Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. By FRANCIS D. COGLIANO. (London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. X, 275. $67.00 cloth, $i9.99 paper.)
Review first appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly LVIII, no. 2 (April 2001), 550-553.
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Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History
Francis D. Cogliano
Reviewed by Michael A. McDonnell, University of Sydney
With the publication of Revolutionary America, 1763-18I5, Francis D. Cogliano joins the ranks of George Otto Trevelyan, Marcus Cunliffe, Esmond Wright, and more recently, Edward Countryman and Colin Bonwick, all of whom were British-based historians when they wrote survey texts about the Revolutionary and early national periods of American his- tory. Cogliano, an American now lecturing in American history at the University of Edinburgh, believes that his location has been invaluable to his scholarship for two main reasons: it prompts him to view events during this momentous period from a transatlantic perspective, and it obliges him to write a clear, concise narrative of the early history of the United States for an undergraduate audience with little prior exposure to the subject. On both counts, Cogliano has succeeded, and his efforts will benefit scholars and students on both sides of the Atlantic. Most students will love this book. It provides a nicely written, succinct, and incisive account of the American Revolutionary era. It begins with an overview of colonial society and includes chapters on the imperial crisis, the Revolutionary fervor of 1775-1776, the War of Independence, the Confederation era, the creation of the Constitution, the Federalist era, and the drive for the "empire of liberty" to i8i5. It also includes discrete chapters on American women and African Americans in the age of Revolution more generally. Clear and precise footnotes, which often highlight current historiographical debates, coupled with an up-to-date twenty-one-page bibliographic essay should make it even more useful for students seeking essay ideas. What it does not include is much in the way of graphs, illustrations, or maps. The prospect of so much unbroken text may make some students recoil, though brief chapters and easily identifiable subheads will help ease the pain for most. For the most part, in writing for an undergraduate audience, Cogliano eschews interpretive innovation in favor of a clear and crisp narrative that will have maximum appeal. That is not to say that Revolutionary America lacks novelty. Certainly, Cogliano's emphasis on the post-1789 period is one of the most welcome innovations in his narrative of the Revolution. Here, Cogliano confesses that his residence in Britain has convinced him of the importance of the transatlantic dimension of the American Revolution and of the need to see that the fundamental relationship in the American colonies, later the United States, concerned relations with Europe, at least until i8i5. During the years he covers in this book, Cogliano claims, the question of transatlantic relations assumed an importance in American life that would not be replicated until after 1945. Not just in their reactions to British parliamentary legislation but also their responses to the later upheavals caused by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Americans were forced to struggle with diplomatic, economic, and ideological challenges that initially precipitated a revolution and then fundamentally shaped the development of the new nation and national identity. Such a focus also helps readers make more sense of the persistence of internal divisions during the Revolutionary period. Indeed, the abrupt break of most texts immediately after the ratification of the Constitution and triumph of the Federalists never seems to sit well with students, particularly those who are aware of the intense divisions in American society leading up to ratification and those aware of the weakness of any kind of national unity at the supposed "founding" moment. Cogliano's narrative allows him to situate more properly the birth of the "nation" after the ratification of the Constitution, when external challenges from the French, Spanish, and British helped shape the nature of politics in the new nation and forge a nascent national identity, albeit a contested one. Here, the work of David Waldstreicher, Simon Newman, Len Travers, Richard Rosenfeld, Gary Kornblith, Michael Durey, David Wilson, Rosemarie Zagarri, and Saul Cornell, to name but a few, have made their way into Cogliano's story. This approach, drawing on an older paradigm as well as this recent outpouring of exciting scholarship on popular politics in the I790s will likely give students often habituated to thinking of the rise of an American nation as inevitable and thus consensual pause to think. Ultimately, the strength of Cogliano's book is part of its weakness. A well-written, concise, and clear account that sustains the story of emerging nationhood over a broad period in only 220 pages might seem to leave little room for the messy, the complex, or the supposedly marginal stories that must complete our picture of the Revolution. Unfortunately, despite serious reservations, Cogliano separated the histories of African Americans and women from the main political narrative because he felt any treatment therein would be too superficial and contrived. Though separate chapters allow Cogliano more scope to discuss those groups who were marginalized in American society during the Revolutionary period and on whom much recent scholarship in journals and monographs has focused during the past decade, his organization will probably prove unsatisfying for most. Native Americans rarely make an appearance at all, and though Cogliano asserts that the American wars of independence did not end until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, he does not develop this thesis further. Native Americans are further shortchanged in the discussion of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition that features prominently in the last chapter. In the end, a political narrative that integrates the stories of ordinary white males yet excludes blacks, Indians, and women is a better narrative, but still an incomplete one. As scholars such as Sylvia Frey, Colin Calloway, Linda Kerber, and Woody Holton have recently shown us, if we are willing to complicate the story and create a more nuanced narrative, we need not sacrifice brevity to obtain rich results and provide an ever more insightful political narrative. At least one worrying casualty of the author's approach is the lost opportunity to emphasize some of the central contradictions of his story: that American nationhood, achieved through a war ostensibly fought for liberty, required the entrenchment of the institution of slavery and the extermination or removal of Native Americans. To be fair, Cogliano does make these points, but they need to take center stage in any political description of the period. There are some other important omissions. Even the ordinary white males who are in some ways the protagonists, or at least main actors and beneficiaries of Cogliano's Revolution, make too few personal appearances. We know what the Jeffersons, Hamiltons, and Washingtons said and did, but we seldom meet individuals from the lower echelons of society who actually think and act in Cogliano's book. He is clearly very sensitive to the voice of ordinary people, but rarely do we hear them ourselves. In the end, despite his ostensible focus on the achievement of nationhood, Cogliano pays scant attention to the question of national identity, at least as a popular cultural phenomenon, and he hardly ever talks about sectionalism. Cogliano claims space limitations require sticking with a political narrative. One can only hope that Routledge recognizes the value of "telling stories" and an enlarged concept of "politics" and that these topics may eventually make it to the surface of this fine book in later editions. Edward Countryman, whose own treatment of the Revolution helped inspire Cogliano as an undergraduate, wrote at the end of The American Revolution (New York, 1985) that his book would only be successful if "readers argue with it, and if some decide to go to the sources and encounter the Revolution for themselves" (p. 274). Francis Cogliano has aimed to achieve the same. With his accessible national narrative informed by an international, or at least transatlantic, perspective, extensive bibliography, and sensitivity to the most recent historiography, he will no doubt succeed in raising the right questions and opening the way for further study. And though his approach may draw criticism, he is to be applauded for his attempt to incorporate some of the best of recent scholarship into a sweeping synthesis that students can afford to buy and that they might actually read.