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Reviews of Books
| Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution. By Benjamin L. Carp. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 352 pages. $35.00 (cloth).
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Reviewed by Alfred F. Young, Durham, N.C.
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Benjamin L. Carp's study of political mobilization during the American Revolution in the five largest colonial cities inevitably will be compared with two now-classic works: Carl Bridenbaugh's Cities in Revolt and Gary B. Nash's The Urban Crucible.1 Each book was a summa of the scholarship of its era, Bridenbaugh's of the anecdotal social history of everyday life, drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of the five major cities, Nash's of the then-new social history based on quantitative analysis of records of taxes, poor relief, and wills at probate. Bridenbaugh's upbeat, richly threaded social tapestry informed a short political narrative based more or less on the dichotomies of Progressive historians. Nash's grim picture of three cities (Boston, New York, and Philadelphia) with troubled economies and stratified societies framed a full political history with a complex interplay of economic interests, social classes, and religion. |
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In contrast to Bridenbaugh and Nash, Carp offers five case studies of political mobilization in the urban landscape, or "cityscape," of five cities, devoting each chapter to a different public space in a single city: for Boston, the waterfront; for Newport, the houses of worship; for New York, the taverns; for Charleston, the household; and for Philadelphia, the State House and its yard. Each space is evoked in the service of a concept: the waterfront community for Boston, religious pluralism for Newport, the "tavern companies" (19) for New York, patriarchy for Charleston, and the conflict between political elites "within doors" (174) and the people "out of doors" (21) for Philadelphia. Carp argues that these five cityscapes "exemplify the processes of mobilization that took place throughout urban America" (21). An epilogue explores the loss of the popular side of radical mobilization in the public memory of the Revolution and the cities' declining influence in Jeffersonian America. |
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Carp "builds" (5) on "traditional studies" (5), as he puts it, which dealt with "rebellious action within colonial institutions and new, 'extralegal' structures, such as the Sons of Liberty, committees of correspondence, or crowds" (5). Very aware that "many of these socially and politically disenfranchised people agitated in their own ways" (15), he stresses the formation of "cross-class" (84) alliances, "coalitions" (14), and negotiations. "City dwellers persuaded one another and cooperated with one another in ... everyday settings" in attempts to reach resolutions to questions of home rule and independence, as well as the questions of democratization and social change" (5). Carp argues convincingly for the cities as "the places that made the Revolution possible" (224). |
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The approach works better for some case studies than others. New York, the city with the highest per capita liquor consumption and highest ratio of taverns to people, proves ideal to study taverns as political sites. Newport is disappointing for houses of worship because, after describing the architecture of each denomination's meetinghouse with loving care, Carp finds that Newporters "failed to harness their town's pluralism in the service of rebellion" (118). Baptist and Quaker memories of Congregationalist persecution led to an atmosphere of suspicion. The Philadelphia case study, on the other hand, is compelling because the State House (today's Independence Hall), dominated by an ossified and oligarchic Quaker-led assembly, was such a constant target for the mobilization of crowds within the adjacent brick-walled yard and because the spatial metaphor of the people out of doors was so much a part of contemporary political vocabulary. |
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