The Mad Historian's Athenaeum, Vol. I, No. 22

Breen, T.H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. xviii + 320 pp.

            T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University sought to answer one of the pivotal questions that historians of the American Revolution have spent centuries trying to answer. Just why did the people of thirteen British North American colonies come together by 1776 in a generally united body to oppose what was considered the most powerful and richest nation in the world? It is thought by many that these colonists opposed taxation, but their own writing proves that this was not the case. They believed that taxation was something to be expected and to be willingly paid to provide for the common good. What they opposed was taxation without representation. More specifically, they felt they were not represented in Parliament like they were represented in the colonial legislature or towns. Yet, what was being taxed that caused the rebellious demeanor of ordinary men and women to come into existence?

            Breen did a marvelous job in compiling a deep pool of primary sources from the ordinary people of the 18^th century. Often people think of the men we call the Founders when they respond to the people of the Revolution. As modern historiography has been showing us over the last three decades, the American Revolution did not begin with the actions at Lexington and Concord, but rather with the reaction of the British colonists to Parliament’s attempts at raising revenue in the colonies. This should be well known because the people of that era recognized that fact as well. John Adams stressed that point himself in multiple forms of correspondence. Breen’s research into this reaction provided him with an illuminating view of how those ordinary people saw their world and their role in it change over a two decade period of time and precipitate the Revolution. 

            What really stood out other than Breen’s thesis are the words of the people in the sources he used. In quite a few cases, if the wording was adjusted to reflect modern speech, the words from the past would be the same as uttered throughout America regarding how people envision the “good old days.” While that wasn’t Breen’s intent for positing his thesis, it is extremely poignant in demonstrating that successive generations have all experienced the same myopic nostalgic opinion of the past when compared to the present. Breen also used the words of the past to show how the people of the 18^th century changed their views on the mother country and its manufactures from 1764 to 1775. In the process, Breen also shows that the real revolution took place among the people of the colonies.

            The people of the colonies experienced a significant cultural change which was among the first examples of consumerism to appear in history. Both the colonists and the British were dealing with a completely new phenomenon, and both had no clue what to expect from this new and extremely significant economic development. Breen’s research shows how the colonists embraced the British manufactures willingly albeit with some grumbling from the more conservative elements of colonial society. He also showed how those same colonists slowly came to realize that their participation in this new consumerist exchange could also be used as a weapon against what they considered abusive government. As Parliament sought to increase revenue from the colonies to pay down the tremendous debt the British had incurred in the Seven Year’s War, it blundered badly in the way it sought to do so. 

 

            Despite these blunders, Parliament repeatedly backed down from its imposition of new taxes on the colonists twice although the attempts by the colonists to use the transoceanic commerce as a form of economic weaponry had also failed twice. What baffles so many historians is the tax that proved to be fatal to the British rule was a tiny, insignificant, but highly symbolic tax on tea. That tax proved to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for the colonists. As Breen showed through the building up of the thesis through the primary sources and analysis of their meaning, the colonists came to see British manufactures and tea as symbols of tyranny because of the way those items were used in the taxation without representation argument. It was these items that formed a common bond between all colonists and these items that the colonists used as economic weapons to resist the British taxation. In the process, the non-consumption of these items or non-importation united the colonists to the point that they began to see themselves differently through their common use of the items. 

            As Breen progressed through each chapter he made a deliberate effort to include gender in how the colonists viewed the issues as well as class. He definitely wrote the book from a social history perspective as a result. While the idea of the marketplace being heavily involved in the Revolution seems a bit Beardian, Breen’s real conception of the era is that the marketplace was made up of individuals who made individual choices. His vision of the Revolution is that of a bottom up interpretation where it began among the common people. This is in line with much of current historical thought. Whereas Beard relied upon economic reasons for the Revolution to occur, Breen sees the economic situation as part of the overall Revolution. The people made the economy respond to them in causing the Revolution rather than the other way around.

