The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire [Paperback]

Francis Jennings (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0521664810 | ISBN-13: 978-0521664813

In the standard presentation of the American Revolution, a ragtag assortment of revolutionaries, inspired by the ideals of liberty and justice, rise to throw off the yoke of the British empire and bring democracy to the New World. It makes a pretty story. Now, in place of this fairytale standing in for history, Francis Jennings presents a realistic alternative: a privileged elite, dreaming of empire, clone their own empire from the British. Jennings shows that colonies were extensions from Britain intended from the first to conquer American Indians. Though subordinate to the British crown, in the opposite direction they ruled over beaten native peoples. Adding to this dual nature, some colonists bought Africans as slaves and rigidly ruled over them within their colonies. To justify conquests and oppression, they invented the concept of racial gradation in a system of social castes. We live with it still. In this full scale reconception, the experience of tribal Indians and enslaved Blacks is brought into the whole picture. The colonists were enraged by efforts of crown and Parliament to forbid settlement in tribal territories. Especially Virginians rose under great speculator George Washington to seize the western lands in defiance of the crown's orders. We witness the founders' invasion and attempted conquest of Canada and the "conquest" of Pennsylvania as Quakers and German pietists were deprived of citizenship rights and despoiled of property through armed force and legal trickery. British sympathies were so strong that George III had to hire Hessians as soldiers because he could not trust his own people. And Britain also had movements for reform that won freedom of the press and refusal to legislate slavery while the Revolutionaries tarred and feathered their opponents and strengthened the slavery institution. Revolutionary rhetoric about liberty and virtue is revealed as war propaganda. Illegal "committees" and "conventions" functioned like soviets of the later Russian revolution. The U.S. Constitution was the fulfillment of the Revolution rather than its "Thermidor." The work is meticulously documented and detailed. By including the whole population in its history, Jennings provides an eloquent explanation for a host of anomalies, ambiguities, and iniquities that have followed in the Revolution's wake.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A longstanding historian of colonial America, Jennings (Benjamin Franklin, Politician, etc.), the former director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, is tired of the traditional celebratory story of the American Revolution. "My book," he writes, "is an effort to tell the Revolution for adults." Jennings examines nearly every aspectAregion by region; battle by battle; and through the eyes of Indians, the British and the colonists. Along the way, he nimbly demonstrates that the colonists, though they claimed to be fighting for liberty, were fighting for the sort of liberty that didn't extend to Native Americans or black slaves. Hardly disinterested servants of the public good, he further argues, the founding fathers were politicians looking out for their own interests. Indeed, they weren't fighting for abstract principles; the colonists didn't, in truth, favor a democratic republic over an empire. To the contrary, according to Jennings, they were very devoted to the idea of empireAthey simply wanted to run it themselves rather than "acting as agents for Great Britain." Throughout, Jennings looks especially at they ways in which ideas about race helped the colonists justify certain kinds of conquest. And although he does not say much that has not been argued dozens of times before, his synthesis is provocative, useful and clearly stated. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

From the conventional view of the American Revolution as a struggle of oppressed colonists throwing off the yoke of royal tyranny, Jennings begs to differ. He asks readers to adopt the perspective of the many enslaved African Americans and marginalized American Indians. From their viewpoint, colonists' talk of liberty and equality rang hollow. Those high-sounding sentiments were little more than war propaganda, for their lands and their persons were either confiscated or enslaved by these very "freedom fighters." Starting with the founding of the colonies, Jennings documents the European settlers' determination to create empires. It took a few decades until they came to see their empire as distinct from Britain's. Early North American maps with their undefined boundaries reveal the western pretensions and breadth of the colonists' claims. Jennings presents his provocative views in a readable style that expands the substance of his argument. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521664810
• ISBN-13: 978-0521664813
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,953,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Your High School American History Book, January 10, 2001

By 

Leo M. Renaghan (Ithaca, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (Paperback)

American history never made sense to me and now I know why. As voltaire said, "History is the lie commonly agreed upon" and that's what was taught to me in school and is now taught to my son. Francis Jennings tries to change all that with a "revisionist history" asking the questions that when posed by students in school are ignored by teachers. How did material progress evolve in a country that was already populated by over 25 million inhabitants? Who owned america? How did we shift from a policy of cooperation with the indians (a la Thanksgiving) to one of aggression. How much of our revolution was political and how much economic? How did relations between colonialists and Great Britain deteriorate so quickly after so many years of harmony? This book is an overview of much that Jennings has written in earlier books with some further thoughts and ideas. What is most enjoyable is that he is willing to speculate, to question accepted fact and wisdom, to go out on a limb, to offer an opinion on various events, characters and situations. For the first time american history became real to me: the people human, the events complex and contradictory, the struggle for independence understandable. In the end a history not much different from what has been happening recently in Washington. The prose can be turgid; parts of it are somewhat academic but Jennings moves the story along and makes for me (a non-historian) very telling points. He left this reader with much to think about. I have since gone out and bought his other books and will be reading those in 2001. A good balancing piece after this book is A Struggle For Power by Theodore Draper.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very important book, should be required in history class, July 1, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (Paperback)

Both of us loved this book and we bought a copy for a friend who also thought it was great. I couldn't believe the 3-star rating it got, but saw one reviewer found it "turgid." We found it an easy read, but we are both college graduates. More important the information and analysis was exciting and outstanding, full of connections and insights that we were never taught in school. Jennings made so much sense of the reality and dynamics of the American Revolution by including the usually-omitted "Indians." Thank you, Mr. Jennings.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get the REAL American History Here, August 27, 2002

By 

A Mclane (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire (Paperback)

I loved this book! It is the most realistic, no-nonsence presentation of the American colonial story as I have ever see, in or out of school. Jennings tells it like it was, sans the "romance" and "heroics" often portrayed in school texts and by those historians who want to cast a rosy glow on the American story; he portrays the struggle for empire (not just "freedom"), depicting not just the challenges with which American settlers confronted England, but he tells of the struggles between the varied inhabitants of the early colonies, from the landed genty to slaves, from the native Indians to the land-seeking westward travelers. There are stories both amazing and cruel in this book, and Jennings pulls no punches in calling a thief a thief (even if one did become President) and a tyrant a tyrant (even though one became Secretary of State). Jennings' report is told in just plain "straight-up" language, without the usual laudatory embellishments. In the end, I was still proud to be an American, seeing how this nation was put together by real human beings... some heros, some not.

The only fault I found with this book was the manner in which some historic episodes and events got repeated from one chapter to the next. True, Jennings may have been casting a new light, fresh discussion, on a previously-discussed event, but this repetition sometimes seem to interfer with the logical progression of the historic chronology Nevertheless, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what reeeally happened in the formation of this nation.