robert palmer review

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Review Author(s): C. L. Mowat Review by: C. L. Mowat Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 1960), pp. 257-259Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and CultureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1943360Accessed: 18-06-2015 09:08 UTC

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REVIEWS OF BOOKS 257

from daring, secrecy, superb woodsmanship, and thorough preparation and training. His superior, General Gage, envied his military reputation, and Sir William Johnson feared his efforts to acquire land and his influence with the Indians. Between them they laid him low, but it took consider- able doing. If Rogers were constantly in debt, he borrowed first to pay his rangers-and was never fully repaid. Accusations of treason made against him were manifest fabrications to discredit him. And, though he fought for England during the Revolution, it was only after Congress had rejected his services.

On the whole admirably written, this volume has its flaws. Johnson's hatred and that of Gage are explained, but not the opposition of so many more of Rogers' associates. Amherst's ambivalent attitude toward him is not elucidated. (compare p. I45 and p. I58) There are a number of proof- reading slips in spelling and dates (Rogers' first ranger commission was dated i756, not I760), and the indexing is incomplete. Yet the volume is swift-paced, the phrasing often vivid, and the research extensive. Rogers was clearly the victim of a conspiracy which historians ever since have compounded by neglecting him; perhaps now the injustice may be partially redressed.

Cortland State College of Education Cortland, New York DONALD H. STEWART

The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, I760-i800: The Challenge. By R. R. PALMER. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. Pp. 534. $7.50.)

In this arresting book Professor Palmer (to borrow from his title) challenges historians by his example to undertake large works single- handed, scorning the collaborative method, and to turn from parochial or even national researches to the broad, synoptic view of history. He sees in the period from I760 to i79i a unity embodied in the Democratic Revolution, the challenge of democratic ideas to government by privilege, whether in Europe or the British colonies in North America. In a sequel he will describe the "struggle" of these forces between i7gi and i8oo.

This democratic movement is traced in Britain and her American colonies, in France, Sweden, Geneva, and the Hapsburg Empire during the i760's. After the American Revolution and in spite of its influence, Professor Palmer descries and describes an "aristocratic resurgence" in the same European countries, affecting even Ireland and halted only-and


258 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

there temporarily-in Poland. In France this revolte nobilaire was the proximate cause of the Revolution.

From an enterprise of this scale and boldness complete success is hardly to be expected. Professor Palmer's style is clear if undistinguished, with an unnecessary (because unpolemical) intrusion of the personal pronoun. He is occasionally repetitious and is led into needlessly discursive accounts of Rousseau and Voltaire, Delolme, Mably, Mounier, Burke, and other men whose ideas interest him. He is too self-conscious in his unusual task ("occupied more with European than American history, I have been able only to sample this literature" of the American Revolution: p. i86). He has, in fact, confused analysis with description. His task is not to narrate the various revolutions of the time but to correlate them. Had he confined himself to this, he would have produced a much shorter, easier, and more closely reasoned work. Instead of a brilliant essay we are given a some- what unwieldy book.

Not that it does not have great merits. There is a freshness of view which comes from a novel perspective. Parallels not always observed become clear: between American committees of correspondence and the similar committees of the English county associations of I780, between representatives on mission in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War and in France a few years later. Interesting questions are asked and an- swered: the comparative tax burdens in the American colonies and several European countries, the comparative numbers of American loyalists and French emigres. We are reminded of Burke's essential conservatism long before the French Revolution and springing chiefly from his "adulation of Parliament." (p. 309) We are shown the irresponsibility of the Whigs in opposition before and during the American war: they undermined American respect for the King and for Parliament and fanned American discontent which they had no power or ideas for relieving. (pp. I72-I73)

Not all Professor Palmer's parallels will command assent. It can be argued that both in Great Britain and in Ireland aristocratic (or oligarchic) government was never seriously challenged in the I76o's and so could experience no "resurgence" in the eighties. Rather, George III's intervention in politics challenged the power of a Whig clique and sent some of its members into opposition. When the American war went badly this clique temporarily reasserted itself, using the old suspicions of country against court which produced the county associations. It soon parted from the radicals, the true reformers; and Pitt was able to restore the former mixture of oligarchic government and limited royal influence. It is thus an exaggeration to ascribe "the climax and failure of the early movement for parliamentary reform in England" (p. i85) to the Ameri-