            I was a bit disappointed that Breen didn’t take this thesis one step further into the much larger context of the Atlantic World. I think he did a great job in developing this thesis and delivering the conclusion, but the colonies were also part of international trade albeit limited by the Navigation Acts. What I particularly liked the best was that if anyone wonders why tea became the sole item that seemingly triggered events that brought about the Intolerable Acts, this book answers that question quite well and uses plenty of primary sources in the process. As a result, Breen has delivered a good explanation of how the colonists used the marketplace during the Revolution to resist the taxation with representation issue. Rather than restate an economic interpretation of the Revolution, Breen has given us a well detailed explanation of how the marketplace became the battleground in the Revolution.

           

The Mad Historian's Athenaeum, Vol. I, No. 4 Reprint

Fea, John. Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. ix + 182 ppg.

            Why it is important to study history may be the most difficult question a history teacher faces every semester. To the teacher it is obvious, yet trying to prove why is not so easy, especially when you have to convince a roomful of students that history has a purpose beyond taking up their time. John Fea, history department chair at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania answers the question with this well thought out exploration of the reasons why history is so important and worthy of study by all people. John is no stranger to discussing this subject. He has operated his blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home at philipvickersfithian.com for several years and has been talking about the importance of history every day for his audience. In fact, his blog seems to have helped him articulate about the subject so much that he was able to take what he had learned from it and put it in a book.

            The result is a very compact, extremely thoughtful, and amazingly deep look at why history is important to everyone. No one reading this should be surprised to understand we live in the middle of a large culture war where the events of the past are used in many ways, mostly incorrectly, in order for people or groups to present their opinions and beliefs to the public. John does not shy away from this fact. He uses it to its utmost effect in demonstrating just why the public should know their history. He gives several examples of people who try to pass themselves off as historians who then deliberately distort history in presenting their own beliefs. Fea doesn’t shy from naming the worst offenders either which makes the statements he delivers ring home. David Barton and Glenn Beck are presented exactly as they are, individuals who are mangling history to give legitimacy to their ideologies and beliefs. 

            Fea is a devout Christian teaching at a Christian college. He does not shy away from making that announcement either. The fact that Fea is calling out other Christians for their lies establishes Fea as a man who believes the means have to justify the end. As a historian, Fea recognizes the importance of truth in any message, truth which is extremely important in any religion if anyone expects faith to be anything but shallow. He explores this in the book and explains why historical accuracy is critical for evangelical faiths. Fea isn’t calling on a liberal interpretation of history either. He constantly points out the importance of truth and accuracy for all historians as well as anyone who seeks to use history in explaining their beliefs and opinions.

            This book is written for students taking their first history courses, but it has a great deal of meaning for anyone and any historian. It is usable at all levels of academia as well which should be refreshing for graduate students who are in historiography courses grappling with the question of why history is important. Each chapter explores a facet of historical study and does so in a clear and rational manner. Chapter Six, History for a Civil Society, is a very moving chapter. John lays out the importance history has for everyone in American society. He follows that with Chapter Seven, The Power to Transform. These chapters form a one-two punch that literally crushes those that would distort the past to their own ends. 

            In the process, John answers why history is so important. He uses examples of actual students who struggled with the questions history presented to them and how they let the facts speak for themselves. The truth revealed by the facts allowed the students to make decisions based upon the facts which in turn deepened their appreciation of the past and allowed them to see things through a different lens. Instead of manipulating the past to reach a desired outcome that fit in with their beliefs, these students learned that the people of the past did things for their reasons, expectations, and beliefs which are in many ways incompatible with ours today. The results made the students look at themselves as well. The realization that they were as flawed as the people of the past were was a maturing process. 

