the true extent of his misunderstanding of eighteenth-century Friends in his description of an encounter between Israel Pemberton and John Adams in which Pemberton upbraided Adams forthe lack ofreligious toleration in Massachusetts. Clearly surprised and confused that a Quaker would ignore conventions ofsocial etiquette and speakvehemently inpublic about his concerns, Jennings doubts the validity and relevance of the encounter, and then essentially dismisses it by describing Pemberton as "exceptionally aggressive and militant among his brethren" (153). Taking his cue apparently from popularized twentieth-century images of Friends, Jennings describes Quakers ofthe period simplistically as "generally stuffy, but mild mannered" (153). In fact, the historical record reveals that Pemberton's actions were nothing ifnot exemplary ofthe passion Friends had for their concerns and their determined disregard of superficial social constructs that muzzled dissent. Jennings is truly earnest in his concern to present the truth ofhistory as he sees it. But he is also torn between humility and hubris. On the one hand, he patronizes his reader and dismisses most scholarship that has preceded his as misguided at best and deceptive at worst; on the other, he apologizes repeatedly for the mistakes and shortcomings that he is sure are there, but clearly cannot detect. The most frustrating point in this work comes at the very end. Jennings acknowledges some criticism from a "good friend" who "chides me for giving too little notice to historical persons who really did struggle and sacrifice for liberty for all" (316...