American Revolutions: A Continental History by Alan Taylor (review)

Alan Taylor's new book, American Revolutions, is an ambitious work of synthesis that offers a nuanced perspective on a popular moment in history. Much like he did with American Colonies, Taylor refuses to accept easy generalizations or polarities, preferring to highlight, as he puts it, "the multiple and clashing visions of revolution pursued by the diverse American peoples of the continent" (p. 8). By using a continental approach, not only is Taylor able to explore the revolutionary experiences of a heterogeneous people living in North America, he can also explore the place of competing empires, nations, and states beyond the British Atlantic and show us the sheer magnitude of the revolution and its global causes and ramifications.

Taylor's book is comprised of twelve chapters moving the reader along from 1750 to about 1804, though the last chapter goes a bit beyond that. In the first three chapters, he describes the creation of empires and colonies in the Americas—how they functioned, who ruled, and how the many peoples who made up these empires experienced and grappled with social, political, and cultural dynamics that were often out of their control. The West has a particularly prominent place in this book. It is in that space that the American peoples (including, but not exclusively, Native Americans, slaves, imperial officials, elite speculators, and ordinary white colonists) epitomized the growing quest for personal and sometimes collective independence that pervaded the early American landscape. They vied for land and power over their individual lives and other people. This theme also sets the tone for his interpretation of the American Revolution. By emphasizing the diversity of ideas and experiences, and that those ideas often conflicted because of individual desires, Taylor makes it easier to comprehend the destructive tendencies of the Revolution as both a political and social movement as well as a civil and global war. Sides were taken, neutrality claimed and denied, and while some people benefited, particularly white male property owners who saw in the west a fulfillment of their desires, many others did not, especially Native Americans and slaves. It was a revolution with immense possibilities as well as limitations.

Each chapter demonstrates an impressive command of the scholarly literature. His bibliography is just as important as his narrative. To be sure, historians who read this book will find little that is entirely new; many of the arguments have been made before in tight monographs and articles. Yet Taylor is not just addressing academics here, rather, he has written something that gives vent to a vast literature in an easily digestible and lively narrative that has the ability to reach a popular audience. For that, he is to be commended.

It is because of that audience that my favorite chapter is Taylor's second to last, which he titled, "Partisans." I enjoyed this chapter because it provided an essential narrative for an important audience during a time when an understanding of the history of the American Revolution and the founding seems utterly necessary. In that chapter, Taylor weaves together some of the most important scholarly works in the past several decades and shows that, far from erecting a nation on a piece of parchment, the United States Constitution merely accentuated an enduring problem of American history—what is an "American" and what kind of country did the revolution create? The recently ratified Constitution and its first ten amendments could do little to settle those questions. In essence, Taylor makes it abundantly clear that popular assumptions of such things as "Original Intent," which presupposes ideological and experiential harmony during the founding, is the product of some sort of alternate reality. As historians, we often take knowing the fractured nature of ideas and experiences during the founding for granted, but Taylor's ability to bring it together in a widely accessible chapter makes it all the more significant.

The last paragraph or so of most book reviews...