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(More customer reviews)In this very well written book, Professor Maier describes the evolution of colonial thought and political action from protest within an accepted formula of dissent to revolution. She shows how colonial actions were based upon a perceived constitutional pattern articulated by British dissident Whig intellectuals and political publicists. From the end of the Seven Years War to the outbreak of the revolution, she shows the leaders of colonial protest working step by step to maintain what they perceived as the proper relationship between rulers and governed. Their actions greeted usually with incomprehension by British officials and politicians. Eventually, the colonials concluded that revolution was the only remaining option. Maier is particularly interested in the violent and coercive acts of the pre-revolutionary period. She shows nicely that this kind of activity (eg, the Boston Tea Party and similar events) took place within an established tradition of public violence that was usually constrained and sanctioned by community leaders and reflected a public consensus. These type of actions were 'extra-legal' as opposed to 'illegal', and were driven by the sense that the British government had violated a social contract between rulers and governed, thus legitimizing extra-legal action. Maier shows also the irrational elements of the colonial cause. For example, many believed that British actions were part of a conspiracy that included French bribery to obtain a suitable settlement at the end of the Seven Years War. There was also considerable fear of the imposition of Anglican and even Roman Catholic religion. The Quebec Act, granting religous freedom to the francophone inhabitants of Quebec, was regarded perhaps the most threatening of the so-called Intolerable Acts. Readers who have picked up recent surveys of the Revolutionary period such as Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause or Bobrick's recent book will find Maier's arguments familiar. This is because Maier's work is now fundamental to understanding the American Revolution.
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"An intellectual interpretation of the American revolution that raises it to a new height of comprehensiveness and significance. A superbly detailed account of the ideological escalation . . . that brought Americans to revolution." -Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review
In this classic account of the Americanrevolution, Pauline Maier traces thestep-by-step process through which theextra-legal institutions of the colonialresistance movement assumed authority from theBritish. She follows the American Whigs as theymoved by stages from the organized resistance of the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 through thenon-importation associations of the late 1760sto the collapse of royal government after 1773,the implication of the king in a conspiracyagainst American liberties, and the consequentDeclaration of Independence. Professor Maier'sgreat achievement is to explain how Americanscame to contemplate and establish theirindependence, guided by principle, reason, andexperience.
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