| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America. By Richard R. Beeman. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. x, 366 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8122-3770-6.)

Today's politics are remarkably simple compared to colonial America's. Virtually all Americans believe that democracy is good and is easily defined; constitutional requirements shape a national suffrage policy that allows only slight state variations; a two-party system transcends state and economic borders; and pity the poor politician who does not understand that constituents feel a right to instruct their representatives on all matters of public policy. By contrast, eighteenth-century English colonists regarded democracy warily as ambiguous in value and definition; franchise requirements and opportunities for political involvement varied dramatically due to the idiosyncratic nature of each colony's governing and social circumstances; no organizing power—certainly not the British Empire—transcended the borders of individual colonies to shape their politics into national networks; and, despite the firsthand knowledge each had of the other, an ill-defined gulf existed between representatives and their constituents. Compared to today, colonial politics seem chaotic.

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