Monday, August 30, 2004
"A Mighty Empire" -- book review
Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988, pp. ii, 338).
By The Erudite Redneck
Marc Egnal looks beneath prevailing interpretations of the American Revolution to uncover something more fundamental than an erudite argument over liberty, yet more profound than a struggle against economic forces. Egnal, using colonial archives, the letters of leading men and other primary documents, finds an elite desire for greatness, in each colony “an upper-class faction whose dedication to the rapid development of America was apparent well before 1763” (6).
He boldly declares a new paradigm, which he insists represents more than a land grab: “This broad, ramifying world view must not be equated with a much narrower concept – a desire for territorial growth” (7).
Egnal studies four periods from the perspective of two schools of thought: expansionist versus nonexpansionist.
From 1690 to 1762, factions appear; from 1763 to 1770, depression following the French and Indian War enlarged and exacerbated Parliament’s slights on the colonies; from 1771 to 1773, relative calm prevailed; from 1774-1776, expansionist leaders were gearing up for revolution.
In Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina, chosen for study because they were the most populous, elite thought shifted around two basic ideas: America either had, or lacked, the wherewithal to become a world power. Egnal sees common people, rural denizens and urban poor, as spoilers at times, lending support or withholding it from one side or the other, usually the expansionist.
The expansionist longing for American greatness evolved into a desire for independence from Britain; nay-saying nonexpansionists grew into oppositionist factions and Loyalists.
Egnal outlines strains in each colony that served to help define both camps in the decades before the Revolution: coalitions surrounding war and money in Massachusetts, traders versus war hawks in New York, Quaker influence in Pennsylvania, huge plantation owners versus frontiersmen in Virginia, and rice- and indigo-beholden conservatives versus those with broader goals in South Carolina.
Then, Egnal details colonial reaction to reduced money flow Britain and slow growth in the West Indies in the post-war 1760s, when the goal of greatness crystallized into an independence movement and nonexpansionists lost power.
Egnal, associate professor of history at York University in Canada, provides no bibliography, but includes a remarkable appendix with a comprehensive list of individual patriot and loyalist leaders in each colony, indicating where each stood on important questions in the decades before the Revolution. Egnal provides copious footnotes in this careful exegesis of his thesis.
END
By The Erudite Redneck
Marc Egnal looks beneath prevailing interpretations of the American Revolution to uncover something more fundamental than an erudite argument over liberty, yet more profound than a struggle against economic forces. Egnal, using colonial archives, the letters of leading men and other primary documents, finds an elite desire for greatness, in each colony “an upper-class faction whose dedication to the rapid development of America was apparent well before 1763” (6).
He boldly declares a new paradigm, which he insists represents more than a land grab: “This broad, ramifying world view must not be equated with a much narrower concept – a desire for territorial growth” (7).
Egnal studies four periods from the perspective of two schools of thought: expansionist versus nonexpansionist.
From 1690 to 1762, factions appear; from 1763 to 1770, depression following the French and Indian War enlarged and exacerbated Parliament’s slights on the colonies; from 1771 to 1773, relative calm prevailed; from 1774-1776, expansionist leaders were gearing up for revolution.
In Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina, chosen for study because they were the most populous, elite thought shifted around two basic ideas: America either had, or lacked, the wherewithal to become a world power. Egnal sees common people, rural denizens and urban poor, as spoilers at times, lending support or withholding it from one side or the other, usually the expansionist.
The expansionist longing for American greatness evolved into a desire for independence from Britain; nay-saying nonexpansionists grew into oppositionist factions and Loyalists.
Egnal outlines strains in each colony that served to help define both camps in the decades before the Revolution: coalitions surrounding war and money in Massachusetts, traders versus war hawks in New York, Quaker influence in Pennsylvania, huge plantation owners versus frontiersmen in Virginia, and rice- and indigo-beholden conservatives versus those with broader goals in South Carolina.
Then, Egnal details colonial reaction to reduced money flow Britain and slow growth in the West Indies in the post-war 1760s, when the goal of greatness crystallized into an independence movement and nonexpansionists lost power.
Egnal, associate professor of history at York University in Canada, provides no bibliography, but includes a remarkable appendix with a comprehensive list of individual patriot and loyalist leaders in each colony, indicating where each stood on important questions in the decades before the Revolution. Egnal provides copious footnotes in this careful exegesis of his thesis.
END
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Not easily. Truth be told, that is not an example of my best writin' or thinkin' -- erudite, redneck or otherwise! But notice that the redneck element provided the swing vote, so to speak, when all those powder-headed elite bastages were tryin' to decide whether to actually throw off the English or keep whinin' for another dozen years or so: "Egnal sees common people, rural denizens and urban poor, as spoilers at times, lending support or withholding it from one side or the other, usually the expansionist." Hmmm, I reckon a "Rednecks in American History" class might could enlighten some folks. The trick would be not gettin' caught high center on the Confederate interpretation of the War of Northern Aggression.
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