The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States) |...

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States) | Robert Middlekauff | Impressed

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The Glorious Cause...

	The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States) Robert Middlekauff Oxford University Press, USA, 2007 - 752 pages average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good but flawed

On balance this is a good, but a not great, book. I expected more from the first book in the Oxford History of the US series. This is not to say that the book is bad or not worth reading, it is just that it is, in my opinion, somewhat flawed, especially the first third of the book. After completing the early sections I was tempted to stop and go on to something else. Fortunately I did not, because, from my perspective, the book got better.

First the good points - This book covers the period from before the revolutionary war (starting in1763) - to the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. It is a well-written and scholarly work. It gives a reasonably good picture of the specific events leading up to the conflict and the positions of the Americans and the British. It discusses the history of the war and the reasons why it became international in scope. There were some very interesting sections concerning various aspects of the conflict that are often not covered in general treatments, such as: the medical crops, the wives left behind, financial and organizational difficulties, and many others. I learned a lot. For example, I got a much better appreciation for George Washington and his better generals and the handicaps that they labored under. I now understand that his genius (and those of his most successful subordinates) lay in making the most of the meager resources at their disposal and in never allowing the British the complete victory that would have won them the war. This book also corrected a misconception that I had concerning the numerical strength of the loyalists supporting the British crown. Contrary to the view stated in most books on the American Revolution Professor Middlekauff cites statistics showing that the loyalists only comprised about 1/5 of the non-slave population, not 1/3 as I had always believed and that they were almost everywhere a harassed minority. One reason for the failure of the British was that relatively few colonists flocked to their cause. There were loyalists and loyalist militia, but they were not as numerous as had been expected. The very interesting analysis of the difficulties that the British had in fighting a limited war against an enemy that could be defeated in battle, but never really subdued, has great resonance for current readers.

Before discussing what I feel are some of the flaws that prevent me from giving this book a five star recommendation, I would like to make a general comment. No single book, even one with almost 700 pages of text, can cover in detail the scope of the events leading up to the American Revolutionary war, the war itself, the development of a constitution and the ratification of that constitution. As such, the best that an author can hope for is that they provide a reasonable framework from which the reader can search for more detailed information. I believe that Professor Middlekauff has done this, although with the flaws that are described below.

Now the flaws:
1) In my opinion, this book does not sufficiently focus on the needs of the more casual reader who may require more background information. For instance, several chapters are devoted to the Stamp act, but there is no mention of what documents required stamps (or even that these stamps were to go on documents rather than on letters). Washington's service in the French and Indian war is mentioned in passing, but never really discussed. This was a pivotal event in Washington's life and the reason why he was appointed as the head of the Continental army. Surely this was worth more than just a brief passing reference. This is especially surprising since the book discusses the lives of English leaders, who were only briefly involved with the events leading up to the war. Likewise, insufficient background information is provided for all of the other important American political and military leaders. In my opinion, the book needs a brief overview of the founding of the various colonies, their various systems of government and the Americans involved in the war. There is little or no background concerning the British parliamentary system and British politics before and during the war. That there was British opposition to the war is hardly mentioned. There is a lack of a comprehensive review of the Articles of Confederation. They are referred to and there is a very brief mention of their development, but no systematic review of their most important features. Some deficiencies are discussed in the context of the need for their replacement by a new constitution. In contrast, there is a lengthy discussion of the development of the Virginia Constitution. It appears as if the author assumes that the reader is completely familiar with the Articles of Confederation, so no review of their most salient features is required. The book could have been greatly improved with short chapters rectifying all these and other omissions.
2) This is not primarily a military history book and those who want more about the fighting can find better choices. Pivotal battles, such as that at Bunker/Breed hill, Saratoga and Long Island/New York are discussed, but only in the most minimal way. Only one sentence is devoted to the important American victory at Bennington. The savage fighting at Oriskany NY is not even mentioned, nor is the massacre of American troops at Paoli PA. The author does a much better job of describing the fighting in the Carolinas, Georgia and finally at Yorktown.
3) The book contains 20 maps, but they are murky at best. The land mass is shown in gray with black lettering for the town and rivers and with black arrows denoting troop movements. In contrast, the water (which generally contained almost no further detail) is shown nicely in white. Single maps are used for a whole campaign or battle, instead of multiple maps denoting different stages of that aspect of the war. The result of these deficiencies is to reduce the usefulness of the few maps that are provided.

The addition of perhaps 20 additional maps and about 30 pages of additional text aimed at the more casual reader, could have gone far to correct these flaws. Given that book is 736 pages long (including the index and bibliographical notes), an additional 50 pages would not have seriously increased the size or cost of the book. If necessary, some judicious editing could eliminate some extraneous details, enabling the addition of these 50 pages without increasing the final size of the book. It is hoped that these flaws will be corrected in a subsequent revision. Then, in my opinion, it would be the 5 star book that I had expected it to be.

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Impressed

I purchased a used copy for the first time, and I was grealty impressed. I bought the book below cost and it was so well taken care of that it didnt even look used.

A Myopic Look at the Founding

"The Glorious Cause" is a wide-ranging look at the founding of the United States that is severely compromised by its author's inability to see the forest for the trees. To be sure, Middlekauff's scholarship is beyond reproach. However, taken as a whole the book reads like a 700-page selection of bullet points stripped of their formatting and delivered in paragraph form. There is precious little in the way of contextual analysis or 'big picture' overview - Middlekauff has events proceed in an ineluctable progression from A to B to C that overwhelms the reader in an endless stream of dates and proper nouns.

More aggravating are the omissions in Middlekauff's narrative - nothing on the treason of Benedict Arnold, nothing on the impetus behind the First Contintental Congress (it materializes out of thin air in his account), and nothing on the Articles of Confederation aside from an after-the-fact blurb about the agreement's flaws.

Instead, he often dives in to lengthy summations of personnel intrigues in obscure sub-committees of the British government, and devotes countless pages to the arcana of military strategy.

I can't figure who the intended audience for this book is. It's scope is far too wide-reaching to be of use to the professional historian, and yet it concerns itself primarily with minutiae of little interest to the average educated reader. Nor does it have the overarching analytic backbone necessary to draw all the facets of the time period together in a sensible format for the average reader.

In short, Middlekauff earns himself three stars for his outstanding scholarship; but he misses out on the other two for his suffocating pedantry.

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Very Detailed... Too Detailed

The good and bad of this book can really be summed up that easily in my opinion. The book is very detailed in its history, however, the amount of detail the book provides also gets in the way of the story. The first 5 or so chapters talks about tax collectors and stories of individuals. While it is interestng, for me, the amount and detail of individual stories takes away from the story of the revolution and all the events which lead up to it.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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