New Books In History

Americans don’t like “big government” right? Not exactly. In the Early Republic (1789 to the 1820s) folks were quite keen on building up the (you guessed it) republic. As in res publica, the “things held in common.” The “founding fathers”–all “Classical Republicans”–designed a form of government that, though “checked and balanced,” gave the federal government significant powers. And throughout the 19th-century Americans asked the federal government to use those powers to do all kinds of things, many of them profoundly self-interested. But as Brian Balogh points out in his thought-provoking new book A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in 19th-Century America they–that is, the American people–preferred that the federal government render aid in a certain way, namely, unobtrusively. Americans wanted the fed to help, but they didn’t want to see any feds. This created a system of “associative” government: the fed collected money (or incurred debt) and then distributed it to cities, counties, and states to get what it–and they–wanted done. But the fed didn’t give the money to local governments alone; they also, even in the 19th century, gave it in the forms of subsidies, tax credits, loans and so on to private individuals and entities. It hardly needs to be said that the impact of this traditional American way of “doing” central power can be seen today. From block grants to states for welfare programs, to for-profit military contractors in Iraq, to “public” health care administered by the private insurance industry–it’s all part of “associative” government. So do Americans hate “big government”? Only “big government” they can see.

Brian and two of his colleagues have a radio history show that you should listen to. You can find it here.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, American Civil War, American Exceptionalism, American Midwest, American Revolution, American West, Atlantic World, British Empire, Congress, Constitutional Law, Democratic Party, Elections, Enlightenment, Foriegn Policy, Founding Fathers, Individualism, Liberalism, National Identity, Renaissance, Republican Party, Republicanism by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is offering in conjunction with the National History Center.  The NHC and Oxford University Press have initiated a book series called “Reinterpreting History.”  The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians. The first contribution to the “Reinterpreting History” series is Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford University Press, 2008). Today we’ll be talking to the editors of the volume, Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan. You may think that historians normally study states or nations, like France and China. But they also study areas of international or imperial interaction. The most famous example of this sort of “international” history is Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), but there are many others. Among them one finds contributions to “Atlantic History,” itself a relatively new field. Its object is the “Atlantic World,” roughly, the history of the interaction of four continents (Africa, Europe, North America and South America) from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In this podcast, Greene and Morgan talk about the origin of the field, its work to date, and its prospects.

For an introduction to Atlantic history, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History. Concepts and Contours (Harvard University Press, 2005) and  J. H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale University Press, 2006).  There is also a lively Atlantic history discussion list. See H-Atlantic.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, African Americans, American Revolution, Atlantic World, British Empire, Colonialism, Empires, Enlightenment, Exploration, Explorers, Frontiers, Globalization, Historiography, Immigration, Imperialism, National Identity, Republicanism by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

It’s hard to be a Christian. It’s even harder to be a good Christian. But being a good Christian on the frontier of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century seems to have been next to impossible. That’s one possible gloss of Kevin Kenny’s eye-opening new book  Peaceable Kingdom Lost. The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (Oxford, 2009). William Penn was a Quaker, which means he and his followers were trying to be very good Christians indeed. They hoped to take their good intentions to the New World, where they would create (as Penn said) a “peaceable kingdom.” Alas, it was a poor choice of venue to begin a Utopian experiment in godly-living. Pennsylvania was wild and woolly, a mixture of idealistic English Quakers, German Lutherans and Mennonites, Ulster Presbyterians, and, of course,  aggrieved Native Americans of many different sorts. Also, just to stir the pot further, the British and French kings were, shall we say, in a rather “heated discussions” about which parts of the New World each would control. It’s not surprising that the lion did not lie down with the lamb in Pennsylvania, or that William Penn’s “holy experiment” broke apart on the rocky shoals of North America. Kevin does a wonderful job of telling the sad, though distressingly familiar, tale of good intentions gone horribly wrong.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, American Revolution, Atlantic World, Atrocities, British Empire, Christianity, Colonialism, Empires, Enlightenment, Founding Fathers, Frontiers, Immigration, Imperialism, Native Americans, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Quakers, War, William Penn by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

When I was in college about a million years ago, we used to sit in bars and talk about the Revolution. Actually, it was this bar and something like this “Revolution.” Clearly nothing ever came of our planning (or drinking). But it wasn’t always so, as you can learn in Benjamin Carp’s remarkable Rebels Rising: Cities in the American Revolution (Oxford UP, 2007; 2009 pbk). When the American colonists got together to talk revolution in taverns, they made revolution. And, as Ben points out, drinking establishments weren’t the only revolutionary loci–docks, churches, assembly halls, and ordinary houses also served as locales in which anger against British “tyranny” was stoked and action against the same planned. Ben’s book is really about public spaces and how they aid in the process of “mobilization.” These are the places where “civil society” moves from fuzzy concept to real thing. This was true in the American Revolution in 1775, and it was true in the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. It was not true in the Grinnell College pub circa 1984. Everyone knows that the real revolutionaries hung out at The Forum (which, I’m sad to report, is no longer “The Forum” but an IT building).

