The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution; The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies; The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832; American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 by Alan Taylor
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Author | Robert Bothwell |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702018754559 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Alan Taylor
The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American
Revolution
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. 560 pp. ISBN: 0-679-45471-3 (hbk.)
The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 640 pp. ISBN: 9781400042654
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. 728 pp ISBN: 978-0393073713.
American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. 736 pp. ISBN: 0393082814
Reviewed by: Robert Bothwell (bothwell@chass.utoronto.ca), University of Toronto
Alan Taylor begins his Revolutions with a story out of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
‘‘Major Molineux,’’ in which a young man seeks out his respectable, eminent,
and influential relative, Molineux, only to discover that he has been disgraced and
publicly humiliated. Acting on instinct, the young man abandons the old and
respectable, and signs on with the New Order. Reasonably enough, Taylor takes
this as a parable for the American Revolution of the 1770s, though as he notes,
Hawthorne does not make this explicit in his story.
For a Canadian reading about the fate of Major Molineux, the comparison to
the Revolution is irresistible, though where Hawthorne finds excitement and
opportunity, the Canadian is likely to scent chaos and mob rule: violence breaking
through the crust of civilization that alone makes life bearable.
Revolutions have two sides, one usually the winner, the other the loser; and
sometimes, over the years, the two sides reverse, and the winners become losers.
Such was the fate of the Revolution in France, eventually re-channelled into the
reincarnation of the Bourbon monarchy. As Taylor shows, a somewhat similar
process occurred in the new United States, where the elitist tendencies of most of
the prominent revolutionaries soon reasserted themselves, making the elite of the
new republic not all that different in philosophy and practice from the American
Loyalists who had rejected the republic and followed the call of the king.
This is a theme that occurs in Alan Taylor’s earlier work, especially The Civil
War of 1812, which, I suspect, sold better in Canada than in the United States,
certainly on a per capita basis. Taylor, in Revolutions and The Civil War does a
good job of describing the military history of the wars, and anyone looking for a
straightforward and comprehensible account of military events will not be
International Journal
2018, Vol. 73(1) 166–182
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702018754559
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