Customer Reviews

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is a history of the last 12 years of the 18th century, which, according to historian Jay Winik, was a period which set the world firmly on the path of human rights, human equality, freedom, and representative government. Beginning in fits and starts with the American Revolution, it the moves east to France, and finally to Poland, which at the time was under Russian control. Of the three, the American Revolution was the most successful; the French Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the ancien regime and lasted for about a decade, but was eventually put down by Napoleon; and the liberal experiment in Poland was suppressed before it even got started by Catherine the Great.

We have long been aware of the kinship between the French and American Revolutions; both were born of Enlightenment ideas put into practice. Many of the main players - Jefferson, Lafayette, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin - participated on both sides of the Atlantic. What is new and novel about this work is that Winik shows how these two revolutions were more interconnected than previously thought, and how they were connected with the events in Poland and points east. The world that Winik describes is one in which people and ideas "freely crossed and recrossed borders." The beginnings of globalization, one might say.

In 1789 the American Constitution was ratified, although contentious at the time, it remains our founding and governing document to this day. It was a success by anyone's standards. As these events were unfolding, the European continent was looking on with bated breath. They were waiting to see if the masses would rise up and demand their rights as citizens. The French, during this same year, were storming the Bastille. This affair turned out to be much more bloody than its American counterpart. Americans had the good fortune of being able to start with a clean slate on a new continent. They also had very good leadership from some outstanding individuals such as George Washington. The French had none of the above. They were bogged down with a long history of strife and violence. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, written by Lafayette and Jefferson, was an admirable document and it guided the revolutionary struggle for almost a decade. But with Napoleon's coup d'etat its ideals, along with the Revolution, fell by the wayside.

The next ripple of the revolutionary wave moving eastward is in Poland. Being under Russia's control, it was anxious to break free and establish a republic of its own. The leader of this revolt was Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of the American Revolution. Kosciuszko thought he could finesse a peaceful American-style transformation of Poland. Catherine the Great, purportedly an enlightened monarch, saw things differently. She fretted a bloody French-style upheaval would take place, given that the circumstances in Poland were similar to those in France. She decided to crush the Polish revolt and take that country as well as Russia in an autocrtic direction. Russia remain backward and oppressed until the its violent revolution of 1917.

This is a very long book (695 pages) and there are long sections that have no obvious connection to the theme of revolutions. For example, there is a lengthy account of Russia's war with the Ottoman Empire. It is interesting if one is studying imperial conquests, but not relevant to the subject at hand. Nevertheless, this is an interesting work that suggests how interconnected the world was even before our globalized era.

This book is riveting. Just as Jay Winik changed the way we see the end of the Civil War in April 1865, he's done it again for the Founding period in The Great Upheaval. America was never isolated from the rest of the world--from the moment of its birth it was enmeshed in events in Revolutionary France and far-off Russia. Winik exquisitely recreates this world--from the tortured in-fighting of our nation's founders, to the bloodshed of the French Terror, to Catherine the Great's Russian armies making (ultimately futile) war on Islam. Woven into these events is also a heart-breaking history of slavery and a fantastic look inside the heart of the Islamic Ottoman empire. I was engrossed by Winik's renditions of not just the Americans, like Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams and their epic struggles to build a nation, but also his depictions of Catherine the Great--so vital to these times and so often ignored, as well as the Louis XVI and Marie Antionette, Napoleon, and Robespierre. Unike too many books, which are great only for the first 50 pages, this one builds with drama--the French Revolutionaries actually sought to start a rebellion on American soil and George Washington believed that America's envoys to France had been guillotined. But beyond the incredible story of holy war, revolution, and fierce rebellion inside the U.S., the lessons from this book stay with you: In Russia, imperial hubris drove flawed crusades against the Islamic world. In France, the political opposition guillotined their opponents. In America, George Washington learned to tolerate them--and taught others to do the same. This lesson of tolerance, of respecting divergent views, of balance and compromise in the face of the most bitter disputes is one the nation can desperately use again today. But these lessons can also give us hope. The Great Upheaval is a masterpiece, and it couldn't have arrived at a better time.

