Reviews of Books

With the publication of Revolutionary America, 1763–1815, 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 history. 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.	1
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 1815. 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.	2
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 1815. 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.	3
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 1790s will likely give students—often habituated to thinking of the rise of an American nation as inevitable and thus consensual—pause to think.	. . .