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Review
| The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, by Gary Nash. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. 512 pages. $16.00, paper.
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| Gary Nash begins this study with the question John Adams posed to Thomas Jefferson: "Who shall write the history of the American Revolution?" Nash sets out not just to be another "who," but to remedy to the "historic amnesia" that has resulted from the previous virtually exclusive focus on the "marble men" we call the Founding Fathers. Instead of this view from the top, The Unknown Revolution is a depiction of the revolution from the perspective of the ordinary people who shaped this momentous event. This vantage point allows Nash to respond to his own question: "How did the birth of a nation devoted to democracy come about from a campaign designed by its leaders to form a republic?" The Founders of the Republic had set States set out to devise a government ruled by elite men who represented the interests of the people rather than one in which the people played a direct role. |
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Nash begins his narrative with an account of the roots of radicalism established in the decades prior to the revolution during the conflicts fomented by religious "enthusiasts," yeoman farmers, Native Americans, mechanics and artisans, women, and an enslaved people. Nash shows that these ordinary people were early motivated by the desire to transform the social order, and then demonstrates how the revolutionary fervor helped fuel the larger movement that resulted in the birth of a new nation by the end of the eighteenth century. In the process, Nash provides insight into the essentially conservative nature of many of the Founding Fathers, particularly John Adams. This in turn explains the subsequent era that encompassed the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the rise of the first party system. From The Unknown American Revolution the reader gains a greater comprehension of the struggle between those who desired to realize the democratic impulse strengthened by the Revolution and those who sought to "tame" it. Essentially, Nash furthers our understanding that the quest to prevent the growth of democracy in America following the revolution was motivated by deep fears that a violent destruction of the ancien regime similar to the upheavals of the French Revolution would result. |
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As Nash states in the epilogue, The Unknown American Revolution is the culmination of more than four decades of investigating and portraying the American Revolution "from the bottom up." His research has focused on the role of working people, African Americans, enslaved and free people, and Native Americans, with a special effort to incorporate information about the contributions and the changing status of women of all classes and ethnicities. He has also made fruitful use of the rich body of research by numerous scholars that has reinforced the thesis that the American Revolution was caused by and succeeded largely due to the contributions and sacrifices of men and women from all sectors of the society. |
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The book is further evidence of Nash's efforts and the efforts of other contemporary social historians to formulate, if not to complete, at least a much more comprehensive and authentic reconstruction of the period of the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution. The "marble men" have been revealed as flesh and blood human beings subject to the sentiments, attitudes, and foibles of their era, as well as being men who transcended the age to lead the American republic to unplanned democratic heights. The fact is that the Great Men depicted by earlier historians would not have been able to accomplish the astonishing feats attributed to them without the support and even the leadership of "ordinary people." Although the author does a fine job of explaining incidents and providing background information on the well known players as well as the unknown characters of this pivotal historic epic, The Unknown American Revolution is most appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses. It would be best used along with studies presenting the political debates and policies enacted by elites on both sides of the struggle. |
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| University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida |
Carolyn Williams |
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