Jay Winik's newest book, The Great Upheaval, is better than his award-winning April 1860 only because the pleasure of reading it lasts so much longer at over 600 pages. This history of the last decade of the 18th century, which juxtaposes events taking place in the United States, France and Russia, will make many schools and universities rethink the way they teach American and modern European history.

In most learning institutions these subjects are treated in separate courses. Winik's thesis challenges that approach. He asserts, and then proves beyond doubt, that events in these three countries during this time had considerable effect on one another. He artfully explains how in a comprehensive work that obviates the need for three separate courses by alternating chapters that artfully picture for us those interrelations.

Benjamin Franklin knew everyone who was anyone in the period during the French Revolution. Catherine the Great had Voltaire and other philosophes in her pocket. Polish nobility played at a role approaching that of La Fayette in the American Revolution. The war between Islam and the Infideles was a hot, not a Cold War.

For anyone interested in any part of this historical period, this book is a must. And if your interest starts with only one of these three countries, I guarantee that you won't be skipping any chapters; you will quickly become a convert to Winik's position that you cannot understand events within your country of interest without understanding what was happening elsewhere.

For anyone who loves to read history when it is not dryly presented, you will be overwhelmed at the pleasure of reading this just for fun.

Jay Winik's newest book is a well-written, well-reasoned and enjoyable read. Mr. Winik brings to life the swirling currents of late 18th century history and politics with his keen eye for interesting anecdotes and his journalist's instinct for superb story-telling. His thesis -- that the great transformations of France, Russia, and the United States were inter-related and influenced by each other -- is brilliantly supported in this thought-provoking book. Mr. Winik demonstrates, as no historian has before, how interconnected were the fates of the leading nations of the time, England, France, Russia and the nascent United States. Mr. Winik has an especially keen ability to bring to life the leading actors in this historical drama by giving the reader vivid details and rich biographical narratives. It's a fun read and it will expand your thinking about the great nations of today and how they came to be as a result of the "great thinkers and doers" of this fascinating, turning-point era.

The Great Upheaval is a riviting story of America's founding and amazing survival in the midst of a global "Great Upheaval." Then as now - Russia, France and the Islamic world were players. There was even an Islamic holy war going on. Winik shows how America's Revolution, followed by an even bloodier revolt and terror in France, a savage war between the Islamic world and Russia - that spilled into the West as far away as Ireland - offer lessons for today. There are memorable insights of - Washington, Catherine the Great, Louis VI, Kosciuzko, John Paul Jones - even into the hidden court of the Ottoman Empire and its traditions... A great read!!

I wanted to like this book. I really did. It's a fascinating approach to a pivotal period in history. The author's treatment of the major players is well done and often insightful. What I can't forgive is the sheer number of mistakes. After a while, I lost count. Here's a sampling:
1. In the introduction and again in the epilogue, Winik states Alexander I of Russia became czar at age 24 on the murder of his father Paul I in March 1801. Yet on pages 438 and 440, he has Alexander being 15 at Catherine the Great's death in November 1796, which would make Alexander the first czar to age nine years in just over four. Actually, Alexander was five weeks short of his 19th birthday when Catherine died, and 23 when he became czar.
2. On page 6, Winik has Louis XIII of France dying in 1642 instead of the correct year, 1643.
3. On page 135, Winik says Louis XVI was orphaned at age 10, when he was actually 11 when his father died, and 12 at his mother's death. Also, on page 137, he has Louis being 16 when he married Marie Antoinette, when he was several months short of his 16th birthday.
4. On page 202, he has Grigory Potemkin distinguishing himself at the battle of Cesme. This is unlikely, as Cesme was a naval battle, and Potemkin was in the army.
5. John Paul Jones was born John Paul, not Paul Jones, Jr as Winik states on pg. 209. Also Jones died in 1792, not 1794 (pg 215).
6. Mikhail Kutuzov's eye costing wound occured in 1774 during Catherine's first Turkish war, not in 1788 during her second (pg. 219).
7. Selim III became sultan of the Ottoman empire at 27, not 18 (pg. 223).
8. Twice, on pg. 263 and 319, it's stated Catherine the Great was pushing 60, when in fact she was already 60.
9. On pg. 382, Marie Antoinette's age is given as 38, when she died just over two weeks shy of that age.
10. Alexander Hamilton's wife's name was Elizabeth Schuyler, not Jane Schyler as listed on pg. 478. Actually, considering how often he cites Ron Chernow's (excellent) biography of Hamilton in his notes, you think Winik would get this right.
11. On pg. 507, John Adams' year of birth is given as 1738. I'll chalk this up to a typo, as the correct year (1735) is given on pg. 21.
12. On pg. 558, Robert E. Lee is said to be two in early 1800. Lee wasn't born until 1807.
13. The Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact was signed in 1939, not 1941 (pg. 567).
I know there's a few i missed, but I think you get the gist of things.

