Review

Author(s): C. L. Mowat
Review by: C. L. Mowat
Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 1960), pp. 257-259
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1943360
Accessed: 18-06-2015 09:08 UTC

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257

REVIEWSOF BOOKS

fromdaring,secrecy,superbwoodsmanship,and thoroughpreparationand
training.His superior,GeneralGage, envied his militaryreputation,and
Sir William Johnsonfeared his effortsto acquireland and his influence
with the Indians.Betweenthem they laid him low, but it took considerable doing. If Rogers were constantlyin debt, he borrowedfirst to pay
his rangers-and was never fully repaid. Accusationsof treason made
againsthim were manifestfabricationsto discredithim. And, though he
fought for Englandduringthe Revolution,it was only afterCongresshad
rejectedhis services.
On the whole admirablywritten,this volume has its flaws.Johnson's
hatredand that of Gage are explained,but not the oppositionof so many
more of Rogers'associates.Amherst'sambivalentattitudetoward him is
not elucidated.(comparep. I45 and p. I58) There are a numberof proofreadingslips in spelling and dates (Rogers'first rangercommissionwas
dated i756, not I760), and the indexing is incomplete.Yet the volume is
swift-paced,the phrasingoften vivid, and the researchextensive.Rogers
was clearlythe victim of a conspiracywhich historiansever since have
compoundedby neglecting him; perhaps now the injustice may be
partiallyredressed.
CortlandState Collegeof Education
Cortland,New York

DONALD

H.

STEWART

The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe

The Challenge. By R. R. PALMER. (Princeton:
and America, I760-i800:
Princeton University Press, 1959. Pp. 534. $7.50.)
In this arresting book Professor Palmer (to borrow from his title)
challenges historians by his example to undertake large works singlehanded, scorning the collaborative method, and to turn from parochial or
even national researches to the broad, synoptic view of history. He sees
in the period from I760 to i79i a unity embodied in the Democratic
Revolution, the challenge of democratic ideas to government by privilege,
whether in Europe or the British colonies in North America. In a sequel
he will describe the "struggle" of these forces between i7gi and i8oo.
This democratic movement is traced in Britain and her American
colonies, in France, Sweden, Geneva, and the Hapsburg Empire during
the i760's. After the American Revolution and in spite of its influence,
Professor Palmer descries and describes an "aristocraticresurgence" in the
same European countries, affecting even Ireland and halted only-and

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258

WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

there temporarily-in Poland. In France this revolte nobilaire was the

proximate cause of the Revolution.
From an enterprise of this scale and boldness complete success is hardly
to be expected. Professor Palmer's style is clear if undistinguished, with an
unnecessary (because unpolemical) intrusion of the personal pronoun. He
is occasionally repetitious and is led into needlessly discursive accounts of
Rousseau and Voltaire, Delolme, Mably, Mounier, Burke, and other men
whose ideas interest him. He is too self-conscious in his unusual task
("occupied more with European than American history, I have been able
only to sample this literature" of the American Revolution: p. i86). He
has, in fact, confused analysis with description. His task is not to narrate
the various revolutions of the time but to correlate them. Had he confined
himself to this, he would have produced a much shorter, easier, and more
closely reasoned work. Instead of a brilliant essay we are given a somewhat unwieldy book.
Not that it does not have great merits. There is a freshness of view
which comes from a novel perspective. Parallels not always observed
become clear: between American committees of correspondence and the
similar committees of the English county associations of I780, between
representativeson mission in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War
and in France a few years later. Interesting questions are asked and answered: the comparative tax burdens in the American colonies and several
European countries, the comparative numbers of American loyalists and
French emigres. We are reminded of Burke's essential conservatism long
before the French Revolution and springing chiefly from his "adulation
of Parliament." (p. 309) We are shown the irresponsibility of the Whigs
in opposition before and during the American war: they undermined
American respect for the King and for Parliament and fanned American
discontent which they had no power or ideas for relieving. (pp. I72-I73)
Not all Professor Palmer's parallels will command assent. It can be
argued that both in Great Britain and in Ireland aristocratic (or oligarchic) government was never seriously challenged in the I76o's and so
could experience no "resurgence" in the eighties. Rather, George III's
intervention in politics challenged the power of a Whig clique and sent
some of its members into opposition. When the American war went
badly this clique temporarily reasserted itself, using the old suspicions of
country against court which produced the county associations. It soon
parted from the radicals, the true reformers; and Pitt was able to restore
the former mixture of oligarchic government and limited royal influence.
It is thus an exaggeration to ascribe "the climax and failure of the early
movement for parliamentary reform in England" (p. i85) to the Ameri-

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REVIEWS OF BOOKS

259

can Revolution. The remark that "with Pitt in office the aristocracy was
kept at a distance" (p. 302) reads strangely. Nor can Grattan's Parliament
be represented as the triumph of democracy in Ireland. The government,
hard pressed in the war, made a concession to the nationalism of the
Anglo-Irish gentry, but then allowed the continuing strength of the
Protestant "ascendancy" and the influence of Fitzgibbon and Beresford
at Dublin Castle to nullify its effect-hardly a case of aristocratic resurgence.
This is not to deny a,- kinship between democratic movements in
Europe and America. Professor Palmer does not claim that the American
Revolution grew out of the European movements, but he does, in a
striking chapter, show how pervasive was its inspiration upon Europe.
It furnished a model for putting into effect the ideas of government by
consent and the sovereignty of the people. (p. 214) It familiarized the
"convention"as a body to frame and ratify a constitution. In John Adams's
preamble to the Massachusetts constitution of I780, it anglicized the word
"citizen." Above all, in the making of the state and federal constitutions
(as an admirable chapter, "The People as Constituent Power," shows) it
demonstrated that a sovereign people could form a government and put
themselves under it. Thus the American Revolution "inspired the sense
of a new era . . . it dethroned England, and set up America, as a model
for those seeking a better world." (p. 282)
Yet-one last caveat-the American Revolution represents the democratic challenge only in a limited sense. When it came to war with Great
Britain, it was "a struggle between democratic and aristocratic forces."
(p. 202) But the government of the American colonies had never been
aristocratic: the colonial oligarchies (from which most of the Revolutionary leaders came) were based, as Professor Palmer shows, on institutions far more democratic (for example in the franchise) than in contemporary Britain. Democracy, like other American attributes, had
evolved in response to the American environment, whose influence
Professor Boorstin has so convincingly described. "In America they claim
... to be perfect States, not otherwise dependent on Great Britain than
by having the same King," wrote Governor Bernard in 1765. (p. i62) The
Americans rebelled, not against an old order as in Europe, but against the
British attempt to impose a new order in the imperial reorganization
after I763. Without this challenge, would American democracy have
formulated and demonstrated its ideas in time to furnish inspiration to the
democratic revolution in Europe?
University College of North Wf'ales,
C. L. MOWAT
Bangor

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