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FourFathers James H. Hutson. John Adams and the Diplomacy ofthe American Revolution. Lexington: University Pressof Kentucky, 1980.200 + vii pp. Richard M. Rollins. The Long Journey of Noah Webster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980.195+ xi pp. Robert E. Shalhope. John Taylor of Caroline: PastoralRepublican. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1980.304 + ix pp. Charles Cecil Wall. George Washington: Citizen-So/die,: Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980. 217+ xiv pp. Geoffrey Bilson Some of the most interesting and provocative recent work on the Revolution has attempted to recover the experience of common people in that crisis. These four books belong to an older tradition, that of the weighty life-andtimes volumes which used to mark the passing of statesmen or at least the death of politicians. Modern economics have reduced the two or three volumes to one slim book, but modern scholarship shows that there is still vitality in this approach to a great historical event. It is not an easy mode to work in, especially under the pressure of limited space, and some of the authors are more successful than others in bringing together characters and circumstances. James H. Hutson, in John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution, sets himself a limited goal and reaches it gracefully. He uses an examination of Adams' diplomatic thinking and diplomatic career during the war with Britain to make some general statements about American diplomacy. There is no doubt about Hutson's thesis, which he states in the first line of the book, "The foreign policy of the American Revolution was not revolutionary." Here as elsewhere in their thinking, the American rebels drew on European thought. They accepted the idea of the balance of power as the central one in diplomacy. They agreed that the interest of states sparked political action and they recognized the truth of economic mercantilism and its emphasis on the close relation between national wealth Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1983, 61-70 62 Geoffrey Bilson and national power. North America was caught up in the European balance for it gaveweight to whoever possessed it. If America were independent, she would continue to play a part in the European balance, and Adams sawheras the key to that balance. Because she was so important to Europe, America could expect hostility from the old powers. Adams was convinced that they would seek a partition of America similar to the one inflicted on Poland. In this hostile world, America could hope to benefit from the fact that France would prefer to see the British Empire dismembered and America subservient to herself. Independence might be secured with the help of France, but America would have to be careful that she did not become subservient to her helper. Adams drew up a model treaty for the Continental Congress, to be offeredto potential commercial allies after independence. The treaty dissolved the British monopoly of commerce by offering all nations free trade on equal terms. Trade would offer America greater security than any lasting alliance with European powers. He calculated, in fact, that a free trade would be dominated by Britain. That would help to maintain independence by playing off Britain and France. Adams also believed that America must have military power ofher own, but on a scale modest enough not to threaten republicanism at home. American diplomacy would operate on traditional assumptions in which altruism had no part. The revolutionary generation of Americans, however, added a new element to their thinking. The idea of a conspiracy against liberty affected their diplomatic thinking. America, virtuous and alone, was the target of a "malign conspiracy ... with the intention of oppressing them" (p. 34). There were few Americans more able to see a conspiracy than John Adams. When he set out for Europe in 1778, he was a man riddled with paranoia who saw enemies where there were none and who was convinced that the world was filled with enemies not only of the United States but also of John Adams. Hutson succeeds in sketching a vivid picture of this lonely, unhappy man rattling around Paris and Amsterdam consumed with fear for his country and himself, wracked with...

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