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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some things to think about here., October 19, 2003
This is not a light book, nor is it the objective historical record. It has a point of view, perhaps one might say two or three points of view. Some of it is old hat. The discussion of Lexington and Concord brings to mind Bill Cosby's routine about flipping the coin at the beginning of a game, "The colonials win the toss. They get to stand begind rocks and trees and shoot. The British must wear red uniforms, beat drums and march in rows." And when we get to Guilford Courtyard, the author would have us believe that Cornwallis' action of firing on his own men reveals his tactical skill, not his contempt for the pressed, enlisted and mercenary troops he commanded. Still it is a useful book. Clearly it reveals that the experience of Vietnam is not an isolated fact. Determined locals, controlling vast territory (or having an available sanctuary) - the Carolina swamps , for example- can play havoc on a professional amy with doctrines of combat, rules of engagement, and extended supply lines. Especially when that local force has the element of time. And this brings up public opinion at home. The text has a wealth of documents from the period demonstrating a situation not unlike that which we experieced in the sixties and seventies. The slow turn of public opinion, the mounting cost in men, money and morale. It was all there then. The final point, one worth our consideration in an era of disputed vote counts and court interference is the idea that the radicalism of the American Revolution was hijacked by the aristocratic and moneyed classes of this nation via such devices as the ecectoral college. A sort of "we had to destroy this revolution to save it" philosophy. Not a really new idea, but well put here. I am not so sure this book makes as much apology for the colonial system as other reviews imply, but it is after all the work of the losing side ( a rare thing in history), but maybe it's the work of the other winning side.
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37 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Arguing with the ghosts of historians past, June 21, 2003
History is written by the winners, and this is British journalist Robert Harvey's attempt to rewrite it from the losers' perspective. Highly readable (often compellingly so), Harvey's account of the American Revolution has much to recommend it, and his narrative offers a nice refresher course in military history. The volume also includes extensive excerpts (with modernized spelling) from contemporary chronicles, lending the book a "you are there" touch. Throughout, Harvey inveighs against Americans' "heroic view of the Revolution" and "the remarkably enduring nature of the myths." But many of his versions of episodes in American history seem to have been culled from textbooks written fifty years ago. (Of the more than 160 works listed in the bibliography, only 14 were written after 1980.) Not once does Harvey identify the writers with whom he is arguing: his summary of the "prevailing myths" are always prefaced by "It is asserted," "It is claimed," "It is widely believed." For example, he claims that "one of the darkest and least researched corners of the American Revolution was the treatment of the loyalists," but he seems entirely oblivious of the scholarly studies by Christopher New or William Nelson or even of the standard popular account by Christopher Moore. Although Harvey seems to regard his revisionism as startlingly original, there is little that is new here. Instead, he seems to be debating the ghosts of such long-dead historians as Carl Becker and George Trevelyan. At times, too, he is so intent on offering a contrary view that he traps himself in a corner. For example, he argues that historians "have traditionally ascribed" Burgoynes's disastrous expedition to Albany and surrender at Saratoga "to massive incompetence on the part of the British." Instead, Harvey contends, the British loss "can be more readily explained by the professional jealousy of two rival commanders." Let's set aside the hair-splitting question of whether military leaders who favor spite over victory can still be considered "competent." I defy anyone to read the subsequent fifty pages and still conclude that Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe were anything other than stupendously inept. Even Harvey seems to abandon his initial claim, finally admitting that defeat was "due to Burgoyne's suicidal impulse to advance and attack." The bulk of Harvey's book focuses on military strategy and the specifics of various battles. He gives relatively short shrift to the ideological, social, economic, or political underpinnings of the conflict. When he does offer such analysis, though, his reliance on work published in the United States undercuts his thesis that Americans have an uncritical view of their own origins. His section on the frontier war is little more than an abstract of Colin Calloway's "The American Revolution in Indian Country," and the chapter on the hypocrisy of slave-owners fighting for liberty summarizes Benjamin Quarles's 1961 study, "The Negro in the American Revolution." (The author seems unaware of the dozens of studies published since Quayle's that recount in far more critical terms the treatment of blacks by American rebels.) Harvey characterizes American complaints against British rule as whining hypocrisy, and he (correctly) points out that British colonial rule was so minimal as to be hardly "oppressive"--in large part because London was unable to rule the colonies effectively from across the Atlantic Ocean. He also claims that the rebels barely won the war and, if it weren't for the French, probably would have lost it. Yet, even if the British had prevailed in the 1780s, it is certain America would have won independence in some future decade--as did Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, India, Iraq, and every major colonial possession ever governed by the United Kingdom. Harvey never pauses to step back and look at the bigger picture: that while British rule may not have been so bad, it was untenable, unwanted, unnecessary, and ultimately doomed to failure. Overall, then, Harvey's stirring prose and strident arguments can't overcome the fact that his book is both fifty years behind the time and ill-considered in its implicit defense of colonialism.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A revised look at the American Revolution, January 29, 2006
Journalist Robert Harvey has attempted to write a "corrective" regarding the American Revolution; it's his belief that the Americans have mythologized and glorified the events and people involved, while the British have merely ignored them. Considering both trends to be negative and counter-productive, he has written this book with the hope of bringing both sides into better balance. At the beginning Harvey states that "virtually every common assumption has to be substantially modified, if not rejected." Some of these "assumptions" that he challenges include: Americans were not just motivated by a love of liberty, but more by economic self-interest and internal social unrest; a large number of Americans opposed resistance to Britain (8% of the population left America after the war); British commanders were incompetent while America's were geniuses; Saratoga was "the turning point" of the War; and French intervention "saved" the colonies from destruction. Harvey's most compelling argument regarding these objections is with the French intervention: he points out, and it makes sense, that when the French decided to back the American cause, it forced the British to concentrate its naval power off the European continent rather than against the colonies. The least compelling concerns his dismissing the British military leaders as being "merely" arrogant or lazy or overconfident - faults in generals that have wrecked many an army. Harvey is usually pretty fair-minded, and instead of totally debunking standard beliefs (he points out Washington's failures in the War, which the mythologists try to ignore, but recognizes his strengths, too), he re-examines them in a more critical light. I thought his final chapter on the creation of the Constitution after the country almost fell to anarchy, bankruptcy, and internal revolt after the British were defeated to be the best. He is quick to point out that the truly amazing thing about the Constitution and the "American experiment" in democracy was how they were able to combine individual freedoms with a set body of laws, to put controls on what undoubtedly would have spun off into total chaos. He is very impressed with how the Constitution was hammered out and what it finally meant for a free republic - as we all should still be today. Harvey writes engagingly and with verve, and his book is a most interesting one. Whether his goals in writing the book were ever actually achieved (see my first paragraph above), it's hard to say (my guess would be doubtful), I personally got much pleasure from reading it. Recommended.
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