            All in all, as an instructor who teaches the beginning American History survey courses, I found this book to be an outstanding resource. Fea’s sources are cited throughout the book. He cites historians and educators and their works which have had an impact on him. This is a valuable resource for instructors seeking to explain why the study of history is so important to their students. Considering the fact that we live in a culture war where history is used to mislead people for many reasons, accurate historical knowledge helps arm people against those that would mislead the public for their own gain. I would be quite happy to make this required reading in my courses.  

    

           Also, John has a series of videos that can be used in conjunction with this book.  He calls them Virtual Office Hours and I find them to be very useful. They are short and compact discussions about the study of history. I have shown them to students and they were interested in them. One day I will have an actual history major come through one of my classes and I have a feeling they will really find these to be great references.

History...Yesterday in the Present

The Birth of an Iroquois Constitutional Legend 

(Original article posted on Boston 1775 by J.L. Bell, October 17, 2015)
 

Like any good fiction writer, Richard Barry didn’t just describe a dramatic meeting between John Rutledge and Sir William Johnson in 1765 and leave it there.

He also returned to the moment hundreds of pages later, when Rutledge was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and chairing its Committee of Detail (which Barry called by a different name):

At the first meeting of the Drafting Committee, on the morning of July 27, in Independence Hall, Rutledge, as chairman, drew from his pocket a parchment, which had never been referred to in the Convention or by any of the delegates outside, and read it aloud.

It was a replica of the constitution of the Treaty of the Five Nations (the Iroquois) of 1520. Rutledge read what the Indians had written more than two and a half centuries before: “We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity and order. . . .”

The chairman made no speech. He merely read the dry, quaint, and archaic words of the Indian parchment. The inference lay in the act. [Charles] Pinckney, [James] Madison, [William] Paterson, and the others had gone back through England and Greece. The fruit of their research lay to hand in the documents on the table. They would be utilized. But for the first brief moment Rutledge was saying to his committee, in effect: We are American, of this soil and none other.

Barry’s citations offer no source for this anecdote, and we skeptical readers shouldn’t accept such claims without evidence. As I noted yesterday, Barry’s statement that Rutledge had discussed the Iroquois form of government with Sir William Johnson in October 1765 doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Furthermore, words on “a parchment” wasn’t how the Iroquois Great Law of Peace worked. The Five Nations hadn’t “written” anything in 1520 (or in whatever year they allied); they didn’t have a written language yet. Wampum belts served as memory aids for the agreement but didn’t preserve exact language. English interpretations of the Great Law of Peace don’t start with “We, the people,…” but with the first-person voice of Dekanawidah, the Great Peacemaker.

Finally, Rutledge’s Committee of Detail didn’t even draft the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the part that starts “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”—phrasing supposedly adapted from that mythical Iroquois parchment. The first draft of the Preamble came out of the Committee on Style and Arrangement weeks later.

The gaping holes in Barry’s story didn’t stop Charles L. Mee, Jr., from repeating it briefly in The Genius of the People (1987), a popular history of the Constitution. Donald A. Grindé and Bruce E. Johansen then used that “evidence” in their argument in Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of American Democracy (1991) that the example of the Iroquois Confederacy influenced the Founders of the U.S. of A.

The popularity of that thesis in some circles appears in turn to have inspired Joy Hakim to go back to Barry’s book for the tale of Rutledge and Johnson, which she retold in A History of US: From Colonies to Country. That school textbook, published by Oxford University Press, is well regarded. It does a good job of getting beyond traditional power structures to tell the story of the whole American nation. However, in this instance the author was misled by a biographer who had just made stuff up.

(Diffusion Note: This article is part of a series explaining how a fictitious legend has been parroted by historians who did not check their sources. It is a very good example of why the use of primary sources is critical to the development of high quality and accurate history.)

History...Yesterday in the Present

  (Original Article posted on JR Bell's most excellent site: Boston 1775)

When the Stamp Act Congress Convened

On 7 Oct 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened at City Hall in New York (shown here). It was a week behind schedule.