Though I am hardly an historian, I found this book to contain very little factual information of which I was not already aware. Nonetheless, the author's approach to the narrative -- the interweaving of events in three disparate nations -- did a better job of "tying it all together" than any other popular tome addressing the same era. Nonetheless, the potential reader should be warned:

THIS BOOK IS VERY, VERY HARD TO READ.

I say this not because the concepts are difficult to grasp, but because the author's grammar is atrocious and/or because his editor did a terrible job.

Early in my career, I learned that a writer should re-examine any sentence exceeding some thirty or so words in length, to determine whether the concept would be more "readable" if divided into a larger number of shorter sentences. Apparently, this is a lesson that the author and/or editor of "The Great Upheaval" never learned.

It would seem that Winik, in love with the comma, a quite utilitarian means of punctuation, has had little guidance, from whatever source, be it formal or informal, in the proper use of this helpful tool, and tends, in most instances, to use a multitude of commas, when, under most circumstances, his prose would be far more comprehensible, by either the general populace or the more educated and erudite reader, if the writer would simply use two, three or even four distinct sentences, even in situations where the use of a single, quite long, sentence is possible, but nonetheless cumbersome.

Yes, I wrote that monstrosity of a sentence intentionally. If you had no trouble decyphering it, you will truly enjoy "The Great Upheaval." Otherwise, your enjoyment may be less, because you will find thousands of similar sentences scattered throughout "The Great Upheaval." In fact, you will often find one in each paragraph on any given page.

As a result of the horrid sentence structure, I often found myself re-reading a sentence two or three times to grasp the information that Winik was attempting to convey. Despite this aggravation, I eventually enjoyed the book and give it four stars for the information conveyed and the unique presentation.

