Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers |...

Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers | Michael Barone | A bit fact-heavy, but fascinating in its thesis

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Our First Revoluti...

	Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers Michael Barone Three Rivers Press, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In this exciting work of popular history, Michael Barone brings the story of the Glorious Revolution?an unlikely late-seventeenth-century British uprising?to American readers and reveals that, without it, the American Revolution may never have happened. With a strong narrative drive and unforgettable portraits of kings, queens, and soldiers, Barone takes an episode that has fallen into unjustified obscurity and restores it to the prominence it deserves.

And I thought I knew English history.

Late 17th century England. A time that totaly shapes what later becomes The United States. It defines what we became & are today. The English Revolution ended the era of Divine Right of Kings. 1688-89 brought the ascendency of the legislature & elected representation in England. Michael Barone has done a remarkable job covering an era that I think has been somewhat neglected. This book is useful for the scholar & history enhusiast alike. This story begins with the civil war & the execution of Charles I in 1649. The monarchy was abolished & replaced with the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell & son. The monarchy was restored by 1660 in the person of Charles II. Religion was everything especially the religion of the sovereign. Since Charles had no rightful heirs the crown past to his brother, upon his death, James II, in 1685. Charles faith was not an issue, But James was a devout Catholic while most Englishmen were Protestant. Plus the fact that James was a tyrant created a crisis. James was mindful that his father had been beheaded when James was a teenager. In 1688 he abdicated & fled to Catholic France. What followed was a Parliament acendency. Laws, a constitution, if you will, were past creating a new era of elected representatives, liberty, capitalism & relgious toleration. The blowback from all of that was felt in the colonies. Mary, daughter of James became Queen. Her husband, William was Standholder of Holland. He became William III, King of England. All the new restrictions created by Parliament on the monarchy were accepted by William. He was a Dutchman, in Holland where there had existed a much more tolerant culture. The biggest new restriction was the pursestrings. William had to go to Parliament for money. It appears through history that Parliament has been quite generous. It was also decreed that the sovereign could never again be Catholic. That only became problematic in 1714 when George, Elector of Hanover became George I. He was 28th in line. He didn't speak a word of English & didn't even Like London much but by golly he was Protestant. That ushered in a century plus of very prolific Georges.
A feature of the Glorious Revolution which makes it diferent from other western civilization revolutions was it's bloodlessness. We are all aware of the horrors of the French & Russian revolutions. Our own American Revolution was very bloody.
There has been a lot of material on the 16th century of Henry VIII, Bloody Mary & Elizabeth. Lots out there on the 18th century empire as well. This is a great addition to the 17th.

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A bit fact-heavy, but fascinating in its thesis

Barone takes on a subject well-known to most Brits, but nearly unknown to Americans -- the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-89, where the autocratic "divine right" James II was ousted by British lords and a Dutch invasion by William of Orange (whose wife, Mary, was next in line for the throne). Barone's thesis is that the nature of this upheaval, of William, and of the aftermath, played a profound role not only in British history, but in the rebellion of the American colonies some ninety years later.

Writing: This is Old School history -- lots of dates, lots of names, lots of recaps, lots of facts and figures -- and probably not as much personality explanations as the casual history buff would like. I know a lot more about the whole thing than I did before I listened to this audiobook -- but while I know what people did, I have less understanding of why they did it.

Part of that may be the clumsiness (in a facts-and-figures setting) of the audiobook format. Part of it is the cast of hundreds spanning across fifty-odd years (at least) of British/Dutch/French history. But part of it is just that the book is often more fact-driven than interpretation-driven.

Info: Barone takes us from the reign of Charles II after the fall of the Cromwellian revolutionary republic, through his successor James II -- an autocrat who was determined to uphold and promote Catholicism in England, Scotland and Ireland -- through the reign of his usuper, William of Orange. How William moved from English opponent, to ally, to invader and king, how the various factions in England let it happen, how James' own actions sorely backfired on him, and the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, is all spelled out quite cleanly.

Religion was huge. Part of it was just factional labeling, making an Us vs Them setup. But the impact of the various religions factions -- Catholics, Anglicans, and Dissenters (mostly Presbyterian, but the term applying to anyone who was an English Protestant but not a member of the the Church of England) -- was huge. Catholics were hated and feared by large swaths of the population, for reasons both concrete (looking at Tudor-Stuart history, not to mention the autocratically Catholic -- if sometimes anti-Papal -- nature of England's enemy, France) and spurious (endless rumors of plots by various Catholic factions). A huge part of what goes on during Charles II's reign is the question of whether the converted Catholic James II can be allowed to be made king -- and, once he acquires the throne, his efforts to either impose Catholic rule, or impose tolerance, by dispensing with various Parliamentary acts restricting civil and military posts to Anglicans and packing same with Catholics. William, coming in as neither an Anglican or a Catholic, is still welcomed by a Church of England establishment that fears and resents James.

The essential thesis of the book -- though only the last chapter really spells it out -- is that the Glorious Revolution (a largely bloodless coup, though accompanied by Dutch troops) played a profound role in the later American revolution. Barone posits that the ouster of James II spelled a radical divergence from the Continent (where autocratic kings were largely marginalizing or doing away with representative councils) and from the Stuart kings (who either ruled for lengthy periods of time without Parliament in session, or else packed/corrupted elections to get only Tory crown loyalists elected), and ushered in a government that followed a civil contract with the king, rather than a divine mandate. Under William -- and thereafter -- the king's powers were circumscribed by the Parliament (elected Commons and peer Lords), and the idea of both representative government and guaranteed liberties that were established for England became a huge grievance for the American colonists in the mid-late 18th Century.

Indeed, binding the two above points together, the eventual Constitutional prinicples of the new United States preventing an established church by state or federal government, as well as forbidding any religious test for offfice, suddenly becomes far more clear in its intent and motivation.

Re-Readability: The information, once passed on, makes delving through lengthy lists of names, dates, amounts, and other columnar facts a lot less appealing. I don't see listening to this again (though I don't regret listening to it once).

Audio: The audio quality of this Tantor unabridged edition is excellent. Stephen Hoye narrates with authority and clarity, though even he struggles with some of the facts-and-figures-rich areas of the book.

Overall: A very informative description of an even some in the US have heard of, but few know much about. Barone establishes and appears to prove his thesis, and it's a very illuminating examination of a precursor to much of what we consider American values today.

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Still an interesting book

Although the author may have somewhat overstated his case that the Glorious Revolution was a precursor to the American, it is nonetheless a well-written book about a fascinating period of British history.

Inspirational

Britain's Glorious Revolution in 1688 resulted in representative government in which Parliament had legislative powers, and the King had executive powers (but with no power to change the laws). In addition to the separation of powers, a Bill of Rights was enacted, which banned unreasonable search and seizure, gave protection against self-incrimination, right to trial by jury, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, tolerance of religious diversity, et al.
In this history of the Glorious Revolution, Michael Barone, a political journalist, argues eloquently that it inspired America's Founding Fathers and had a huge influence on the American Revolution and Constitution. Barone has written a fascinating tale of a largely bloodless revolt that profoundly changed Britain and would later have reverberations in America.
Incidentally (though not mentioned in the book), in 1649 Britain's dictator, Oliver Cromwell, proclaimed: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to abridge their king...", which must surely have been Jefferson's inspiration for the first line of the Declaration of Independence!

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Solid intro for those who don't know the period

Barone meant this as an intor for those who know little about the Glorious Revolution. He does a solic, unspectacular job. A bit slow in places, with some repitition, but always clear.

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

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