As proposed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives back in June, this was a convention of delegates from the colonial legislatures of North America to come up with a common response to the Stamp Act.

Royal governors had done their best to stymie legislatures’ plans to participate in the congress, mostly by declining to convene those legislatures in time to choose delegates.

As a result, in Delaware, New York, and New Jersey legislative leaders chose delegates through committees or in meetings held without the governors’ approval. Other colonies, including the oldest and most populous, Virginia, couldn’t finagle a way to send anyone. Out of fourteen colonial legislatures invited (including Nova Scotia), only nine had representatives at the congress.

Massachusetts was one of those nine, but royal governor Francis Bernard was confident that he had things under control, as he reported to the Board of Trade in London on 8 July 1765:

It was impossible to oppose this Measure [for the congress] to any good purpose: and therefore the friends of Government took the lead in it, & have kept it in their hands; in pursuance of which, of the Committee appointed by this house to meet the other Committees at New York on the first of Octr. next, Two of the three are fast friends to Government & prudent & discreet men, such as I am assured will never consent to any undutiful or improper applications to the Government of great Britain. It is the general Opinion that nothing will be done in consequence of this intended Congress: but I hope I may promise myself that this province will act no indecent part therein.

The three Massachusetts delegates were all members of the committee that had recommended proposing the congress:

• James Otis, Jr., of Barnstable, the lawyer who had become leader of Massachusetts’s opposition.
• Oliver Partridge of Hatfield, veteran of the Albany Congress.
• Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick, a former house speaker and brigadier of the militia.

Probably because Massachusetts had instigated the meeting, there seems to have been consensus among the delegates that their chairman should be from that colony. But which man?

Blog of the Week, Vol. 1, No. 19

A few weeks ago I highlighted The New Republic's blog site and said I would reciprocate with a conservative blog site. I have been a little busy and have not made that next Blog of the Week article until now. So with no further ado, here is the Blog of the Week looking at The American Conservative.

     I can't say I am a big fan of this site, but compared to many other conservative sites, this one is actually pretty good. It is published by the American Ideas Institute (yes, I realize that some institute, foundation, or thinktank is behind many of the liberal and conservative blog sites) and promotes in their own words, "conservatism of realism and reform." Compared to the usual incompetent political rhetoric and lack of facts at most sites that advertise themselves as conservative, this one is downright honest. Basically, these people are the type that you can sit down and have an intelligent conversation with and skip the political rhetoric.

     The articles are worth reading. I like being able to read some articles that make sense and use facts to support the logic instead of bold claims that have no merit. I am not sure how many on the right feel about this site. I have seen several of the articles cited by moderates, but next to none by those who champion the more extreme side of conservative politics. That makes me wonder just how much attention this blog commands.

     I also have not seen it endorse any candidate for president as of yet. I haven't even seen a clue as to who it might endorse. If anything, it seems to be rejecting all of them so far. In fact, many articles have been negative for almost all of the candidates as far as I can tell. I have a feeling they know what is coming in November of 2016 and are looking beyond to rebuilding the Republican Party so that it appeals to more Americans instead of just those on the far right of the spectrum. We shall see how that goes.

     I like the blog because I can read some good articles without the ridiculousness of what is currently passing for political conversation on the right. If the US is going to continue to exist it will have to do so with the input of both left and right, not just one side. History shows that, but unfortunately some people are not paying attention to history. The American Conservative is paying attention. Considering that The American Conservative was created in opposition to the Iraq War back in 2002 and it encouraged its readers to vote Democratic in 2006, it is very clear that this is a site that is not afraid to reject the lunacy that has infected the GOP recently.

     This is what America needs more of whether it be liberal or conservative. It needs dialogue built on respect and facts, not rhetoric. So if you are looking for a blog that is not liberal, but not catering to the lunatic fringe, give The American Conservative a try. You may not hear what you want to hear all the time, but then again you may hear what you should be hearing instead of some fantasy.