Jay Winik is best known for his popular "April, 1865" dealing with the final chapter in the sanguinary American Civil War. In this new 600 page tome we see Winik taking a detailed look at the world of the 1790s.
Winik's asserts that the world in those distant days was intertwined and connected in ways we internet-tied moderns might not suppose. Ideas and persons traveled great distances. Little was done unheralded in distant corners. Event did have repercussion globally.Scholars and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rosseau; political theorists such as Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke had their works read and discussed from St. Petersburg to the farms and villages of America.
Winik examines the decade of the 1790s in three major nations: The United States, France and Russia. What we learn are:
1, In America the post-revolutionary age leads to the development of political partisanship. Alexander Hamilton, John Adams led the Federalists who were pro-British, pro-big business and supported a strong federal government. Their vision has become manifest in the modern behemoth of industry and wealth that is the United States in the 21st century. Thomas Jefferson led the Republicans favoring agrarian culture, states-rights and support of the French Revolution. We meet in the America sections such giants as George Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams getting good character sketches of these titans and their beliefs. Despite bitter politics and such revolts against the government as the Whiskey Rebellion America was emerging as a world beacon of democratic representative government. Winik makes clear that the fireball in the night "slavery" was a problem which was not resolved; left to linger until it resulted in the Civil War. The conflict between a strong national government and states-rights proponents was also left settled leading to the major conflict over this issue in the nineteenth century.
France was a land runniing with the blood of saints and sinners as the French Revolution destroyed the Bourbon dynasty, executed Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and overe 40.000 others in the horrific Reign of Terror.
We see such revolutionaries as Robspierre, Marat, Danton and the emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte. We see French society torn asunder. These sections are the saddest as we contemplate a revolution turned into tyrrany and repression. The French Revolution was a harbinger of such brutal regimes as those led by Stalin, Hilter and Mao in the twentieth century.
In Russia the redoubtable Catherine the Great destroyed Polish freedom; reigned Mother Russia as an enlighted despot and made passionate love to Potemkin and countless other favorites. She seized the Crimea and fought with fury against the Islamic Ottoman's who ruled Turkey with intrigue, murder and fear. Catherine is a fascinating woman well examined by Winik.
The book is written in a very readable, accessible style which is geared at the educated general populace. Winik has made some mistakes; the books is riddled with typos; it is well illustrated including good maps.
Among his many errors are:
a. He says Robert E. Lee was two years old in 1800 when he was not even born until 1807!
b. Position is used instead of postillon! What an egregious error to let slip by a coypeditor!
c. He confuses Anthony Trollope (not born until 1815) with his mother Frances Trollope who wrote a British bestseller on her journey to America.
The book offers little that is new to the historian but does make for enjoyable reading and learning. Jay Winik is one of our best popular historians moving into that class inhabited by the likes of David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joseph Ellis and Robert Dallek.

Winik's latest was I admit a pleasant revelation. When I saw the book and the time period covered I thought here is yet another book about the 1790s; Do we need another book on the first decade after the constitution? But that was just it. It is not a book just about America's Early Republican period, it is the history of America couched in the swirling, tumultuous worldwide events coeval with the founding years of America.
Winik provides an interwoven narrative of history from 1788-1800 between America, France and Russia. His main point is to tell an interconnected story because contrary to popular opinion from a population of internet junkies and satellite babies, the world of the 18th and early 19th centuries was connected more than we know. In all of this talk of connections, England is curiously left out and this approach might be fruitful for other nations as well (Spain?), but this would be way too much for one book and might well have killed the public history aspect of Winik's project. Who knows maybe that is Winik's next book, American, England and Spain. Despite some missing pieces, the pace and prose of the book are outstanding. With everything from a vivid and at times macabre retelling of the French Revolution (which is extremely helpful to those unfamiliar with the event) to the violent clashes of the czarina Catherine in Turkey, the book at times reads like fiction.
The presentation of the book also forces the reader to use higher cognitive functions in comparing and contrasting the events in America with those in other countries. The result is an illuminating look at otherwise well worn topics such as the Whiskey Rebellion, citizen Genet's visit and the transfer of power from Adams to Jefferson.
At one point in the book after discussing the French Revolution at some length, Winik returns to the American narrative and takes up the familiar Whiskey Rebellion. But instead of simply restating the usual Washington marched on the rebels because he wanted to demonstrate federal superiority, which no doubt was true, he frames the entire event in the context of what examples Washington would have had at his disposal for such action. Winik states that Washington not only wanted to make bare the federal arm but he had Louis XVI's dangerous precedent of wavering and weakness before him and as Winik states, Washington did not want to end up another Louis. I have never once thought in all my time reading and studying history to compare Louis and Washington together but it is extremely revealing.
From such vantage points as the French Revolution and Catherine's Russia fresh vistas and a new sense of frailty unfolds for well known American personalities and events that too often are treated as if mortals knew the script they were acting from and did everything according to a director just off stage. For those readers familiar with the Early Republic, The Great Upheaval will offer many surprises and to those who aren't as familiar with American history there is plenty to gain from such a read. Winik offers a slim ray of hope that trained historians can once again offer the public books that are both readable and reliable. Well done.

Jay Winik is one of the finest, and most stylish, historians writing. This book is as wonderful as his triumphant "April, 1865."