| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. By Ray Raphael. (New York: New Press, 2002. xiv, 273 pp. $26.95, ISBN 1-56584-730-X.)

Ray Raphael has produced an engaging narrative of western Massachusetts during the Revolution. It would be disingenuous to claim that this is a neglected area of scholarship, but Raphael's fine book will correct the fallacy that western Massachusetts was barely disturbed by the imperial crisis of the 1760s and early 1770s. The first two chapters delineate the impact on western communities of the controversies generated by British colonial policy that dominated affairs in the General Court and divided colonists into Patriots and Loyalists. Three chapters describe the popular uprisings against royal officials that occurred during the late summer and autumn of 1774. This was the 'real revolution'--a 'transfer of political authority' from Britain to Patriots. 1

What that 'revolution' entailed is reasonably familiar. Throughout Worcester, Hampshire, and Berkshire counties, large crowds intimidated councilors and judges appointed under the Massachusetts Government Act-- the second of Britain's hated Coercive Acts. With a minimum of fuss and without bloodshed, the crowds persuaded most of the officeholders to resign or to ignore their Crown commissions and on occasion to recant tory principles. Gen. Thomas Gage was under no illusion as to the mounting threat to British power, and he kept his three thousand regulars holed up in Boston. . . .

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