The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-america [Hardcover]

Kevin P. Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 1998

The question at the heart of The Cousins’ Wars is this: How did Anglo-America evolve over a mere three hundred years from a small Tudor kingdom into a global community with such a hegemonic grip on the world today, while no other European power - Spain, France, Germany, or Russia - did? The answer to this, according to Phillips, lies in a close examination of three internecine English-speaking civil warsÑthe English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. These wars between cousins functioned as crucial anvils on which various religious, ethnic, and political alliances were hammered out between the English-speaking cousin-nations, setting them on a unique two-track path toward world leadership - one aristocratic and aloof to dominate the imperial nineteenth century and the other more egalitarian and democratic to take over in the twentieth century. They also functioned as unfortunate and deadly cultural crucibles for African Americans, Native Americans, and the Irish.Phillips’s analysis shows exactly how these conflicts are inextricably linked and how they seeded each other. He offers often surprising interpretations that cut across the political spectrum - for instance, that the Constitution of the United States, while brilliant in many respects, was also a fatally flawed political compromise that contributed mightily in setting the stage for the final - and the bloodiest - cousins’ war: the American Civil War.With the new millennium upon us and triggering widespread assessment of our nation’s place in world history, The Cousins’ Wars provides just the kind of magisterial sweep and revisionist spark to ignite widespread interest and debate. This grand religious, military, and political epic is the multi-dimensional story of the triumph of Anglo-America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Political commentator Kevin Phillips (author of the 1991 bestseller The Politics of Rich and Poor) takes a break from analyzing the latest election returns with this sweeping history of Anglo-American exceptionalism. How did the political culture of Anglo-America rise "from a small Tudor kingdom to a global community and world hegemony"? asks Phillips. His answer comes in the course of studying three wars--the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the U.S. Civil War. Phillips does not examine the military history of these conflicts, looking instead at the political, religious, economic, and sectional interests that shaped them. He makes several eye-opening observations, comparing, for instance, a "state-by-state portrait of which counties, towns, districts, or regions were loyal" during the American Revolution to "ethnoreligious maps of the modern-day Balkans." This is a hefty book (over 600 pages, not including appendices and footnotes), and while Phillips's preface is a bit self-absorbed, admirers of David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel will find much to like between its covers. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

Phillips (Arrogant Capital) is one of the most influential political analysts in America. In 1969, his The Emerging Republican Majority correctly predicted that the Republicans would become the majority party by taking control of the then Democratic South. Now, turning to the past, he offers this ambitious account of how "Anglo-America"?his term for the cultural and political axis and kinship of the U.S. and Britain?came to dominate the political, linguistic and economic shape of the world. His thesis is sweeping: a trio of wars?the English Civil War, the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War?were a single crucible out of which a dominant Anglo-America emerged. In each of these "cousins' wars," maintains Phillips, the catalytic groups were similar: Puritans from Eastern England (East Anglia) in the 1640s; their Yankee descendants in New England in 1775 and 1860. Moreover, he argues, each of the three wars reaffirmed and spurred Anglo-America's expansionism, as well as the belief of British imperialists and American pioneers that they were God's chosen people with a manifest destiny to fulfill. Phillips emphasizes the plight of the cousins' wars' principal losers: black slaves and ex-slaves, Native Americans, the Irish. Interestingly, he counts Germans among the losers, arguing that Anglo-American ascendancy and waves of European emigration to the U.S. diminished the relative clout of German-Americans and thwarted Germany's expansionist ambitions. As in his political analyses, Phillips pays close attention to ethnic, religious, class and electoral divisions. At times, his thoroughness makes for slow, somewhat wonky going, but on balance this is a tremendously rewarding work full of startling connections and provocative syntheses. Agent, Bill Leigh.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 736 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (December 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465013694
• ISBN-13: 978-0465013692
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #700,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Thesis, November 5, 2001

By 

matthew j herbers (New Berlin, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America (Paperback)

Phillips make a compelling argument that the three wars, English Civil War of 1640, American Revolution of 1776, and American Civil War of 1861, all carry the same dynamics between combatants. Those dynamics, Catholic vs. Protestant, Reformer vs. Conservative, Land Holder vs. Artisan, tumble down from one war to the next, and Phillips does a thorough job of explaining them. However, my only complaint with the book is that he was too thorough. I am an avid reader of history as a hobby, so I am a stranger neither to details in demographics nor dealing with person and place names unfamiliar to me. But I read history because it is fascinating stuff with outrageous personalities and remarkable coincidences, things that fiction simply cannot create and call "plausible". This book was more of a thesis--dry and heavy going.

I recommend the book to those who want to look at these wars, and the relationship between the USA and the UK, in a new light. The conclusions are eye-opening and thought provoking. But the path to getting to those conclusions is a tough one, so I do not recommend this book to those who read history as a happy diversion from daily routine.

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A provocative thesis, May 9, 2000

By 

R Boast/D Edmunds - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America (Paperback)

Every now and then a book comes along which really does live up to the usual publisher's hype that it will change our view of history - this book is one. Although there are a few factual and spelling mistakes (it's "Macaulay", not "Macauley") and the author is clearly not as comfortable with the English civil war as he is with the two other "cousins' wars" (the American revolutionary war and the US Civil War) this is a five-star book for the novelty and interest of its main thesis. It goes a lot further than books such as Fisher's which note the persistence of English regional ethnic communities in the US. It is a study rather of how Anglo-American world hegemony came to be through three trans-Atlantic civil wars. There are some parallels with JCD's Clark's emphasis on the primacy of religious discourse in Early Modern Britain and America, but Clark is a difficult writer and _The Cousin's Wars_ is very readable, and anyway goes a lot further than Clark. The author's emphasis on the divisions within the American colonies at the time of the revolution and on the strength of Whig support for the Americans in England is refreshing. Hopefully "The Cousins' Wars" Atlantic perspective will inspire more English historians to escape from their increasingly narrow pedantic anti-Whig history which has drained the subject of so much of its meaning and interest - and which can by now be clearly seen to be a dead end. And it's nice that the author recognises that Anglo-America also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which together with the UK-Ireland and the USA form a natural community of countries with shared traditions and origins. Time for the Crown to be dumped and all the "Anglo-American" countries to work on closer links?

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Refreshing View Of Anglo-America, February 25, 2000

By 

Peter Savage "seriously" (Near Portland, ME USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America (Paperback)

This is a startling book in many ways. First, the author completely avoids the usual "generals and battles" approach to the trio of wars: The English Civil War, The American Revolution and The American Civil War. Instead, he painstakingly follows what he sees as the 'real story', the religious affinities and social aspirations of the patchwork societies of the time. And how the push-and-pull between groups that can loosely be characterized as puritans and cavaliers sparked each of these internecine conflicts. The detail and clarity of the analysis is remarkable, but then, Phillips is a political demographer and thinker of great weight, who usually confines himself to modern times. You'll never think about the origins of the US, the misfortunes of the Irish, or current affairs in the same way again. It deserves to be read in conjunction with Fred Anderson's "Cauldron Of War", which covers an element that Phillips doesn't spend much time on, the Seven Year's War (French & Indian War). "Cousins' War" is a virtual hymn to the stunning rise and success of the US and the UK, whose centripetal forces shaped the 20th Century. And will continue to be important long into this one. Don't hesitate to buy it!