| |  | Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 277494
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 447
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0679404937
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.31
EAN: 9780679404934
ASIN: 0679404937
Publication Date: December 24, 1991
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 A Review of the Revolution from a Solid Position September 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Gordon Wood's litterary talents have grown since the CREATION OF THE AMERICAN RERUBLIC. This book is much more readable and is fascinating in its scope and clarity. The influence of his mentor Bernard Baylin is evident and one almost believes he is reading the teacher rather than the student. An excellent work by an accomplished historian.
 Breathtaking in its scope and magisterial in its writing July 18, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The purpose of Gordon S. Wood's wonderfully written The Radicalism of the American Revolution is to reinvigorate a sense of awe around present-day thought regarding the Revolution of 1776. His opening sentence reminds the reader that "we Americans like to think of our revolution as not being radical" (3). Then, with the patience of a Renaissance sculptor and the literary craftsmanship of a master historian, Brown uses the following 366 pages to convince the reader that we Americans are wrong: the American Revolution was indeed radical. The Revolution's purest radicalism comes from the fact that the changes in government that the American leaders successfully achieved through the overthrow of British authority in the colonies led to unforeseen and uncontrollable social changes in the emerging nation.
Wood's goals for this book are incredibly ambitious and the language he invokes is equally grandiose: "It was the Revolution, more than any other single event, that made America into the most liberal, democratic, and modern nation in the world" (7). But if one can bear a concise introduction that reads a bit like historical grand-standing, Wood uses three well-designed and equally convincing sections (monarchy, republicanism, and democracy) to legitimate his enormous claims.
The first section of the book presents an exhibition of how the British monarchical system permeated most aspects of colonial social life. A traditional patriarchal system of hierarchy tied each subject, in turn, to another through a common tie to the king, as the head (patriarch). The responsibility of patronage--"the lifeblood of monarchy"--by those in higher levels of the social structure, beginning with the king, kept the system of accepted (and expected) inequality intact and functioning. The colonial system of patriarchal patronage, in part because of distance from the king, was not quite as sound and solid as that of the English isle, and the loosening of the patriarchal bonds between subjects promoted a larger sense of independence. Wood's analysis here rings with notions of the American social transformation from Filmerian patriarchy to Lockean familial ties posited by Jay Fliegelman in Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority 1750-1800 (Cambridge Paperback Library). Accordingly, "by the middle of the eighteenth century so repugnant was the idea of dependency among free men in the English-speaking world, and so elusive and presumably mutual were these innumerable personal attachments, that only the term 'friendship' seemed universal and affective enough to describe them" (58).
The second section demonstrates the importance of social and political literature to the American transition from monarchy to republicanism. Drawing upon the influential analysis in the first third of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,originally published in 1967, Wood credits the eighteenth-century British literature of social criticism as the dominant and pervasive literary influence on the republicanism of colonial leaders. Despite Bailyn's contention that the colonists did not thoroughly read and fully grasp (yet liberally cited) the classical republican writings of Cicero, Virgil, and others, Wood concludes that the colonial revolutionary leaders and future national leaders attempted to embody and live out classical republican values as they understood them. The strain of trying to revive Roman republican values in a nascent North American nation eventually led to dissent, disappointment, and disillusionment of those who dedicated so much to the revolutionary endeavor.
One of the more important aspects of the book is its understanding that eighteenth-century American equality "did not mean that everyone was in fact the same, but only that ordinary people were closer in wealth and property to those above them and felt freer from aristocratic patronage and control than did common people elsewhere in the Western world" (171). Virtuous gentlemen "free from dependence and from petty interests of the marketplace" and educated in the liberal arts were supposed to lead the ordinary people in the establishment a modern republic free of corruption (104). Ordinary individuals could not sustain republican virtue and guard it against corruption because they were not free as long as they depended on the marketplace to prosper. This Roman model of republicanism, however, was untenable in eighteenth-century America. Though the American colonies possessed a few rich and many poor, even fewer among the rich could serve the new nation without worries of continuing to manage their personal wealth. Therefore, after 1776, propertied men, merchants, and farmers were elected and served side-by-side in state legislatures.
