| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Simon Middleton. From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City. (Early American Studies.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2006. Pp. 306. $45.00.
Traditional views of colonial artisans are of a quiet community of masters, journeymen, and apprentices in which advancement was generally not difficult for the talented craftsman, and in which deference was granted to the mercantile elite. Recent work also argues that this world was seriously disrupted by the market and political revolutions of the mid-to-late eighteenth century, leading to greater political activism and eventually to the notion of "artisan republicanism" that historian Sean Wilentz sees as key to understanding nineteenth-century American politics.	1
Simon Middleton's book takes a revisionist stance. Employing underused Mayor's Court records, it argues that there was no single colonial experience, or abrupt financial transition, but an incremental transformation toward the political and economic ideologies of the American Revolution. The Dutch legacy was largely paternal. Artisans were granted lesser burgher rights under the control of the mercantile (greater burgher) elite. Entry into a trade was not restricted by guilds, though regulation of trades through burgher rights limited competition. Civil control was pervasive, with public work requirements. Artisans accepted regulation in return for craft protection.	. . .

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