Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past ed. by Renee C. Romano, Claire Bond Potter (review)

This collection of history-focused essays is in part inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s appeal, “I want the historians to take [Hamilton] seriously” (qtd on 6). In their introduction, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter validate Miranda’s assertion that his smash-hit musical is worthy of scholarly examination by pointing out, “the effect of popular culture on the public mind is a matter of keen interest for historians” (9). The essays span a range of topics, from the historical figures who appear as characters in Hamilton to the ways in which super-fans engage with the musical and its creator through social media. Some essays are quite critical of the musical and some more celebratory, but all agree that Hamilton has influenced the cultural landscape of US history and art in ways worthy of scholarly study. The chapters are largely written by scholars who specialize in US history, with three chapters written by theatre and performance scholars.

The book is divided into three sections, titled “The Script,” “The Stage,” and “The Audience.” The five chapters in “The Script” address Hamilton’s historical inaccuracies, representation of race and gender, and nontraditional casting. In chapter 1, William Hogeland identifies many oversights in both Ron Chernow’s biography, Hamilton (the primary source material for Miranda), as well as in the musical, and argues that Hamilton’s philosophy of linking national security with financial elitism formed the basis for the contemporary industrial and imperialist United States. While Joanne B. Freeman’s chapter fills in some of the important missing details about US politics during this era, she concludes that the musical captures the “spirit of the moment right” (52). Tackling the issues of race and slavery, Lyra D. Monteiro offers a powerful rebuttal to the claims that Hamilton’s casting practices make it a progressive musical; she instead argues that the lack of black characters reinforces the idea that the only people who mattered during the early United States were white land-owning men. After offering important historical information about Hamilton’s attitudes toward slavery, Leslie M. Harris moves to rectify the erasure of black experiences by reading colonial practices such as Pinkster and Governor’s Day, where slaves elected a governor to adjudicate disputes, as performance events that gave black Americans agency. Catherine Allgor’s chapter implores readers to learn more about coverture, the legal status that meant married women were the property of their husbands.

The second section of the book, “The Stage,” addresses Hamilton’s fiscal philosophies and the musical’s position in genealogies of narratives about the Revolutionary War and musical theatre hits on Broadway. Michael O’Malley’s chapter delves into the history of US currency and banks. David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley’s chapter, one of the standouts in the book, puts forward a useful and thorough account of the history of “founders chic,” a term that appears many times in the book and essentially refers to a trend of admiring individual founders as exceptional men or exalting the group of them as an exceptional collective. This chapter also suggests a black voice that historians and Miranda could celebrate in lieu of focusing exclusively on white founders: free black political leader William Hamilton, who some historians think is the descendent of Alexander. In chapter 8, Andrew M. Shocket outlines a trend that began in the 1990s in which the US public turns to stories about the American Revolution to cope with the fractured contemporary political moment. He calls this phenomenon “American Revolution rebooted,” and highlights the conventions of this genre and the many ways in which Hamilton conforms to them. Elizabeth L. Wollman gives a detailed history of major musicals and trends in the history of Broadway musicals and concludes that Hamilton is not, commercially or formally, as revolutionary as one might think. Brian Herrera...