The most arresting part of the book, the third section, explores how the dream of revolutionary leaders for an American republic secured by the disinterested actions of elite gentlemen gave way to a democratic system and society they never imagined. Despite a valiant effort by proponents of a national constitution in the 1780s to create a central government structure to balance competing interests, "so much did private interests come to pervade the halls of Congress and the corridors of the various statehouses that many Americans found it harder and harder to conceive of disinterested leadership anywhere in the society" (267). So strange did the post-revolutionary, constitutional United States seem to some of the revolutionary leaders that many concluded, like Alexander Hamilton, that "this American world was not made for me" (367).
The Radicalism of the American Revolution is breathtaking in its scope and magisterial in its writing. For scholars, undergraduates, and general readers, it is a page-turner. Wood mounts an impressive intellectual arsenal of primary source evidence that corroborates and confronts the major historical works of the past half-century. In one book, Wood sensitively introduces readers to major arguments within the historical discipline and then leads them with prowess and passion to his point of view. The author's sparse (and I mean sparse) treatment of women, African slaves, and Native Americans are valid sources for complaint and criticism in a work of such caliber. But it is, indeed, the sheer caliber of Wood's work that will afford him some level of absolution by all but the staunchest of cultural historians.
Detailed and fascinating February 14, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Ever thought our current government was too laden with special interests? Don't be surprised, but American government driven by special interests has been around a long time. Did you think that Washington's return to private life after his two terms as president was not really that unique? Actually, it was almost unbelievable to the leaders of European countries and had an impact on European political culture. Did you think that pre-Revolutionary War Britain was anti-liberty? Guess again. Even though a monarchy, Britain had a deep tradition of freedom and liberty espoused even by the King. Did you think that our Founding Fathers died happy knowing of their success in laying the foundations of a new kind of government? Actually, many were saddened by how our government evolved. Did you think that the framers of the US Constitution believed that any man should have a chance at political office? Far from it - most strongly believed that only elite "gentlemen" should hold political office - or rather should shoulder the burden of holding political office.
This is a great book. I loved how Wood laid the history of our government's birth into the cultural, economic, familiar, and religious milieu of that time. Simply fascinating.
Another Perspective of the American Revolution January 5, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Gordon S. Wood places the American Revolution into perspective with his detailed narrative, THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. He does not present romanticized depictions of the event, but rather a critical and ideological view of one of the most pivotal events in American history to transform western civilization. Wood takes the revolution apart piece by piece in order to show readers that there was more to the American Revolution beyond the construction of a democratic government and the assembly of a group of intellectual thinkers and leaders who came to be the Founding Fathers.
Indeed, the revolution was comprised of revolutionary thinkers and participants. But also involved those who revolutionized the mercantile and economic face of the United States of America that occurred during the early Republic -- shopkeepers and farmers who helped place the nation competitively side by side with former motherland, England, and political and intellectual cohort, France, and other European nations. These were the radicals and movers and shakers - the common workingman or "self-made man" (341). Thus Wood's main premise has to do with the social and economical ramifications and contributions that derived from communal and entrepreneurial endeavors that strengthened Americans' presence in America as well as globally.
Wood parallels the French Revolution to the American Revolution. However, he emphasizes that they are two distinct events that have their own respective histories and accomplishments. First and foremost, the American Revolution helped to pave the way for "social transformations from 1760 to the early years of the nineteenth century,...which made it possible for anti-slavery and women's rights movements and egalitarian thinking" to occur (7). In addition, events that occurred after the revolution helped to create a bridge for all, which resulted with an influx of immigrants from Europe and Asia to arrive.
Wood provides a retrospective discussion of the American Revolution that may interest anyone who would like to read another point of view to one of the most monumental events to occur in American history. With his clear and distinct narrative, Wood presents a better understanding of the event as it reflects on the political, social, and economic issues, which helped shape and mold American society to what it would become: from being a dependent colonial society to becoming an independent self-reliant society.
The radicalism of the American Revolution November 9, 2006
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
very easy to read and keep up with details. very descriptive. Hector
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