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, American Revolution, Aristocracy, Atlantic World, Boston, British Empire, British-U.S. Relations, Charleston, Churches, Colonialism, Empires, Family Life, Frontiers, Immigration, Imperialism, National Identity, Native Americans, New York, Newport, Philadelphia, Politics, Popular Culture, Radicalism, Social History by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

How different is the United States from other nations? American leaders and common folk have often said it’s very different. The Founding Fathers said it, Abraham Lincoln said it, Woodrow Wilson said it, Franklin Roosevelt said it, Bill Clinton said it, and George W. Bush said it–and they were hardly the only ones. It certainly seems that the history and nature of United States are quite different from other comparable nations. Americans often say that the U.S., almost uniquely, has been and remains ‘a nation of immigrants,’ the ‘land of opportunity,’ and the ‘arsenal of democracy.’ But how much of it is true? In his provocative new book The Myth of American Exceptionalism (Yale UP, 2009) Godfrey Hodgson attempts to answer this important question. He’s the right man to do so. Though British, he has observed the U.S. professionally for nearly half a century. Thus he has both the perspective of the detached outsider and the knowledge of the native insider. He challenges Americans to look at themselves as others see them. Whether you agree with Hodgson or not (and as you’ll hear, we sometimes cross swords), that is certainly a good thing and we should thank him for it.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast [60:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, American Exceptionalism, Anti-Americanism, Foriegn Policy, Founding Fathers, George W. Bush, Historians, Historiography, Ideology, Imperialism, Intellectuals, Iraq War, Liberalism, National Identity, Nationalism, Neoconservatism, Popular Culture, War on Terror by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

Being “sent to Siberia” is practically a synonym for exile even in English-speaking countries. Why is this? In his fascinating new book Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822 (Palgrave, 2008), Andrew Gentes explains. And it’s quite a story indeed. The tsars began to dispatch people to Siberia almost as soon as they “conquered” it in the sixteenth century (an interesting story in itself). Some of the exiles were criminals. Others were simply political enemies. But as Gentes demonstrates, Russian rulers sent them to this frozen vastness not only for the purposes of punishment, but also to populate Russia’s new territories and make them productive, mostly via fur and mineral extraction. Long before the Soviet’s founded the notrious GULag, Siberia was as much a work camp as a penal repository. And though the tsarist settlements were perhaps not as harsh (and certainly not as large) as their Soviet successors, they were still very nasty places. If tsarist-era exiles didn’t die on the way to Siberia, they would very likely end their days there. America had a “Wild West.” Russia had what we might call a “Deadly East.” We should thank Andrew Gentes for showing it to us.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast [60:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Colonialism, Exile, Frontiers, Imperialism, Migration, Punishment, Russia by Marshall Poe
1 Comment »

John Randolph, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is our guest on the show this week. His book The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism (Cornell University Press, 2007) has just appeared. As a sometime Russian historian myself, I was very interested in reading the book. I knew a bit about Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian anarchist famous for running around nineteenth-century Europe fomenting revolution, but I knew virtually nothing about his family. I’d guess the same is true of many of you. John traces the Bakunins from their earliest days to the mid-nineteenth century, and along the way significantly revises the history of Russian radicalism in the period. The book is a model for historians who wish to weave together the private and the public, the personal and the political, the familial and the social. Highly recommended.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast [63:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, Family Life, Intellectuals, Intelligentsia, Politics, Radicalism, Russia, Soviet Union by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

Today we talk to J. D. Bowers of Northern Illinois University about his book Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). Against the received wisdom, Bowers argues that American Unitarianism did not emerge solely from indigenous Boston-based Congregationalism. Instead, he shows that Joseph Priestly and English Unitarianism exercised considerable influence on the church throughout the nineteenth century, despite what the Unitarians themselves claimed. Mark D. McGarvie of the University of Richmond calls the book “beautifully and persuasively written,” and Daniel Walker Howe of Oxford and UCLA says Bower’s work is “A resolute and positive reaffirmation of Joseph Priestly’s place in the heritage of American Unitarianism.”

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast [52:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, Christianity, Enlightenment, Protestantism, Religion, Unitarianism by Marshall Poe
No Comments »

Welcome to New Books in History. In this, our inaugural podcast, we’re honored to have Malcolm Rohrbough on the show. As many of you may know, Mac is a distinguished historian of the American West at the University of Iowa. He’s the author of many books and articles, among them The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789-1837 (Oxford University Press, 1968), Aspen: The History of a Silver Mining Town, 1879-1893 (Oxford University Press, 1986) and Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (University of California Press, 1997). In this show, however, we talk to Mac about his book The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850. It was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1968, but an expanded and revised edition of the book has just been released by Indiana University Press. Andrew Cayton of Miami University calls The Trans-Appalachian Frontier “the definitive history of the subject” and says “nothing approaches it in the scope of its coverage.” We hope you enjoy the interview.

Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 

 Standard Podcast [49:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: 18th Century, American West, Frontiers, Native Americans by Marshall Poe
No Comments »