| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Michael A. Morrison and Melinda Zook, editors. Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2004. Pp. ix, 192. Cloth $68.00, paper $24.95.
At the intersection of state building and nation formation one finds the phenomenon of revolution. From the seventeenth century to the twentieth, revolutions have not only overturned old administrations, they have harnessed the myths of nation building to the creation of larger and more powerful administrative and military states. In doing so, they have transformed our very notion of what a nation-state should be. This profoundly important collection offers fresh scholarship on the role of nationalist ideology in the revolutions that ringed both sides of the Atlantic Ocean from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Contributions by Lois G. Schwoerer on Britain's Revolution of 1688, by John M. Murrin on the American Revolution, by William H. Sewell, Jr., on France in 1789, and by Eric Van Young on Mexican independence are integrated by Jack P. Greene's brilliant introductory essay on state formation and the creation of revolutionary traditions and Peter S. Onuf's conclusion on the continuing evolution of nations and nationalism.	1
Greene's essay makes the familiar argument that most of these revolutions were rooted in the defense of specific liberties and privileges held by particular regions and corporate groups against the expanding and centralizing authority of monarchies. When kings began to act as though divine right justified their unlimited authority, the defenders of such liberties (aristocrats, gentry, town and guild leaders, merchants, professionals, local politicians, judges, and other privileged groups) rose up in revolt. What Greene adds integrates this account with the rise and intensification of nationalist beliefs. When elites mobilized the masses to support their attack on monarchical privilege, they justified the protection of liberty as a prized national heritage, so that nationalist sentiment was joined to revolutionary action. Such was the scenario in Britain, the United States, and the Latin American independence revolutions, where nationalism and revolution served to destroy state aspirations to absolutism and shackle the central state, while drawing up short of overturning the privileged status of the revolutionary elites.	. . .

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