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Bezig met laden... American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 (2016)door Alan Taylor
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Taylor is a fill-in-the-gaps historian, adding correctives to standard narratives by including African-American and Indians as central players. Geographically he includes areas often overlooked beyond the 13 colonies. And he shows how big picture the motivations of Empires, including the new American, were driving forces. All of this is important and it's hard to disagree. He is playing what we call in Wikipedia "WEIGHT" ie. how much attention to give certain subjects. A re-balancing of the past - less Valley Forge, more Western. Less Bunker Hill, more slavery. etc. The problem is unless you already have a preexisting foundation of the war it feels like what it is, revisionism. Taylor is best approached after you have a good understanding of the period, then you can see it from a new weighted perspective. As a core history of the war I don't think it achieves. ( ) Perhaps I'm just getting old, but this was much less gripping than Taylor's book on the colonial era. It seemed a bit more straightforward, though still offering important correctives to the standard narrative--giving time to the loyalists and so on. Perhaps there was just too much here; it felt to me like an encyclopedic work, rather than a narrative one; there were too many short sections, and the narrative sections were over comparatively well-trodden ground. American Revolutions demolishes the myths of the American Revolution as we were taught in school. It is an outstanding and very readable history of the American Revolution providing the perspectives of the British, the Loyalists, other British colonies and the diverse tribes of American Indians. This book is strongly recommended. The American Revolution has been canonized by Americans as the good one, the non-messy one. In fact, it was a civil war among British whites, and drew in numerous other nations, notably the Indian tribes whose land the colonists coveted; British sympathy with Indian rights was one of the grievances the colonists had. Taylor explores the various tensions in the colonies—mostly the rebel ones, but a bit into Canada and the Carribean—and how the Revolution fit into that larger story. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation's founding. Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor's Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain's mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. Brutal guerrilla violence flared all along the frontier from New York to the Carolinas, fed by internal divisions as well as the clash with Britain. Taylor skillfully draws France, Spain, and native powers into a comprehensive narrative of the war that delivers the major battles, generals, and common soldiers with insight and power. With discord smoldering in the fragile new nation through the 1780s, nationalist leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to restrain unruly state democracies and consolidate power in a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of "We the People," the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But their opponents prevailed in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision of a western "empire of liberty" aligned with the long-standing, expansive ambitions of frontier settlers. White settlement and black slavery spread west, setting the stage for a civil war that nearly destroyed the union created by the founders. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)973.3History and Geography North America United States Revolution and confederation (1775-89)LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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