REVIEWS OF BOOKS 259

can Revolution. The remark that "with Pitt in office the aristocracy was kept at a distance" (p. 302) reads strangely. Nor can Grattan's Parliament be represented as the triumph of democracy in Ireland. The government, hard pressed in the war, made a concession to the nationalism of the Anglo-Irish gentry, but then allowed the continuing strength of the Protestant "ascendancy" and the influence of Fitzgibbon and Beresford at Dublin Castle to nullify its effect-hardly a case of aristocratic resurgence.

This is not to deny a,- kinship between democratic movements in Europe and America. Professor Palmer does not claim that the American Revolution grew out of the European movements, but he does, in a striking chapter, show how pervasive was its inspiration upon Europe. It furnished a model for putting into effect the ideas of government by consent and the sovereignty of the people. (p. 214) It familiarized the "convention" as a body to frame and ratify a constitution. In John Adams's preamble to the Massachusetts constitution of I780, it anglicized the word "citizen." Above all, in the making of the state and federal constitutions (as an admirable chapter, "The People as Constituent Power," shows) it demonstrated that a sovereign people could form a government and put themselves under it. Thus the American Revolution "inspired the sense of a new era . . . it dethroned England, and set up America, as a model for those seeking a better world." (p. 282)

Yet-one last caveat-the American Revolution represents the democratic challenge only in a limited sense. When it came to war with Great Britain, it was "a struggle between democratic and aristocratic forces." (p. 202) But the government of the American colonies had never been aristocratic: the colonial oligarchies (from which most of the Revolu- tionary leaders came) were based, as Professor Palmer shows, on institu- tions far more democratic (for example in the franchise) than in con- temporary Britain. Democracy, like other American attributes, had evolved in response to the American environment, whose influence Professor Boorstin has so convincingly described. "In America they claim ... to be perfect States, not otherwise dependent on Great Britain than by having the same King," wrote Governor Bernard in 1765. (p. i62) The Americans rebelled, not against an old order as in Europe, but against the British attempt to impose a new order in the imperial reorganization after I763. Without this challenge, would American democracy have formulated and demonstrated its ideas in time to furnish inspiration to the democratic revolution in Europe? University College of North Wf'ales, Bangor C. L. MOWAT


Article Contentsp. 257p. 258p. 259

Issue Table of ContentsThe William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 1960), pp. 143-288Front MatterThe Appointment of Chief Justice Marshall [pp. 143-163]The Pilgrims and Their Harbor [pp. 164-182]Queensborough Township: Scotch-Irish Emigration and the Expansion of Georgia, 1763-1776 [pp. 183-199]German Intellectuals and the American Revolution [pp. 200-218]Notes and DocumentsDid the Jennison Case Outlaw Slavery in Massachusetts? [pp. 219-241]A British Reaction to the Treaty of San Ildefonso [pp. 242-246]

Trivia [pp. 247-248]Reviews of BooksReview: untitled [pp. 249-251]Review: untitled [pp. 251-254]Review: untitled [pp. 254-256]Review: untitled [pp. 256-257]Review: untitled [pp. 257-259]Review: untitled [pp. 260-261]Review: untitled [pp. 261-262]Review: untitled [pp. 263-264]Review: untitled [pp. 264-265]Review: untitled [pp. 265-266]Review: untitled [pp. 266-269]Review: untitled [pp. 269-270]Review: untitled [pp. 270-271]Review: untitled [pp. 271-272]Review: untitled [pp. 273-274]Review: untitled [pp. 274-275]Review: untitled [pp. 275-277]Review: untitled [pp. 277-278]Review: untitled [pp. 278-279]Review: untitled [pp. 279-280]Review: untitled [pp. 280-281]Review: untitled [pp. 281-282]

Letters to the Editor [pp. 283-287]