Customer Reviews

Colonies to Nation, 1763-1789: A Documentary History of the American Revolution

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This old book deserves a notice because there is no better place to begin your study of the American Revolution than with this collection of documents compiled and edited 40 years ago by one of the two or three living giants of the history of this period. Greene's introductory notes on each set of documents are succinct and rich. You can literally follow the progress of events and the way the stakes were ratcheted up with each succeeding crisis, up to the final break and beyond - it's better than any textbook because you get the primary sources (loyalist as well as "patriot" -- it's great because you can see exactly where someone like MA royal gov. Thomas Hutchinson was coming from -- try arguing against his point that: "I know of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of parliament and the total independence of the colonies, as it is impossible there should be two independent legislatures in one and the same state." The "patriots," as you will see in this book, stumbled into conceding the point and opted for Independence).
The book's only limitation is that the historiographical notes have not been updated since the first edition (though they are still a fantastic guide to the literature up to the mid-1960s -- there is no better guide to it than Greene) - so if you're keeping up with the trajectory of the scholarly take on the Revolution, you'll need to supplement with the last 40 years of research. But as a foundational volume on the Revolution -- and I would recommend this to the absolute beginner -- this has no superior.