| 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

Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630-1680. By Roger Thompson. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001. xviii, 269 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-55849-304-2.)

As Roger Thompson relates in Divided We Stand, the Charles River community of Watertown worked hard to earn its obscurity. The town produced no great colony leaders, kept steadfastly out of the antinomian troubles and the Half-Way Covenant conflicts, saw little economic development beyond farming, and was rarely even mentioned in colony records after 1650. Nevertheless, Thompson sees in Watertown an opportunity to revisit the by now familiar topic of the adaptation and persistence of English ways in New England, and to determine how settlers were able to create stable communities amid a marked penchant for quarreling and dissent. 1

If there was much about Watertown that reflected English ways, 'cultural conservatism could not mask the fact that this was a new creation.' In particular, Thompson argues that the American experience of Watertowners brought about 'revolutionary change' in patterns of landholding, religion, politics, and the labor market. Thompson is not breaking new ground here; his interest is in seeing how one community, steeped in English tradition, could adopt such radical changes while maintaining a conviction of tradition and continuity. . . .

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